http://www.stupidtester.com/index.php?fd

Interesting thing with us humans is that we seem to have a complete lack of ability to plan long term. It can be seen in individual behavior as well as in group behavior. Even if a person knows long ahead of time that something must be done, they will not do it until it absolutely must be done.

This can be seen in things like our approach to global warming, pollution, and government to name a few things. We know there are problems, but as long as they're tolerable we will not lift a finger to fix them, the only time people are willing to do anything is when things become intolerable.

An example is a government becomes oppressive. The people will refuse to rise up against it as long as they have something to lose. That however would be the best time for a change, instead people are willing to wait till they have nothing left and a revolution happens.

So are we as a species doomed by our short sighted nature, it's not that we cannot see the problems, it's just that we do not address them at the right time due to complacency, does this mean that eventually will misjudge a problem on a large scale and by the time we are pressed to face it the time for action will have passed?

So I was discussing faith and religion after having started reading The God Delusion, and I came to a few realizations.
First religion itself is not the problem, religion is byproduct of faith. Also religion is no different from any other kind of faith. People seem to have the need to identify with a group and have a simple metric for making decisions. This can be seen by people identifying themselves as communist, capitalist, liberal, conservative, etc.

The common thing is that the brain seems to create reasoning patterns and apply them to situations, that way one does not need to make a deep analysis of each situation, and can quickly apply the appropriate pattern. The problem of faith occurs when people continue applying these patterns in the faith of contradictory evidence. Once it is demonstrated that a belief is flawed it must then be discarded. When a person fails to discard flawed beliefs then the mechanism which allows them to make quick decisions breaks down.

Therefore it seems to me that a person should be taught logic from the young age, so that they are able to identify the cases where their automated reasoning is no longer applicable and have the ability to adjust their reasoning patterns accordingly. On this note I'm curious how harmful exposure of young children to religion is. Since religion teaches faith, which is an act of non-thinking where the person learns that it is good to accept ideas without questioning them. It would seem to me that introducing this element into the environment when the brain is still developing could have adverse effects on the reasoning ability of that person throughout their lives. If this is the case should religious indoctrination be considered harmful to children and as such discouraged?

To make it clear, I have no issue with children learning about religion, I only see potential problems with religious indoctrination of children, where they are taught to accept things without reasoning them through.

Curious what people think of this, do leave comments :)

let's do some polling shall we :)

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=9935030990046738815

Pure Nerd 60 % Nerd, 43% Geek, 17% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations! Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Professional Wrestling Love & Sexuality America/Politics Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

http://luminusdadon.wordpress.com/2006/05/04/how-english-becomes-german/

http://politicalcompass.jpagel.net/

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -6.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.23

http://www.break.com/index/angrybt.html

Came across this gem, and I had to share :)

http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/09/13/machtest/index.html

The Machiavelli personality test has a range of 0-100
Your Machiavelli score is: 94
You are a high Mach, you endorse Machiavelli's opinions.
Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but there's a significant minority at either extreme.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=515642196227308929&q