Microsoft Addressing Consequences of Pernicious Complexity

Following up on my earlier post, Pernicious Complexity:

WSJ.com - Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software:
"With each patch and enhancement, it became harder to strap new features onto the software since new code could affect everything else in unpredictable ways." (Fair Use archive in the first comment below.)

I don't know if Mr. Allchin had read Tainter by this time, but it sounds fairly likely.

This is a great article from the Wall Street Journal. Their editorial stance pissed me off a while back so I dumped them, but I always thought their reporting was good. Maybe I'll go back the next time they send me one of their "come back" emails. This also bodes well for Microsoft.

Money available for diversion to Katrina and Rita

Hey! Here's some "wasteful spending" money available for Katrina! Hey! Look! Here, right here!

Ah, never mind then.

Son of a bitch...

TIME.com: Pattern of Abuse

Hat tip. And another.

The abuse we keep hearing about from Iraq has been a real shock to me.

I was an enlisted Army counterintelligence agent for five years back in the mid-'70's, and clearly remember the training we received on the Geneva Convention. There would have been no excuse for participating in such things, or for failure to report such things. "Following orders," it was stressed over and over and over again, was no excuse. Training on these things was not delivered with winks and nods, either. It was serious and sincere.

Though atrocities occurred back then, too, I'd come forward from that time with the clear impression that the chain of command at least tried to stay on top of things like this.

As little as just two or three years ago I was moved to write a letter to Russia's President Putin to protest the actions of Russian soldiers in Chechnya. One particular story had Chechen people forced to crawl gauntlets of Russian soldiers, who would beat them as they passed. One particular Chechen victim had been partially paralyzed and permanently tortured by a hammer blow to the spine. I was outraged, and the thought of such a thing happening at the hands of American soldiers didn't even cross my mind.

How stupid of me.

Along came Abu Grabass and stories like this, and I am disgusted and ashamed. It's not so much that these things happen as that the command structure seems so clueless. Complicit, even.

I would like to think that the officer class of the US military, being all christian and shit, would have a good handle on things like this, but apparently not.

During my time in the Army I met some of the best people in the world, and some of the worst. The latter seemed vastly outnumbered, though. Now I'm not so sure.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican 'to ban new gay priests'

'
Hey Pope!
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html

Conclusion

The empirical research does not show that gay or bisexual men are any more likely than heterosexual men to molest children. This is not to argue that homosexual and bisexual men never molest children. But there is no scientific basis for asserting that they are more likely than heterosexual men to do so. And, as explained above, many child molesters cannot be characterized as having an adult sexual orientation at all; they are fixated on children.

Faith is belief absent evidence, so I guess they can believe that homosexuals have a higher tendency towards child abuse than straights if they want. But then, I don't think the church really believes this; rather, they're scared of the fundies and facts are irrelevant.

The real problem has been the church's failure to deal with child molestation when it happened. They preferred instead to bury the problem and shuffle the guilty off to another parish.

In any event, the real aberration is celibacy. They don't even want you to jack off. Don't they know that prostatitis is called "monks disease" for a reason, or that masturbation prevents prostate cancer?

That's enough <-- The Museum of Left Wing Lunacy

I've had enough of this right-wing shit thank you very much. For starters, they should can the sound effects.

In the introduction to his lecture, Our Energy Challenge, [here] [here], Dr. Richard Smalley refers to "right-brained" and "left-brained" people in the context of political tendencies, alluding to the same sort of Mars-Venus differences some say exists between men and women.

I think he's right. Whatever the case, the people behind this so-called museum of left-wing lunacy are wired differently from me. Looking at the site repels me, which is unfortunate because we need more not less accommodation across this divide. I enjoy Brooks and Buckley, but not these guys.

(Everybody should see Smalley's lecture, by the way. Very highly recommended.)

Bennett reverses: He's foe of Yucca

"The entire issue needs to be rethought, Bennett said. The fundamental principles of that new policy should include unqualified support for more nuclear power, that the nation work toward the technology that would allow reprocessing of waste and that all nuclear waste be left where it is until reprocessing can proceed, he said.

"If it is safe to transport nuclear waste, and it is safe to store nuclear waste at an interim storage site like Skull Valley, "by definition it is equally as safe to leave it where it is," he said."

Sounds like a punt to me.

Reprocessing of "spent fuel" is the way to go. Were it up to me, there would be absolutely no dumping of "spent fuel". So-called spent fuel still contains the vast bulk of its original fuel value. It should be reprocessed both to recover that fuel value and to radically reduce the amount, and lifetime, of nuclear waste ultimately needing disposal. Reprocessing "spent fuel" makes a great deal of sense.

On the other hand, leaving spent fuel at the plant in spent fuel pools or in dry casks, as is now the practice, is hardly as safe as putting it underground or gathering it from hundreds of scattered interim locations to one interim location.

Had Bennett said, "Reprocessing is now an option in this country" rather than " the nation [should] work toward the technology that would allow reprocessing of waste", I'd have been encouraged. Had he said, "Reprocessing is now an option and this bill mandates reprocessing over dumping" I'd have been very happy with it.

Reprocessing is already more than an option. It's a reality. The French, Japanese and Russians do it all the time. We should, too.

As it is, though, Bennett's stance is just pandering to anti-nukes and NIMBYs. As someone said, perfect is the enemy of good enough. Yucca will be good enough for now. Reprocessing would be better, but the energy situation is dire and we have to get a move on. All Bennett's stance does is shield him a bit from anti-nuke activists and NIMBYs at the expense of reduced prospects for nuclear energy.

Reducing the prospects for any relatively benign, massive-scale, non-intermittent renewable energy source is exactly the wrong thing to do to our modern industrial society, especially on the eve of peak oil and at a time when the reality of anthropogenic global climate change is acknowledged by all but the blind and self-interested. And yes, nuclear energy is relatively benign, massive-scale, non-intermittent and renewable.

The Museum of Left Wing Lunacy

Update 20050919:

This morning the Museum is lacking their blogroll so I could not visit any new right-wing blogs, but I'm not sure it matters. So far the best thing I've noted is this picture.

I'll have to keep visiting for a little while, but I'm starting to think that there must be a Mars-Venus-like difference between at least this variety of conservative and myself. After I start looking I have to force myself to keep looking. Their facts are not my facts, and I feel their stance on my facts is that they are not facts. I've seen a lot of smug LOLing among them, and I simply can't stand "LOL". "Breaker breaker 1-9 good buddy." Just rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway, nice right-wing tits.

======================

I've never considered myself "liberal" or "conservative". I've been around brilliant people of both self-descriptions. Invariably though, I find myself very much at odds with both sorts, enough to feel alienated from their respective camps.

For example, I'm 99% atheist so that's one strike against the presently ruling "conservative" party (who don't seem all that conservative to me, frankly). For another example, I'm pro-nuclear energy, so that's one strike against the "liberals" (who seem pretty damned conservative at times).

I'm stereotyping and simplifying, sure, but it's useful.

I'm pro-death-penalty so I'm at odds with the liberals. I'm pro-abortion so I'm opposed to that conservative mindset.

I'm a conscientious objector in the war on drugs so neither liberal or conservative thought in that arena holds much appeal to me.

I've watched enough of Fox News to turn away, having concluded they're a propaganda arm of the republicans. I've watched enough of the the major network news to turn away because of the lowest-common-denominator nature of their content (they titilate rather than inform, they don't cover a lot of very important stuff while devoting time to trivia). I still watch enough of both to confirm my conclusions.

I can't stand Ann Coulter, but I didn't much care for Al Franken's "Lying Liars" either. I very much like William Buckley and David Brooks, but I also like Bob Herbert, Frank Rich and Doonsbury (which I think is eloquent political commentary more than just a comic strip).

I'm suspicious of operatives like Carville and Matalin, especially because they're married.

I suppose I'm sympathetic to the old lady who, when asked how she'd vote, responded, "Vote? That would only encourage the bastards!" (Actually, I don't know whether that line was a joke, from a real old lady, or by a motorcycle journalist called Gordon Jennings, to whom I saw the quote attributed in a now apparently defunct forum.) The assertion that though our system was a mess it was still the best system around used to seem reasonable, but I'm not so sure anymore.

I've had libertarian tendencies all along, but when I read a little deeper into libertarian stuff I find it impractical, so I'm not a libertarian. I'm certainly no communist though some smart people have been.

So what the hell am I? Sometimes I think I'm basically a fatalistic, non-anarchic nihilist, meaning that I am driven to conclude by what I perceive as present and likely-future reality that it doesn't much matter what I am - that events have a course of their own over which there's very little hope of control. I am not a determinist because I don't believe in destiny, so the qualified "nihilist" seems to fit me.

Lately I've been paying more attention to blogs and similar outlets than to mainstream media. I don't read everything at each of the links I've collected, but I try to balance my collection of links and diversify my sources somewhat. My collection seems to be a little lefty, though, so I've blogged this site because they have a long blogroll of conservative sites I can check out.

Right off the bat, though, I like Pip Wilson's collection of founder's quotes better than theirs.

So Long New York Times <-- TimesSelect: Overview

I don't understand the New York Times' move to start charging for access to their editorial content. Were I in the business of propagating memes I'd want them to travel as widely as possible, including to those minds unwilling to pay for the privilege of reading them.

Looks like Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, John Tierney, Nicholas Kristof, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, David Brooks, Frank Rich and others will have to find other avenues to my eyes. That's a shame. They are all brilliant writers. Were I one of them I'd be pissed at this move by the New York Times, because there are plenty of other brilliant writers out there unimpeded by this new hurdle.

Am I just being cheap? Maybe, but you've got to draw the line on expenditures somewhere. I'm already paying subscription fees to the New Republic, Scientific American, Skeptic, the Atlantic Monthly and others. I'm more inclined to cut the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic than I am to start paying the New York Times another fifty of my finite bucks, for which I have plenty of other uses. I already tossed the Wall Street Journal a while back, but that was for another reason - their editorial stance became too much to stomach with their adoration of the charlatan Lomborg and their climate change "skepticism".

I can understand the Times' need to increase revenue, and if I used their archives a lot I would not mind paying, as I have not minded once or twice when I've done so. I could not care less about their sports content, and I have no use for their other Select services. Sorry, but if they want me to read their editorials they'll have to cover their expenses with advertising revenue.

Thanks, but no thanks. It's been swell, but I guess it's over. So long, New York Times. So long, esteemed opinion page authors. Maybe I'll read your stuff elsewhere some day.

Pernicious Complexity

Bruce Schneier linked to Marcus Ranum's "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security". It's all interesting, but what sets me off this morning is this sentence from the discussion on Schneier's page, in which Ranum says

We can make systems that are more powerful but less complex. I absolutely believe that to be true. It is, however, easier to build systems that are more complex and more powerful.

That's the problem.

Joseph Tainter's 1996 paper, "Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies", beautifully lays out the consequences of the lure of utility at the expense of complexity. [link] [Wikipedia] [Google]

Tainter's paper does not even contain the word "computer" (it's about energy and sustainability) but the central theme applies perfectly to the computer world. The point of Tainter's paper is that complexity and utility are related, and that the relationship over time is predictable. It starts out where you fix a problem by adding some complexity and get a great deal of utility in the process. Later on, when you have another problem you've got also to deal with the complexity you added before. Things are a little harder now, but you add more complexity because you can get more utility. Things continue this way for a while.

Eventually though (and this is where Ranum trails off) you start getting less and less utility for each increment of complexity, until it reaches the point where you're just dealing with the complexity and keeping things afloat somehow. The utility/complexity curve has levelled off. If you stay on this track, if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll start heading down the back side of the curve, adding more complexity to keep things going, but losing utility. Now you're on the road to eventual failure.

Read the paper. I'm not doing it justice.

If I were in charge of something like an IT shop, nobody would work for me that had not internalized Tainter's message. If I were in charge, internal customer service would "suffer" because internal customers would no longer automatically get what they want. All requests for new functionality, and all proposed approaches to existing problems, would have to be examined with respect to their impact on complexity. Very little would be adopted unless it somehow resulted in a reduction in effective complexity.

Of course, I wouldn't be in charge for long.

Read Tainter's paper.

Daniel C. Dennett: Agent of SATAN!

Daniel Dennett will surely BURN IN HELL FOR ETERNITY for allowing SATAN'S CLEVERNESS to reach his pen. In his adoration of Satan, Dennett even wears a beard like Satan's!

Satan has used Dennett to compose a piece filled with as much trickery as the leftist New York Times could decently publish in its ongoing attempts to prevent the teaching of humanity's REAL origins.

Children must be protected from tricky screeds like Dennett's, especially if their "open mindedness" makes them vulnerable to the arguments of these "scientists." I urge you to block the ENTIRE NEW YORK TIMES WEBSITE from your home computer, and make sure any library or school computers are also blocked from the Times' evil influence before letting your vulnerable children be exposed to Dennett's blasphemous tirade.

Pat Robertson made a mistake recently. Hugo Chavez! Give me a break! Daniel Dennett is the one we should assassinate! What was Brother Robertson THINKING?!

If you must know the enemy, and if you are confident of the protections of your prayers and tithes, the offensive op-ed is here (or see the whole thing (Fair Use) in the first comment to this post). You are forewarned: BE WARY OF SATAN'S CLEVERNESS.

Phoenix OzzFest 2005

I went to the tail end of Ozzfest with my friend Chris on Thursday night. We saw sets by Mudvayne, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. I wasn't familiar with Mudvayne; they sounded good and I'd like to hear more. Iron Maiden I was familiar with, of course, but to my surprise I didn't have any Iron Maiden on the computer. Now I do, having downloaded the greatest hits Edward the Great album, which is playing as I type, Apple having received some money from me via this marvel of modernity, iTunes.

Wow! What a show! What a crowd!!

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Queensryche and Judas Priest at the same place, Cricket Pavillion (west side Phoenix area). That crowd was a third the size of this one. The demographics were markedly different, too. This was a surprise because, after all, the four bands, Judas Priest, Queensryche, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, all hail from similar times and climes.

This event had been going on all day though. I suppose that make some difference. Had we come to Ozzfest earlier we would have seen Rob Zombie and some others I wasn't familiar with. Oh, well, work you know.

At the Priestryche show I had no problem spotting people my age or older, but at Ozzfest I must have been the oldest guy there. In addition to a much larger and quite younger crowd at Ozzfest, they were more aggressive! There were as many as five different bonfires going simultaneously after dark. Trash fire bonfires. I saw several attractive young ladies topless, having had their breasts and torsos artistically painted. They looked good! Toward the end of the show we headed to the top of the grass to better walk over toward the exit (Friday being a work day for Chris). From the top the view was pretty impressive. Some great song was blasting its way through the air, lit by what seemed like one lighter in every other attendee's fist. A LOT of people had lighters going, and it was a cool sight. Great music. Ozzy was great. Looked great. Sounded like Ozzy.

Ozzy and Black Sabbath put on a great follow to Iron Maiden, who'd also put on a great set. Iron Maiden set a great stage for Black Sabbath! It was all just great. Great show.

I could have done without the fires. Burning plastic's aroma is not particularly pleasant. Might even be toxic. Anyway, people wanted their fires to dance around. Participants at one particular fire as we were headed out had apparently just run off a group of security people, who were headed the other way with angry young men yelling unpleasantries after their retreating asses. Apparently the fire dancers just wanted to be left alone - they weren't messing with people that I noticed.

I studied my hearing aids for a while. They are definitely providing some protection from loud concert sound levels. If I turn off the hearing aids it's like wearing some hearing protection. Not industrial grade hearing protection, but some. When I would take off the hearing aids it allowed some very high intensity higher-frequencies to come through that were actually uncomfortable for me. With the hearing aids turned on, I still got some protection from those high-intensity -higher frequency sounds, but I could hear the lower frequency stuff almost as well as without the hearing aids, during which I thought the automatic dynamic range compression was doing what I'd like it to do.

Anyway... Jolly good shew!

The 98% Red Hammer

There's this Internet email meme, I think of it as the "2%-98% red hammer meme". Click directly to the comments to read it. You might want to read it first, then return to the spoiler below. That is what I would have opted if presented with a spoiler before reading the thing.

Anyway, the email arrives (thanks Rick), boldly proclaiming "This is really weird." Then it gives instructions to scroll down the page doing some simple additions along the way. Toward the end it primes you further with "Just a little bit more". When I reached the punch line, it did have a weird effect on me for a moment. I hope it is "for a moment" with others on whom this trick works, but I suppose some people may go on misunderstanding the reality.

Here, I already wrote this in an email (OK, now I've edited it a little bit):

No, it's just a trick.

When I read this thing and did the additions and scrolled down and then it asked for the color and the tool and I thought "red hammer" and then scrolled further down to be told I was part of a certain important group of people, I felt . . . . impressed. When I came to the part where it says "You were thinking "red hammer" weren't you?", I got a really strange sensation for a minute. Complete incredulity. How the hell...?

It's just a trick that works sometimes.

First, I think the 2% / 98% claim is bogus. It's a lie for effect. It's to increase the stickiness of the meme. Which will work better?

1. Telling them they're in a highly significant and, by extension, prestigious group, or
2. Telling them they part of a large but probably non-majoritarian group, but that the grouping itself is irrelevant?

If they'd said the more-true number 2, the trick wouldn't work as well on those for whom it works. Even if it doesn't work on most other people, the ones likely to think something other than "red hammer", the trick would still play on a lot of people, whose who will say "red hammer".

So the number is bullshit.

Then, apparently they have researched the likelihood of a person answering a question a certain way out of the blue ( "they" being the scientists). The majority of people (a large number of them anyway), when asked for a color out of the blue, will say "red". It's the same when people are asked to name a tool out of the blue. Most, or a large percentage, will say "hammer." They're just two thing that are likely to come to mind first, except these are more likely. Put the two together and you get some percentage (not necessarily a majority) of people who'll think "red hammer". For that group of people this thing can work (at least the first time they see it). For some people the most likely answers are not "red" and "hammer", but who cares. Then they give you the false 2% / 98% statistic and prime the ones who answer "red hammer", they are primed with the apparent (though explainable) weirdness that the email "knows" you were going to say "red hammer". Some of the supposed 2% wind up wondering what's wrong with them.

If you are falsely primed for an answer to an unanswerable question about an unknowable truth, you'll stand for something so won't fall for anything. Besides, those other people may be stupid. HA! Let's make that meme more sticky. Bullshit can be sticky.

The purpose of having you do the additions as you scroll down the page is to put you into concentration on something else, so that your answers to the questions actually do come from out of the blue.

Maybe some day scientists will discover subtle neurological differences among different types of different sorts of people's brains. I wonder what they'll find different about some people, who read the red hammer meme in the email and pick the color "fuck" and the tool "you" and wonder why they read this far. Why they did the additions. Why they forwarded the email.

Anyway, it was an interesting diversion. I thought the momentary initial reaction when the trick worked on me was pretty cool, and I think the explanation (though there's more to it, I'm sure) is pretty cool, too.

Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design

What is ID, and does it have a legitimate place in the high school science curriculum?

Of course not, because it is not science.

People behind "intelligent design" are taking a stab at memetic engineering, it seems to me.

The New Republic Online: Creations

The New Republic Online: Creations: "The cunning souls who propound intelligent design are playing with fire, because they have introduced intelligence into the discussion."

HA! That's just the opening line.

Actually, the opening sentence is softened a bit by the one following. The author, probably being a nice guy, may prefer that I place the two in continuity:

"The cunning souls who propound intelligent design are playing with fire, because they have introduced intelligence into the discussion. It is a standard to which they, too, must be held."

Here are some more gems:

[I]ntelligent design was prompted by the consequences of literalism in the interpretation of Scripture.
...
Sanctity is not an excuse for stupidity.
...
Truth is never heresy, except for those who make their religion vulnerable to truth.
...
The gates of figurative interpretation were opened in my face, and I grew up.

"..., and I grew up." Yeah!!

And finally:

For His agents on Earth have cultural uses for anti-Darwinism. They think it will make us good, because Darwin makes us bad. No doubt this is why President Bush wants "to expose people to different schools of thought," and have intelligent design taught alongside evolution: to retard our corruption. But isn't the idea that morality is founded in nature itself a sin of materialism? And are we to teach other false ideas alongside other true ones? I do not want my son to waste his time on phlogiston. I mean, what is truth? The question is begged yet again, this time by the pomo of Crawford.

What is truth? The question is begged yet again...

...the pomo of Crawford.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Berners-Lee on the read/write web

BBC NEWS | Technology | Berners-Lee on the read/write web:

When you write a blog, you don't write complicated hypertext, you just write text, so I'm very, very happy to see that now it's gone in the direction of becoming more of a creative medium
Tim Berners-Lee

Well, I seem to be enjoying it, along with about 9 million others who are being joined by a new blogger every second or so.

TBL: ... My goal for the web in 30 years is to be the platform which has led to the building of something very new and special, which we can't imagine now.

ML: Tim Berners-Lee, thank you very much.

Indeed.

The Politics of Ignorance - Sam Harris - Huffington Post

The Politics of Ignorance - Sam Harris - Huffington Post
Great piece.

"Because it is taboo to criticize a person’s religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world."
...
"Garry Wills has noted that the Bush White House "is currently honeycombed with prayer groups and Bible study cells, like a whited monastery." This should trouble us as much as it troubles the fanatics of the Muslim world."

Dawkins seems to like Harris' piece, too.

There's one part of Harris' piece that gives me pause:
"According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As the President is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. ..."

I pause not because Harris is wrong but because he's right, and because actions that weaken this dominant superorganism weaken it in comparison to other, rising superorganisms that are inherently stronger. Look how Sistani has been able to contain Iraq's Shia population, commanding them to go to the polls and so on. Not that Sistani or the Shia pose any threat for the time being or necessarily in the future, but I am somewhat ambivalent about the weakening of the dominant superorganism, the one I live near.

I'll have to explore this and try to put it to better words some other time, but right now it's past my bedtime.

Taliban Go Home!!

What a bunch of BS.

I like and respect many of the religious people I know, but I can't stand the ones so deeply hooked by their own particular memeplex that they'd shove it down everyone else's throat by force if they could get away with it.

In case my graffiti obscured too much of the sign I'd love to have sprayed it on, the sign reads, "Whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a BORN child is legitimate to defend the life of a PREBORN child."

No, Fool! A fetus is not a child. It has no soul because its brain has not developed sufficiently to produce a soul. In any event, the soul you believe in, which exists independent of the brain, is a figment of your imagination.

Believe in myth if you must, Taliban, but leave my female friends and relatives the hell alone.

Hat tip.

Art prankster sprays Israeli wall

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Art prankster sprays Israeli wall
I like Banksy.

"Brain-dead woman dies after birth" - No, she died three months ago.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Brain-dead woman dies after birth:
"... she was brain dead, but they offered to keep her alive ..."

If she was brain dead, then she was dead.

Susan Torres did not die when life support was removed after giving birth. She died three months ago when an undiagnosed cancer reached her brain, causing the stroke that killed her. Since the time of her death, the deceased woman's body has been kept on life support in order that her unborn child might survive.

The soul is what the brain does. When the brain dies, the soul dies with it and the person is dead.

Ms. Torres' death three months ago was a tragedy. That people think she died just yesterday represents another.

USNews.com: Culture: Atheists claim discrimination (8/2/05)

USNews.com: Culture: Atheists claim discrimination (8/2/05): "'We should not be tolerant of people who exercise such intolerance.'"

I am about >this< close to being an atheist, and though it may be pissing in the wind, I support the Brights and the Universists. I've met some great people through their meetings and in their online fora.

I have also met many great people of genuine faith with whom I could coexist in cooperation and harmony or even be friends. I understand that world views are as varied as the people who hold them.

The problem is that some religious people assume they are under orders from the one true god, and that people who think otherwise are somehow ... wrong. Well, if you have people of different faiths all claiming the authority of the one true god, then if follows that most of them are wrong. It is impossible for all of them to be right, right?

Well, actually, I see one out, which is that an omnipotent god can be all things to all people. But that clashes head on with the dogma most such people adhere to. These people, in effect, imply that their omnipotent god is not omnipotent because it cannot be all things to all people.

In other words, they are full of shit.

Having said that, and since humanity is seemingly hard-wired for belief so that the faithless will forever be a minority, I'd prefer to live in a relatively secular society with a Western-style god in the wings than in, say, an Islamic theocracy. The former may tolerate secularism and even encourage it out of self interest, but the latter will kill me if I tell them my truth.

Here.