Some ideas are intuitive to me and others are not. I don't think that makes my declarations of what's "real" or not any more than personal opinion. The idea that we see 3 cats and 3 goats and associate the same number 3 to each is an abstract construction. If I have one piece of chalk and another piece of chalk, does that mean I have two pieces? What if I break one in half? Or could I place them so close together that they are one piece of chalk again? We can't talk about one of a thing being inherently different than two of a thing, since no two identical things exist in the universe.

You are comfortable with the idea that we can count things and that the numbers we assign to quantities of different objects are comparable. In some remote places of the world you'll find people, adults, who see this idea as unnatural. The idea that you would quantify any group bigger than 5 is alien to them.

1+1=2 because we have defined a number system in which it is so. Conveniently, we can understand real objects in terms of this system. We arrived at this system through a combination of intuition and abstract manipulation. No one has ever sat down with 1350 oranges in one pile and 6723 in another and counted the sum to see that they got 8073.

Similarly, the sum 9x10^(-k) = 1 because we have defined infinite decimals to work this way. Conveniently again, this allows us to understand physical phenomena. We also arrived at this system through a combination of intuition and abstract manipulation. The fact that it doesn't feel intuitive to you doesn't give you any real argument against it.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^dannym3141:
@GeeSussFreeK i don't like it either, but it's one of those things you have to accept is true - just like quantum mechanics Your mind's desire to slot it into a jigsaw puzzle will have to go unsatiated.

You can't really talk about something unless you have an idea of it, just like you can't talk about circular squares or some other such construct that doesn't point to a real idea. I am still considering what @Ornthoron was saying and wondering if we are talking about the same thing or not. Get back to this later, have to ponder, I think this is a problem of ontology vs abstraction. @Mikus_Aurelius I am very familiar with the idea of a limit, taken many years of calculus and dif. EQ back in the day. My argument isn't that you can "use" things, but if those things represent actual things in and of themselves. I do think that there is an inherit realness to numbers outside of complete abstraction. The idea of a single object relating to itself is always true, regardless of a formal number system to represent it. The relation of 2 objects against 1 object is also still a real distinction that exists outside of a formal numbering system. The realness of elements of counting are, seemingly (and I need to think more on this) tautological true; an analytically true statement in other words.
I need to ponder on this more though, perhaps I am mistaken. Or perhaps I was talking about a different aspect of it than everyone else. Time to grease down the mind with beer!

>> ^dannym3141:

@GeeSussFreeK i don't like it either, but it's one of those things you have to accept is true - just like quantum mechanics Your mind's desire to slot it into a jigsaw puzzle will have to go unsatiated.


You can't really talk about something unless you have an idea of it, just like you can't talk about circular squares or some other such construct that doesn't point to a real idea. I am still considering what @Ornthoron was saying and wondering if we are talking about the same thing or not. Get back to this later, have to ponder, I think this is a problem of ontology vs abstraction. @Mikus_Aurelius I am very familiar with the idea of a limit, taken many years of calculus and dif. EQ back in the day. My argument isn't that you can "use" things, but if those things represent actual things in and of themselves. I do think that there is an inherit realness to numbers outside of complete abstraction. The idea of a single object relating to itself is always true, regardless of a formal number system to represent it. The relation of 2 objects against 1 object is also still a real distinction that exists outside of a formal numbering system. The realness of elements of counting are, seemingly (and I need to think more on this) tautological true; an analytically true statement in other words.

I need to ponder on this more though, perhaps I am mistaken. Or perhaps I was talking about a different aspect of it than everyone else. Time to grease down the mind with beer!

Say "I'm a research physical scientist in the astrobiology analytical laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center" five times fast. I wonder how many takes that was. There was obviously a cut in the middle already.

As you may have notice, this message is very long. Please take a while and read it a few times, in chunks, before you respond. I ask a lot of questions here so I’d like it you pretended as if you were asking the questions to yourself.

I should have qualified my statement about religions. I meant to clarify that in the Persian and Pre-Rome regions of the world, which were primarily Pagan, a huge majority of the religions didn’t have religious structures that were based around fear, for the most part. Yes, I admit that there was the concept of retribution from the gods but it wasn’t anything to the degree of everlasting punishment. I currently don’t know anything about the religions of the very early Americas (Mayans, etc). It wasn’t until the god concepts became more personalized and more humans that it became more about fear. There is a natural progression in the ideological development in religions that goes from being nothing about humans to being all about humans. Eternal suffering or anything resembling a “hell” is relatively new and came about around the time of monotheistic religions.

Let me ask you a question. Why do you trust your personal revelation?

I ask this because I used to be very “spiritual” and I’ve even had out-of-body experiences, experiences that I can only call past life regressions. I grew up in a practicing Christian family and I have memories of experience that I can only call “personal revelation”. I’ve come to a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t trust those personal revelations; I want to know if you’ve come to understand how the human brain is very easily tricked into irrational behaviors and beliefs (not just religious)

You say that this has been an ongoing revelation since you were 14. If you had not had this history of personal revelation at all and it came to you suddenly today, would you find it believable? I imagine that you’re beliefs have been challenged many times. Are you certain that the strengthening effect of the challenges aren’t just from the boomerang effect, caused by a need to justify something that you feel committed to?

Here is another great question. How much of your belief system is tied to your identity; how much do you identify with it, personally or socially? Meaning, if you came to disbelieve what you now believe, would you know who you are or would you have a sort of identity crisis? If you stopped believing as you do now, do you feel that you would you lose a part of who you are?

You ask a good question in “Maybe it is you who is delusion and I see things as they actually are.” Yes, perhaps I am and perhaps you are and perhaps we both are. So how can we know, how would we find out, what kinds of tests and experiments could we do to illuminate the answer. It isn’t good enough to simply say that we both might be delusional; therefore our views are equally valid. Either one of us is correct and the other is not, or we are both incorrect.
You know, I used to have a dualistic view on the nature of humans. I used to believe in the soul or the spirit as something separate from the body. I used to resonate heavily with the lyrics of Tool and the ideas behind the art of Alex Grey.

I guess my biggest question would stem from this statement that you made
“My faith is that i have a spirit, a soul, a divine spark that is connected to the ALL, the ONE, also known as "the source".”
What makes you think that there is an “ALL”, a “ONE” or “the source” and how do you know that you’re not just fooling yourself? What would it mean if you discovered that it’s probably not true, and that the real explanation for the subjective experiences that you’ve had are far more elegant and interesting than the ideas of spirituality that you currently hold?

To be blunt, I don’t think that you’re thinking this whole notion of an ego through far enough. It sounds like you’re just accepting the ideas as being true without going through the motions of analyzing what the concept implies. The notion of an ego implies several things; one of which is that we as humans are special to the degree that we have egos when, either, other animals don’t, or, other animals are better than us in controlling it. The questions then become, do other animals have egos? If so, how does the ego operate in them? Do other life forms, such as plants or bacteria, also have egos, or does the ego require a certain degree of cognitive function? If the ego does require certain cognitive functions to be noticeable, and since we are extremely closely related to other apes such as chimpanzees, do they also exhibit features of having egos? If they don’t and having an ego is strictly a human feature, what happened during the development of the brain that allowed for the access to what we might call the ego and at this point, do we really believe that the “ego” is actually something that exists outside of the brain? If it doesn’t exist outside of the brain than how can we separate who you perceive as yourself and what you perceive as the “ego”? Are all “ego’s” the same or is it brain dependent with variations depending on brain structure and chemistry? Can you see why I would say that the notion of the ego as something outside of or separate from oneself is inherently egotistical.

The way that you talk about the ego makes it seem mystical and somehow separate from “self”. To me, that sounds like someone trying to escape responsibility. Why not just cut out the middle man and admit that you, not your ego, has the tendency to be possessive, needy, insecure, wishes for self-aggrandizement, etc. The notion that “negative” qualities are part and partial of some sort of external thing that is separate from “you” just seems childish to me, not to mention, completely unsupported by research.

For myself, I suppose that I recoil at the idea of an “ALL”, or “ONE”, or “the source” because it doesn’t really answer any questions. If someone were presenting these ideas to me for the first time, I would immediately start asking questions like “What is it made out of, what kind(s) of particles?” “How does it perpetuate?” “What is the physics of this thing?” “By what mechanism does it connect to everything?” “How does a source not also have its own source?” “What tests and experiments can we do to learn more about this thing?” “What objective information do we have about it?” “Does this thing operate differently between animate and inanimate objects?” “If spirit or soul is inherent in the system, do animals and plants also have a spirit or soul?” “What exactly constitutes as a spirit or soul, what can it be defined by?” “Did “the source” have a beginning or a history?”

I think you understand my point. My problem with subjectively believing something is true is that it’s more susceptible to not going far enough in scrutiny. It is much easier to subjectively believe something that feels good or feels right and not go any further than that. Very few subjective beliefs translate into objective or rational understandings of nature; it’s very easy to get it wrong. Subjective beliefs are as prone to fallibility as humans are to irrational thinking.


In reply to this comment by enoch:
hmmmm..
i disagree with your statement that only the monotheistic religion control by fear.
buddhism (yes..buddhism) shinto,mayan,toltec,arminianism,zoroastriasm..the list is legion and they ALL have punishment/reward doctrine.each at varying degrees but its in there.

i do enjoy hearing an atheists perspective on how my faith translates.
very..analytical of you my friend.
suffice to say my faith is born from personal revelation and has been an ongoing revelation since i was 14.
nothing i have encountered or experienced has taken away from this revelation,in fact it has strengthened it.
could i be delusional?
i guess its possible.
or maybe it is you who are delusional and i see things as they actually are.
not trying to be an ass,just pointing out the subjective nature of this particular polemic.

i guess..in its most simplest of terms.
my faith is that i have a spirit,a soul,a divine spark that is connected to the ALL,the ONE,also known as "the source".
freud believed that the ego WAS who you were.i could not disagree with that more.
the ego is who you THINK you are.predicated and perpetrated by those who are close to you.
we cant help that.it is very human.
so around 12 yrs old we start to have a sense of self.this self understands the world and how he/she interacts with it by rules set by his/her parents.
as we grow older so does the circle of influence i.e:friends,lovers,teachers etc etc.
think about this for a second because i am expressing a very huge idea in a very short amount of time and glossing over all the implications of said idea.

my philosophy..or my faith if you will,views the ego as my "false" self.
the ego wishes only to validate itself (thats why mass marketing is very VERY effective).
the ego wishes to perpetuate its own existence by way of constant feed-back.
the ego gets jealous and possesive.
the ego gets insecure and needy.
the ego has demands...and desires...which seek only for self aggrandizement.
now societal roles consisting of compassion and empathy will,and can,curb the destructive nature of the ego (think your teenage years and just how self centered you were to give you an idea of ego gone wild)

through my faith and discipline i am quite aware of my ego and have suppressed it to the point where it no longer manipulates my thinking nor my emotions.
so i have no urge nor a desire to be perceived as "correct" because to me that is irrelevant.
(though i do prefer to be "corrected" if i misstate something).
i do not experience jealousy,nor envy.
but i do experience pride.
i do not allow anothers limited perception of me based on their own subjective reasoning influence how i feel about who i am.
i am open and honest because my faith is that we are all connected with the divine and to lie,steal or cheat you is to be doing to myself also.
i do not judge anothers faith or lack of it because that is THEIR path and the only time i ever feel the need to intercede is when it flows into my domain and affects me in some way.

even as i write these words,which to me seem pretty articulate and clear,i know that you will understand them based solely on..well..your understanding.
i do not say that as a slight but rather a statement.
trying to convey complex thought patterns by way of text can be so..limiting.

everything i do or say i do so with spirit in mind.
sometimes i fail..sometimes i succeed.
i am human.
with a spirit! ziiiiing!
anyways..
i really do enjoy our conversations.
you are a pleasure my friend.
namaste.
(look that word up btw..its a great word)

hmmmm..
i disagree with your statement that only the monotheistic religion control by fear.
buddhism (yes..buddhism) shinto,mayan,toltec,arminianism,zoroastriasm..the list is legion and they ALL have punishment/reward doctrine.each at varying degrees but its in there.

i do enjoy hearing an atheists perspective on how my faith translates.
very..analytical of you my friend.
suffice to say my faith is born from personal revelation and has been an ongoing revelation since i was 14.
nothing i have encountered or experienced has taken away from this revelation,in fact it has strengthened it.
could i be delusional?
i guess its possible.
or maybe it is you who are delusional and i see things as they actually are.
not trying to be an ass,just pointing out the subjective nature of this particular polemic.

i guess..in its most simplest of terms.
my faith is that i have a spirit,a soul,a divine spark that is connected to the ALL,the ONE,also known as "the source".
freud believed that the ego WAS who you were.i could not disagree with that more.
the ego is who you THINK you are.predicated and perpetrated by those who are close to you.
we cant help that.it is very human.
so around 12 yrs old we start to have a sense of self.this self understands the world and how he/she interacts with it by rules set by his/her parents.
as we grow older so does the circle of influence i.e:friends,lovers,teachers etc etc.
think about this for a second because i am expressing a very huge idea in a very short amount of time and glossing over all the implications of said idea.

my philosophy..or my faith if you will,views the ego as my "false" self.
the ego wishes only to validate itself (thats why mass marketing is very VERY effective).
the ego wishes to perpetuate its own existence by way of constant feed-back.
the ego gets jealous and possesive.
the ego gets insecure and needy.
the ego has demands...and desires...which seek only for self aggrandizement.
now societal roles consisting of compassion and empathy will,and can,curb the destructive nature of the ego (think your teenage years and just how self centered you were to give you an idea of ego gone wild)

through my faith and discipline i am quite aware of my ego and have suppressed it to the point where it no longer manipulates my thinking nor my emotions.
so i have no urge nor a desire to be perceived as "correct" because to me that is irrelevant.
(though i do prefer to be "corrected" if i misstate something).
i do not experience jealousy,nor envy.
but i do experience pride.
i do not allow anothers limited perception of me based on their own subjective reasoning influence how i feel about who i am.
i am open and honest because my faith is that we are all connected with the divine and to lie,steal or cheat you is to be doing to myself also.
i do not judge anothers faith or lack of it because that is THEIR path and the only time i ever feel the need to intercede is when it flows into my domain and affects me in some way.

even as i write these words,which to me seem pretty articulate and clear,i know that you will understand them based solely on..well..your understanding.
i do not say that as a slight but rather a statement.
trying to convey complex thought patterns by way of text can be so..limiting.

everything i do or say i do so with spirit in mind.
sometimes i fail..sometimes i succeed.
i am human.
with a spirit! ziiiiing!
anyways..
i really do enjoy our conversations.
you are a pleasure my friend.
namaste.
(look that word up btw..its a great word)

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^COriolanus:
Can any one provide a link for an opposing view?

The one I have been reading about is MOND
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOND
There is also the newer, or newer to me, QG unification theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_gravity
I think there is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic rules of matter, energy, time and space. I don't have much evidence to support this idea. It might be the same problem Einstein had with QED that I have with dark matter, it's messy. It seems like we are creating something first because of the maths we have agreed are true instead of questioning the fundamental understanding. I compaire it to Quine's web of belief. I could be wrong, perhaps there is some wacky matter out there that behaves the exact opposite of real matter, is most of the stuff in the universe, and doesn't interact electromagnetically with our plane of existence...but it seems like reaching for straws.


It's wrong that Dark Matter is just some wacky thing created because of the maths. It is observed, through its gravitational interaction. Just because it doesn't interact electromagnetically doesn't mean it's invisible. It's also wrong that Dark Matter behaves the exact opposite of real matter. The Standard Model of particle physics is far from complete, and we already know of particles that interact through one force of nature and not through others. To posit a new fundamental particle that could fit the Dark Matter profile is not really that far fetched. There are even candidates obtained through Supersymmetry that may or may not provide the right answer. I don't find this messy at all, and frankly, Nature doesn't care if you think its rules are messy or not.

Also, if you don't like messiness, MOND is really not the right answer for you. Modified Newtonian Dynamics is an interesting concept with some interesting results for their own sake, and it may still ultimately prove correct. The idea that extrapolation from high gravitational fields to low ones might be unsound is something that should not be dismissed. But so far, the data are not in MOND's favour.

>> ^COriolanus:

Can any one provide a link for an opposing view?


The one I have been reading about is MOND

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

There is also the newer, or newer to me, QG unification theory

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

I think there is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic rules of matter, energy, time and space. I don't have much evidence to support this idea. It might be the same problem Einstein had with QED that I have with dark matter, it's messy. It seems like we are creating something first because of the maths we have agreed are true instead of questioning the fundamental understanding. I compaire it to Quine's web of belief. I could be wrong, perhaps there is some wacky matter out there that behaves the exact opposite of real matter, is most of the stuff in the universe, and doesn't interact electromagnetically with our plane of existence...but it seems like reaching for straws.

Everyone stupid please STFU.

Anyway, I have seen several videos about these machines and the guy who makes them. He has an intimate bond with them, treats them more like animals than just machines.

What I find interesting is that he doesn't use any cad software or analytical computations in designing the constituent components. He just plays with the dimensions of motion until he gets a movement he is looking for, and adds it to the design. Considering the same motion translated through hundreds of different mechanism, even a small error gets magnified many times. I am often amazed it comes out working at all.

The thing I don't get about the hating of Henry Rollins, is the idea that he should be frozen in time in Black Flag. The fact that he's critical and analytical really appears to rub people up the wrong way. I don't agree with everything he says, but I love the way he thinks.

The very definition of "sanction" is just as what MarineGunrock's saying, being a term used to mean approval or permission. International sanctions are generally a bad thing, but at the heart they're still used to define what a country may do rather than what they may not do, though that's the more pertinent part of it. Any modern use of the word "sanctioning" to mean a negative thing is just a corruption of the original meaning by uneducated folks who learned it by context alone. Eventually, though, common enough misuse of a term will be enough to make it generally accepted. It's because of this that I can't fault Sarah Palin too much for phrasing it like she did, but if I had a mind to be over-analytical, I would say it serves as an example of just how much of a layman she really is.

*backup=[...snipped...]

I doubt any of us here are climatologists, but we are people. As people, we can expect people doing science on climate to not be entirely dissimilar to us. While they my process possess information regarding a particular area, they are not immune to the culture they live and work in. Quine talked about this a lot. That science doesn't evolve like the romantic picture that is painted. Rather, like pop culture, science shifts its entire focus from one foundational theory to another. Einstein doesn't extend Newton, it replaces it. Why do we not, rather, adapt the math of Newtonian physics to incorporate the data of relativity and keep the same mindset of forces instead of space time warps? Quines answer is that, like pop culture, a mans theory only lasts as long as he is around to extend it. Eventually, no matter if your theoretical construct was correct, if you aren't around to sort out the sometimes minor technicalities...your out. The people after you will eventually supplant your theory with something else more trendy. That science is subject to the same rules of the schoolyard as anything else. Peer review is more of a contest of popularity and not overall truth value.

As such, the very act of peer review is subject to the cultural perspective of the day. The moral and political climate of the day speaks volumes to what peer evaluated papers support or don't. Peer review is the best we have in science to approximate how we experience the universe, but it is not without its short comings. Let us not fall into the fallacy of authority, and majority in stating x group of people are more correct than y group opposed. Instead, judge things on merit of the argument.

To that end, I find that I am undecided on the whole debate. Moreover, I hesitate to put government in control of saving the environment...such was already their responsibility in the gulf. I don't want to live in a world of wrappers and smog, and to that end, I am motivated for cleaner technologies. Being wasteful has always felt somewhat despicable. To me, I remain skeptical of mans prowess of weather prediction. Year after year there is tail of "the worst hurricane season in history" that fails to show itself. If you say it enough I guess eventually it will be right, but that takes some of the wind out of the sails(har har har).

Furthermore, where is the data to support that global warming would even be bad? The only fact to the end that I am even familiar with is more extreme weather, and that dried up lake in Africa. I have lived next to lots dried up lakes and rivers...so that seems like more of a social disaster than an environmental one.

In the end, I feel like there is some snake oil salesmanship over the whole ordeal. I think we want to believe that we are the next greatest disaster. We will entwine any evidence into the web of belief . And ostracize anyone that deviates. We have always been at war with Eurasia, after all.

edited: grammar and spelling

>> ^Shepppard:

I gotta admit, when I first saw his video of the Virtua Boy, I absolutely hated this guy. He just seemed to be awkwardly throwing in swears for the sake of doing so.
Lately, however, I gotta admit, he's grown on me, and his newer videos are especially good.


For sure. The AVGN character isn't for everyone.
I agree his new ones have been pretty good. He's toned it down and is more analytical now, less talk about diarrhea etc.

"i'm going to take a very large idea/decades long body of someone elses intellectual work! and only skim the surface of it! and then i'm going to use my smart brain, and i'm going to kick the shit out of what shallow muck skims off the surface instantly! and post youtube videos and say the word FUCK alot! Fuck Yes!"

wisdom > analytical skills.

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