Does chess increase violence?

 no, it doesn't answer chessfanforlife's question - it merely proves that chessplayers love to go offtrack and answer all sorts of questions not related to the original question

Reasonable beliefs are held by examining evidence

And I hold that since you have not personally reviewed and tested the so called evidence, that your belief is unreasonable. Without independent verification, you are taking on faith everything you are being told. We know that 1+1=2 because we can do the math for ourselves and all of us come up with the same answer, but what if the news media started telling us 1+1=3 and at the same time the education system stopped teaching mathematics in the schools. We would have an older generation, who of course KNOWS that 1+1 does NOT equal 3, but the younger generation, denied an education in mathematics has to believe what they are told because they cannot independently confirm or deny it because they don't have the tools or the education to do so. As the younger generation grows and the older generation dies off, those who believe 1+1=3 grows and it becomes the truth. Those who still hold that 1+1=2 are now the 'deniers of truth'. That is what is happening with global warming. Do you have the tools or the education necessary to say decisively what is or isn't true about global warming?  Let me see the results of your independent testing so I can know the truth. You can't teach me the truth because you don't really know what it is yourself. All you know is what a talking head on TV keeps driving into your head over and over again until you believe it. Well I DON'T believe it. When the media starts telling me that GW DOESN'T exist with the same fervor that they are using to tell me that it does, then I will start worrying about it. 

Dillon. How do you know that the earth orbits the Sun? Have you run the tests yourself? If you stand in one place and you point at the sun, then a few hours later stand in the same place and point at the sun again, you will be pointing in a different direction. Why is it that you think the earth moves round the sun when clearly the sun has moved in relation to you? You believe it (I assume you believe it) because people with greater authority than you on the subject have shown that it does. Let's take another example. Is the world flat or round? Have you personally visited every part of the world or done the maths to show it's round? How about something simpler, have you done the experiments to show that every action has an equal and opposite reaction? Or how do you know that your house won't fall down? How do you know that a dictionary is full of words and valid definitions instead of just random definitions made up by the people writing it?

How do you know that the person you are talking to on the phone is the person you called? How do you know that the news is telling you the truth about anything? So let's see...

Do you not believe in the sun orbiting the earth? Do you not believe that stars are made of gas? Do you not believe that it's gravity that holds us to the earth? At the end of the day, how much of what you believe have you actually tested and validated. When we make decisions a certain extent of that is based on faith (in the case of 1+1=2 you're holding onto the faith that the definition of those numbers that you have been taught is correct) in everything we decide. The question is, how much faith do we put in various sources?

Sources have differing levels of credibility based on a variety of things. For instance, a single researcher who has a degree in physics is usually more qualified to talk about aerodynamics than your average joe in the street. Someone who has a phd specialising in aerodynamics has more authority on the subject than that researcher with a single degree. Say you have a group of people with phds on aerodynamics, that group has more authority than the one phd, simply because you naturally get different viewpoints. Up from that you might have think tanks. These are groups of academics with a certain viewpoint. These will be biased, but you know that their research will be more focused. For instance, if a left-wing think tank ruled that it was absolutely necessary to install security cameras in every house you would take notice. 

Further up you get peer-reviewed journals. If you dismiss peer-reviewed work you don't understand what the process is. Your own peers review your work and check if there are discrepancies in your working or in your conclusions based on your evidence. If there is, you won't get published. These journals are very difficult to get into (I know this personally), and there are different levels of journal depending on how good a paper has to be to appear in a journal. Generally if you see an unpublished paper there is something wrong with it.

At the very top are the huge alliances of scientists. The AAAS and NAS are huge groups, with opinions that are formed by the majority of their members voting on it. The AAAS has roughly 144,000 members, all scientists, and supports the climate change caused by humans theory, as does the NAS. This is about as big an endorsement that you get.

You evaluate sources based on their credibility and their content, and when Exxon is saying this: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Europe-English/Citizen/Eu_VP_climate.asp I would take note.

The problem here is that the public are debating climate change, whereas the scientific community has pretty much made up its mind. Since you asked for evidence:

This is a nice summary by the IPCC:

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm 

Haha, 10,720 hits on this thread so far, and on an OT that's pretty much moot.  Good one, George!

Anyone got any good global warming jokes? 

shakje,

You're absolutely right. I have no way of independently verifying that the Earth revolves around the Sun because I obviously can't take up a vantage point in space far enough away to actually observe it, but then, neither can you so how do you know the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth? How do we know for sure that the Earth is round? These are all things that are drilled into us from a very young age, but how do we know they are true? We have faith in the "authorities" that they are true, but have no means of proving it to ourselves. If you can take such a huge leap of faith to believe in science, which you can't prove, then how is belief in a God so far fetched? Science and religion both expect the masses to blindly accept what they are told is true. The real problem with global warming, though, is that if it is ever proven to be false then what else might the public begin to believe is false? If global warming falls then maybe their other cash cow, evolution, falls too, so global warming MUST be propped up by whatever means necessary so people won't lose faith in science.

 It is starting to make me feel like I want to take a bite out of someone! does that count?

No Count, it doesnt count, since thats part of your nature anyway.

And I thought that McCarthy was dead! Now this person naming himself GreenLaser is eating melons. It makes perfectly sense, though. Concerning "collectivization": who is today the BIG, the efficient agent for such? It is big capital and big allah, and it all happens in a frenzy. "McCarthy" --- a still vital component --- is part of this frenzy of course.

When the Siberian tundra melts CO2 will invade the planet, more than double what now revolves of CO2. 

McCarthy was a joke. 

So you're saying that you don't believe that the earth orbits the sun? Or that the earth is round? If you believe either then your statement about not believing anything without being able to prove it is false. Even if it's because it has been drilled into you. Your argument is utterly ridiculous and I refuse to be drawn into discussing something that requires us to completely ignore the observations of others, if you do that we might as well stop talking as there's no way to prove the definition of the letters on your screen. There's no way to prove that your computer isn't stealing your soul ever time you turn it on, there's no way to prove that your body exists, so why even bother discussing anything anyway?

 It has nothing to do with it, but I'm not the one who started the debate. greenlaser began the derailment of the train in post 32.

Sheeew, had me worried for a bit. I heard the same report on the radio while I was drinking my coffee.  I thought maybe it was my coffee drinking that caused it.  Thanks for fessing up!  

Actually I think it was #49 that went off topic. #32 was valid as anecdotal evidence. I don't know if I agree with the idea that scientists need external controls, as I don't think it's enforceable on a global scale, and what would this control say? You can't think this because we, as an external body, who don't understand the intricacies of your subject area because we aren't scientists, think you're wrong? That would be a sure way to stop American science progressing any further.

Al Gore has his heart in the right place, but is a bit silly really. He's done as much damage to the climate change argument (ie the public debate) as he has raised awareness of the issues. 

 i live in greensburg