Richard Feynman was an amazing person. He was already sick with cancer and still took on this crucial role to find out what really happened.

I love the way this works. I first heard about it from Richard Feynman here:
https://videosift.com/video/How-a-Train-Stays-on-a-Track-not-as-simple-as-you-thought

What a truly beautiful, inspirational, human being.
I couldn't figure out who he reminded me of until 8 mins in. And it is my hero, the genius, Richard Feynman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmtJpzoW0o This man is a Geordie version..;)

I bet you're remembering the clip of Richard Feynman explaining that function here on the sift?
http://videosift.com/video/How-a-Train-Stays-on-a-Track-not-as-simple-as-you-thought

I remember being fascinated by that. I don't think it has anything to do with this function in bicycles, but on the other hand I had no idea that was how trains stayed centered over the tracks either...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'element 118, richard feynman, physicist, honors, chemistry, physics' to 'element 117, richard feynman, physicist, honors, chemistry, physics' - edited by RhesusMonk

I think this is a very important point. I watched a movie about the Challenger disaster yesterday with Richard Feynman on the committee. Richard Feynman was some sort of kook, who asked the experts at NASA what was the failure rate of the Challenger. They said there was a 1 in 100,000 chance that a Space Shuttle would fail catastrophically (Destroyed and all Crew Dead). Feynman knew that was "a wish" because that would mean if you launched Space Shuttles every day it would be 274 years until one failed (on average). Furthermore he polled the engineers of the shuttles and their numbers were 1 in 200 some as low as 1 in 50.

You throw numbers at people and a lot of times they don't know what to do with them. How to categorized what they're hearing. And if you throw science at them which specifically NASA was doing to the public to try and confuse them, it takes a brilliant mind such as Feynmans to explain in basic terms what is going on.

The same method to determine whether or not the world is heading for serious ecological collapse is why we are all standing here today. Why our medicines work, why our machines work, why the little rectangles that we gaze at all day bring us the entire world.

If you are curious about this sort of thing, and you come at it with an open mind and work off of a basis of scientific knowledge to understand the world, you will come to the conclusion that global climate change is happening and it's getting very serious. If you come at this with cynicism, or superiority, or especially politics you won't get it and that's on you, not science.

Your video, Richard Feynman cracking safes at Los Alamos - Numberphile, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Listening to this Dr. reminds me of listening to Richard Feynman talking.
He's very precise and exact in his wording and definitely has a complete grasp of what he is talking about as he describes what could be a very confusing situation in a way that anyone can comprehend.

Lies begin when a non-omnipotent consciousness forms and that consciousness seeks, let's say, truth, yet finds only half truths that require mental gymnastics in order to believe. Sand exists. How? I don't know. God? It's only natural to invent things concept to fill in the gaps.

A civilization of people formed out of collective half truths has unfulfillable expectations in this world which creates the security breach which breeds more lies. Thus it becomes state authority creating lies to appease those that their ancestors lied to since the beginning of our time. Brother kills brother. How did your brother die? A member of the opposing tribe did it! Opposing tribe dies. Known "truth" then becomes fact and history remembers that a violent tribe of brother-killers was sacked.

Truth will ALWAYS be an illusion to mortal beings of limited perspective. Always. Even if you perceptively died and met God in Heaven, it still remains suspect that your experience could be a lie guided by carefully controlled stimuli. If there's a modicum of truth that we have observed with science, it's only truth within the system of our understanding of the universe, therefore not Truth.

Yes, science allows us to observe and our observations have allowed us to record "laws" of the universe, but even someone like Richard Feynman admits to making shit up and then, Presto! it makes the equation make sense. Lies. No matter how small, they can fill in the gaps just enough to create perceived truth. But that's mechanical truth. A mechanism just needs to work or not work. It doesn't matter if you did everything right using precise truth.

So you may think: If life is an illusion, then what about all of the scientific experiments which have allowed us to create civilization as we know it? Well, every game, or sandbox, follows rules, so experiments within that world can be valid in that world according to the laws that govern it, but it doesn't mean those laws are the Truth.

If the world we are in was akin to something like Minecraft, observation would indicate that the world is functional and that there are observations which can be repeated over and over again with the same or similar results, leading to the creation of technology. But what about the concept of a .JAR or .DLL? Checksum? How about a network? If we only know the observed laws of the current server we have access to observe, how do we record the Truth? Black box observation and nothing more. My kingdom for a scientist that can perform unit testing. A string theory unit tester might be a good start.

Anyway, just rambling for communal sanity, as always. Not all of us have picked a side, let alone a position of understanding in the universe to cling to like a crucifix or a meme.

>> ^Lowen:

Just when I thought it couldn't get more amazing, Richard Feynman is invoked.


Agreed. Feynman is like the non-culinary version of bacon; there's pretty much nothing that cannot be improved with its/his addition.

And that video was genuinely beautiful.

Just when I thought it couldn't get more amazing, Richard Feynman is invoked.

Does anyone else think of Harvey Keitel when watching Richard Feynman?

Don't try and pawn this off on me. It's not my "excuse". I'm closed only to one idea: of my being absolutely certain about anything. I'm not closed to any other idea, period. You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story. And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

All you're telling me is that you are convinced of something, and FWIW, I believe that you are. You have no grounds to believe that your human perceived conviction is warranted, especially given that you know of many other humans who are equally convicted about things that contradict what you believe. That alone should give you doubt about your convictions, as it gives me doubt. If it doesn't give you doubt, you're not being rational. What's more likely: that you alone are correct among all the millions of equally convicted people, or that all equally convicted people, including you, are wrong? What makes you so special?

I DO doubt my own existence -- at least, I don't take it as fact that I exist. I could be a brain in a vat, etc. I don't accept my own senses either as categorical evidence. I live as if they're accurate because it's instinctive and it serves me to do so. Skepticism is not ignorance. Accepting something absolutely and uncritically is ignorance. You expect me to accept your word on faith. Why should I believe you? You're just some random person on their internet soapbox who claims to have visions of god. See how stupid it would be for me to change my life because of that? You wouldn't.

You are certain about God's revelation to you because God has given you certainty of it. That's tautology, if you're a rational agent. You want God to be real so you deny all evidence even to other *possibilities*, let alone facts. I don't want anything in particular to be real. I only want to be as sure as possible of what I do believe. Yes, of course a god could convince you, but just because you're convinced, doesn't mean it was God who did it. That would be a faulty syllogism. Minds can play the most amazing tricks on people. That's documented fact.>> ^shinyblurry:

If that's the excuse you want to use, that's fine. I'm not saying I am infallible, I am saying God has made me certain. By myself, I wouldn't know what the truth is. The fact is, whether you like it or not, God can certainly give someone certain revelation. I have received such revelation and I am not the least bit uncertain about it. I would be a liar if I told you otherwise. Since your mind is entirely closed to the possibility, to you it seems absurd. That's because you have no experience of God and you live every day with uncertainty. You think this is somehow a redeeming quality to be uncertain, just as Richard Feynman does, but the truth is that this is actually ignorance, and it is not good to be ignorant. Unless you doubt your own existence, you consider yourself infallible on the subject of your own existence. Clearly, infallible knowledge is not a problem for you. This is why you didn't want to debate whether you could trust your own senses, because if you couldn't, then everything becomes absurd. You have to make that assumption otherwise you have nothing left to work with. This wasn't my point, however; I wasn't questioning your assumption, I was questioning your justification for the assumption. In any case, I am certain about Gods revelation to me, because He has given me certainty about it. It's not because of me, it's because of Him. If God couldn't give me such certainty, would He be God? No one in scripture who had encountered God ever had any doubts about whether He existed or not. Some Christians may have such doubts, but I do not. To me, it would be as absurd as doubting your own existence is to you.
>> ^messenger:
@shinyblurry
I don't admit any of those things; I have most definitely received revelation from God, and there is no other plausible explanation for the evidence
Then our conversations are done and you've been wasting my time. All this time you repeatedly accused me of not having an open mind, and it turns out you won't even admit that being human, you may be capable of error. If you'd identified yourself is infallible when this began, you could have saved me a lot of time. So much for civil discussion. I'm really pissed at you.

If that's the excuse you want to use, that's fine. I'm not saying I am infallible, I am saying God has made me certain. By myself, I wouldn't know what the truth is. The fact is, whether you like it or not, God can certainly give someone certain revelation. I have received such revelation and I am not the least bit uncertain about it. I would be a liar if I told you otherwise. Since your mind is entirely closed to the possibility, to you it seems absurd. That's because you have no experience of God and you live every day with uncertainty. You think this is somehow a redeeming quality to be uncertain, just as Richard Feynman does, but the truth is that this is actually ignorance, and it is not good to be ignorant. Unless you doubt your own existence, you consider yourself infallible on the subject of your own existence. Clearly, infallible knowledge is not a problem for you. This is why you didn't want to debate whether you could trust your own senses, because if you couldn't, then everything becomes absurd. You have to make that assumption otherwise you have nothing left to work with. This wasn't my point, however; I wasn't questioning your assumption, I was questioning your justification for the assumption. In any case, I am certain about Gods revelation to me, because He has given me certainty about it. It's not because of me, it's because of Him. If God couldn't give me such certainty, would He be God? No one in scripture who had encountered God ever had any doubts about whether He existed or not. Some Christians may have such doubts, but I do not. To me, it would be as absurd as doubting your own existence is to you.

>> ^messenger:

@shinyblurry
I don't admit any of those things; I have most definitely received revelation from God, and there is no other plausible explanation for the evidence
Then our conversations are done and you've been wasting my time. All this time you repeatedly accused me of not having an open mind, and it turns out you won't even admit that being human, you may be capable of error. If you'd identified yourself is infallible when this began, you could have saved me a lot of time. So much for civil discussion. I'm really pissed at you.

What attracted you into conversation here is that the Sift is a de facto place for atheists to hang out. When you "speak your mind" about religion and atheism, there's two problems. The first is that since we are overwhelmingly non-believers, opinions against atheism and pro-religion are going to irritate a greater number of people, and so get the most attention. Our opinions against religion only offend you and maybe one or two other people ever, that I've seen. It's a numbers thing. Don't take it personally. The second is that, as I've mentioned already in this thread, you do come off supremely arrogant in your beliefs. Just saying, from our perspective. I'll turn it around to your perspective for a second. Consider these two sentences, a) "I consider the Bible to be fairy tales, and I don't understand why Christians people believe it's true." and b) "It's better to question the world rather than blindly accept a book of fairy tales." After which of these two sentences are you more likely to be able to continue reading for several more paragraphs, presumably all written in the same tone, with an open, clear, unangry mind? For most people —even atheists— the tone of the first sentence is preferable and more conducive to communication.

I'm not offended by your conversation, or your videos. In the past, I may have overreacted to insults, but they don't really bother me any longer. I am not sitting here enraged because some atheist suggested that God doesn't exist. I have heard just about every nasty thing anyone could possibly say about God, and then some. People have called me every sort of name that you could call someone. Even you can't resist putting in a dart here and there. That's just the way it is. If I let that bother me then I wouldn't be able to talk to anyone here.

If I've come off as arrogant, then that is unfortunate, because I don't feel superior to anyone here. I apologize to anyone who thinks that is the case. I am usually very direct in what I say, and I don't beat around the bush, and perhaps that has ruffled a few feathers. However, I always try to temper my speech with compassion and understanding. I don't think that is a fair characterization, and I think you are also ignoring the hyper sensitivity people have about their beliefs.

I've been using the sift since 06 or 07; the reason I finally signed up is because of the antitheistic bent the site had taken. Perhaps it was always there and I didn't really notice it. In any case, as a long time visitor here, I felt the site no longer represented me and I felt compelled to speak up for the other side of the argument. So I was not drawn to the sift because of atheism; I had already been using the sift for a long time.

I'll turn it back to the non-theist's perspective now. After listening to a cogent talk from Feynman explaining quite clearly why he would prefer to have no answer rather than possibly have a wrong answer, your first pitch over the plate was, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it", and then all rest of the stuff that followed that shows you didn't hear what he said at all. Feynman clearly doesn't prefer to "imagine that the answer is something else, because he doesn't like it." Then you used that as a launch pad for an assault on scientists in general through quotemining. I didn't read past the first paragraph. I moved straight down to see the reaction to your tone, and sure enough, it had started in earnest. I'd call that a failure in communication, unless you just wanted to vent, and maybe that day that's all the satisfaction you wanted. OK, but there you are. And you do this often enough, and people will see your avatar at the head of a comment somewhere else, and immediately their minds will shift into attack/defense mode, and your chances of communicating directly to their minds is almost zero – and they haven't even read a word yet.

Yet, someone who usually criticizes me agreed with me and said I had a good point. You say I didn't understand what Richard said, but apparently I understood it well enough to make a coherent point in opposition to what he said. What you're guilty of here is cherry picking. That sentence was part of an overall point and wasn't mean to be taken by itself.

In any case you say I failed, and perhaps I did in some ways, but not in the way you have asserted. You're right and you are wrong about what you've said here, but I get your overall point.

The fact is, since I've been here, this is the way people here have reacted to me. I don't get this reaction everywhere I go. Some of this is my fault, and some of it isn't. Either way I am not complaining. It is what it is. There is always room for improvement.

And to your comment about being invited. This place wasn't primarily designed for people to communicate opinions. It was designed for people to enjoy themselves while they procrastinate, feel a part of something, get some pseudo-community feelings going. There's no rule against giving any opinions here, nor against coming in large part to represent a certain opinion, but doing so runs against the main purpose of the place, organically defined by the intent of the people who come. This isn't an ideas discussion/debates forum with focus on arguing points to a conclusion. You can do that, but that's not the main purpose. What you tend to do here makes it more difficult for others to achieve their main purpose here, which is kicking up and not really thinking for an hour or two. And uh-oh, there's a comment from sb, killing the buzz. We could ignore it, but we just can't help reading what it says even though we already know it's almost certain to infuriate us with a relentless brand of reasoning that we do not understand.

Come on. People are not just here to relax, they are also here to promote their political, philosophical and (anti)religious ideologies. The sift loves red meat. People here love to express their opinions about what they love and what they hate, and they love to argue when anyone disagrees with them.

I get what you're saying. I could be more sensitive to how my comments will be perceived, and try to say things in a different way. I agree with you here. I'll keep it in mind.

In the end, however, the main purpose of this site is whatever the site operator purposes. What the site operator has said is that I am a valuable member of this community.

Fallacious arguments? Every time I point out a mistake, you invent a convenient new rule for understanding the Bible (or more likely you copy-paste what it says on some apologia clearinghouse website). I could literally find a quote that says, "oranges are black" and you'd justify it somehow. I just found a passage that gives two incompatible lineages from Joram to Joatham. And in a book that's supposed to be completely true, you excuse it by telling me the writers are taking artistic licence? WTF????? This isn't a poetry slam! It's the bloody word of God! If you claim everything in it is true, so much so that you've given up sex, condemn gay people, etc., then everything else in it *must* be literally true or you have no foundation for giving up sex or condemning gay people. Those could be metaphorical warnings about the lure of great pleasures in general. Either one of those things about Joram and Joatham written in the Bible is false, or anyone can point to any passage and call it optional, or poetry, or a style of writing, or just a metaphor. You can't have it both ways.

Now this is simply your ignorance talking. When I gave you my answer about the lineage in Matthew, I wasn't just pulling something out of a hat. Apparently you haven't heard of Chiastic structure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure

It's not false, it is simply a writing style employed by Matthew to emphasize the lineage in a particular way. This is not some kind of desperate analysis to cover up a mistake, but is a well known style used in ancient literature. I'm not making excuses, or putting off something to metaphor; Matthew was definitely using Chiastic structure, and that is why that verse is symmetrical.

First, I'm saying the effects of personal prayer *can* be scientifically measured, so either your contention that God will not be tested is bunk, or self-prayer is really just meditation. You also didn't understand the set-up of the prayer-for-other test. In that scenario, there were real ill people in the hospitals, and they compared the outcomes for patients who had had others sincerely praying for them from a distance versus those who didn't. IOW, the sincere prayer happened. There has never been any measured health benefit for the ill people. They died off and recovered in equal numbers.

No, they can't be scientifically measured. You would never know during your test whether God was simply feeding you a certain kind of result. Think about it. God knows the entire time that you're trying to test for His existence outside of what He ordained (faith in Jesus Christ). His choice is either to give you results that will prove His existence outside of Christ or results that will make it ambiguous. What do you think He is going to do?

You keep saying that my position is one of cognitive dissonance. Look at yourself. You twist your mind into any shape you need for your dogma to hold true, never once truly considering the possibility that it's all in your head. You've said the words that you might be wrong, but you've never shown it's more than lip service. I've never seen you take a critical eye to your position on God and the Bible, despite the numerous opportunities I and others have given to you.

And this is exactly what Feynman's talking about when he says the scientific approach starts from the position that all hypotheses are wrong, then goes about trying to prove it through observation. Anything that's still standing afterwards is good scientific theory.

You're acting is if I have no evidence for my beliefs. If it was just a matter of believing the bible was true because I wanted to believe it, you might have a point. The reason I believe the bible is true because of personal revelation. I experience the presence of God in my daily life. It would be illogical for me to deny the existence of God based on the evidence I have received. I do not "twist my mind into any shape" to believe what I read in the bible. My worldview is internally consistent, and it is also rational. You may find it irrational because of your presuppositions, but that is because you reject the evidence I have receive apriori. To you there must always be some other explanation, and that is the way you interpret everything I say. You've already come to the conclusion that I am deluding myself, and everything I say you filter through that conclusion. Rather than letting the evidence interpret the conclusion, you are interpreting the evidence through the conclusion.

Religion, on the other hand, starts from the assuming the conclusion that God and the Bible are real, and any observational facts that don't line up must themselves be wrong facts, no matter how well documented they are. And when those facts can no longer be denied, then the Bible passages in question are suddenly no longer considered to have literal meaning, and now have only a "metaphorical" meaning, or must be understood from a different perspective.

If every word in the Bible is subject to this convenient wishy-washy fanciful method of interpretation, then it's a lousy foundation for a system of faith. You cannot follow anything that you can change the meaning of by arbitrarily saying, "That part is meant to be understood non-literally." The Bible, as it stands now, is either a 100% true book that we humans are incapable of understanding; OR a book that we are meant to learn from that also has lots of loopholes in it. It cannot be both, not as it stands now. The whole Bible should be re-written such that what's left in it is literal unmistakable unfudgeable truth. I think it would be a very, very short book, or, a much longer book filled with qualifications, something along these lines:

I'm well aware that many Christians have compromised with the world and reinterpreted the bible to reflect worldly wisdom, but I'm not one of them. Though not everything in the bible (like the song of solomon for instance) could, or should be taken literally, I believe it contains the literal history of planet Earth. As I've explained in other threads, I didn't always believe that. I assumed where science said it was right, the bible was wrong. It was only when I questioned that and investigated the evidence that I found it was the other way around. I believe the bible is true not only because of revelation, but because of the evidence, not in spite of it. You have unfairly mischaracterized me, because I am the last person you will talk to who will turn the bible into a metaphor to avoid the facts.

Otherwise, as you seem to fear about secular morality, the Bible itself could be interpreted to mean absolutely anything by anyone at any time, if they thought hard enough about it.

I don't fear that, I know that. You're absolutely right, you could make the bible say anything you want to. People do it all the time. It's only a literal reading that makes any sense. Even atheists know that:

destroy adam and eve and original sin and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God and take away the meaning of His death

-american atheist association

>> ^messenger:

stuff