Some good tips there and some obvious ones (who doesn't know the mango trick? I don't even like mangos and know that one), but I didn't know that corn meal had the powers of defying the laws of physics and make ants "literally disappear".

Yummy, arguing on the internet!
I haven't done this in years, I'm gonna throw my hat in the Ring now.
I spent countless hours here for years, just enjoying the show. Staying out of all this, in the end at least, unimportant chatter. I came for the videos. Then somebody starts singing about sluts and I end up with an account. What can I say? I like sluts.
I spent much time reading and skipping over the posts of @shinyblurry here. And I still wonder why people feel the need to argue with him in such detail and length. He talks a lot about his faith in God and Jesus but what it come down to is this: He believes in The Bible.
The Bible features God and Jesus and all that but most important of all, it features a heckload of arguments for all kinds of things that are often in direct conflict.
Earlier in this thread, somebody threw a Bible quote about how rape victims have to marry their rapist in @shinyblurry's face and he actually started to explain (correct me if I misunderstood) how it's a punishment for the rapist that he has to pay money and marry the woman if the father chooses that.
I have money to burn. Is Jessica Alba married and where does her dad live? She's super hot and I *need* that kind of punishment. God wants her to fulfill her marital duties, right? If she's not available, I could make a list.
Now, I could argue this IMO rather distasteful idea with him, quoting the Bible back and forth, using other philosophical sources for arguments (I'm sure Hitchens mentioned rape somewhere sometime) but all that doesn't matter.
He believes in The Bible.
If I went back in time and edited early versions to my liking to include gems like "Every man shall also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed no abomination: they shall surely be praised", old shiny here would organize gay pride parades now. Because it's in the book. Whatever is in there, it's the truth. Whatever.
It's the same reason why creationist (I have no idea if old shiny is among them) can not accept evolution. It's not in the book.
They believe in this powerful, omnipotent god, not just in I-can-command-all-sea-animals-god. No, not that Aquaman shit the Greeks had, I'm talking about I-invented-the-universe-god. Get this, this guy did *invent* the universe. And still it was all some Siegfried and Roy BS we *know* to be nonsense. 7 days? Really? Was he in a hurry? Couldn't he wait until we get to the Game of Thrones and Tivo part of History? Was there another Earth to take care of? Contract work?
The idea to credit that dude for creating Evolution itself is too much to ask for these people. The idea that God created a giant machine (the universe) and allowed it to feature other tiny, tiny machines that repair, reproduce and improve themselves (life itself; evolution), is too mindblowing.
Who's more awesome in your book? The god that can do magic or the god who could do magic but opted for inventing everything science has discovered so far?
You know, science failed to disprove the existence of god. They can't do that yet. But they can disprove The Bible, at least parts. And yet, they still side with that darn book.
They don't care about God, the don't even care about Jesus. They care about what they read about them. They care about their perception of it.
Telling @shinyblurry that Jesus was a little, brown, jewish Hippie who got mixed up with existing mythology is like telling a fourteen year old that Ed Cullen is, by his own admission, a creepy murderer who stalks underage girls 80 years his junior. They don't want to hear it because that is not what the book said. They book didn't say that god created the natural laws of physics, chemistry and biology and set them upon the universe to wreak havoc until dinosaurs showed up. The book said it took 7 days. And ribs and dirt.
The Bible says so. Nothing else matters.
That's why it's pointless to argue scripture with him. The book is everything and allows so brilliantly for circular logic and cherry picking. It worked with slavery and how many are willing to argue nowadays in front of a TV camera for it? But gays are not slaves and women can always be picked on. Some wrong ideas are easier to conceal behind a book cover than others.
The Bible is everything to him, God and Jesus are just featured players. In the end they could be replaced by Donald Duck and Batman, they just weren't around back when they started to write it.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to hear your thoughts about the latest Daft Punk single, @shinyblurry. Or are you more into Rock music?

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

The moral standard of western civilization is founded upon judeo-christian beliefs. Read:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595555455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366921071&sr=8-1&keywords=book+that+made+your+world

Following the morality the biblical God advocates is the hardest thing you will ever do. The standard of today is a superficial, politically correct morality where you pretend to be nice to people but curse them when they aren't around. God requires a transformation on the inside where you have genuine love for your fellow man.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Are you saying nigh universal adherence to certain moral standards isn't evidence for an absolute standard of morality?

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

You don't understand what God was doing in the Old Testament, or why He did it the way He did. It is morally consistent with His goodness and holiness, and there are logical reasons for why this is so. So far you are not interested in hearing them or discussing them. When you are let me know. In the end you don't have any excuse for suppressing the truth about Jesus, no matter what you think about how God acted in the Old Testament.

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

Basically, what you're saying is that because 2+2 probably equals four everywhere in the Universe, you are free to make absolute statements about morality? The fact is that your belief system leaves you with no justification for any absolute statement what so ever. Why should 2 + 2 always equal 4 in the first place? Can you tell me why the laws of physics should work in the same way 5 seconds from now without using circular reasoning?

Can you justify any piece of knowledge without God? If you can then tell me one thing you know and how you know it. Could you be wrong about everything you know?

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

It comes back to the same question: As the giver of life, and the adjudicator of His Creation, is it wrong for God to take life?

And here's another interesting brain tickler. If everything god commands is right, and god has a track record of testing his faithful with their willingness to commit infanticide, how can you say that this lady isn't moral?

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170166_1_baby-s-death-baby-s-father-documents

The scripture is finished and anything which contradicts it is not of God.

Wrong, I know that things are wrong because humans and cultures have a long history of interacting with reality, and certain strategies have been more successful than others. You haven't spent one iota of your time discrediting this notion, whereas I have given you plenty of examples crediting mine and discrediting yours.

What I am supposed to be discrediting? You're asking me to nail jello to a wall. You have not even defined what "successful" is supposed to mean beyond pure survival. In that case, every civilization has been successful. Tell me what your definition of success is supposed to be.

For the millionth time, I have no hopes of convincing you of anything - you'll defend your stance against literally any proof. But you seem to come here on the sift with the intent of demonstrating to others that there is some logical basis for your beliefs.

What proof? The foundation of atheism stands upon the shifting sands of relative truth. You, the atheist, ultimately make yourself the measure of all truth. Because of that, you can't tell me a single fact about the world that you can justify.

Well you're failing miserably, mainly because you are only capable of restating the following sentence as if it is an agreed upon truth:

"Not only is the entire concept logically contradictory, but it doesn't match our experience, which is that some things are absolutely wrong. "

I don't expect you to have any good support for that, but the audience out there just waiting to be convinced, they will need at least something.

Torturing babies for fun; not absolutely wrong?

I'm still waiting for you to give Stalin some kind, any kind of argument as to why he should adopt your morality and abandon his own. If you can't tell Stalin why he is wrong, then you have no hope of escaping the charge of incoherency.

I cannot figure out what you are trying to debate? That there is no science behind DMT? That there is nothing to DMT? That "spiritual" does not exist? What is your point of this continued conversation? That you are scared of psychedelics? Why do you think such an experience would have been programmed into our head, the most powerful experience a person can have?

I have trouble understanding "spiritual" to be the same as "awesome" or "awe-inspiring", but if thats what you mean by "spiritual", I suppose we agree. I understand "spiritual" to mean "that which concerns the spirits or the spiritual world", ie something supernatural.

I suppose there is little point in continuing this debate, I get a little carried away.. My point ws only that it is unscientific and nonsensical to think that stimulating your brain with chemicals can help you discover some sor of spiritworld or some nonsense like that, the reason I KNOW this, as you put it, is what I've fruitlessly to express over several long comments. Basically, to repeat myself for like the 5th time, it has to do with basic facts of the origin of our brains and so forth, it is now established, beyond any reasonable doubt, that our brains evolved. If you understand what biological evolution is and how it works, you'd know it is the mindless reshuffling of nucleotides acted upon in populations of animals over countless generations, this produces amazing survival machines, and some of them develop brains, and some of those grow big brains.

How do you think DNA evolved over so many years,
DNA probably evolved after RNA, nobody knows exactly how replicating nucleotides started to replicate, it was probably a staggeringly unlikely event, but then there was literally all the time and space in the universe for it to happen..

you ever read Francis Cricks, who helped found DNA, Well, I've read The Double Helix, and I'm currently studying biology and genetics.
what his theory for DNA was? Panspermia. Yeah.
No,
It was speculation, probably tongue-in-cheek that he later regretted. In any case, the argument was based on the fact that the origin of DNA/RNA was an extremely unlikely event, and that if it didn't originate on earth, it could have been brought here from elsewhere. Both options are essentially saying the same thing, that abiogenesis happened and that it later evolved (either here on earth, like most scientist now think, or somewhere else.)

It doesnt really matter whether directed panspermia is true or not, DNA is still strings of molecules that abide by the laws of physics and chemistry. They are not some sort of magical quantum spirit crystals mind-controlled by aliens.
The Universe is a lot trickier than just our basic Science.
Whatever you say boss.

How do you KNOW?

Physics is something that is only beginning to be understood. The Laws of Physics are subjective to change. We will probably find out soon whether the speed of light is a constant it may be that the speed of light is not a constant.

My point is, is that we have barely even tipped our toes into the way everything works, while I trust science much more than any religion I am not arrogant enough to think that there are fundamental aspects of reality that we simply do not understand on any level.

Another point is, if you ever take DMT. Most people have no words to describe what they see. As stupid monkey humans we have defined vague terms to mean something. Even if someone thinks a DMT experience is spiritual, so what? Because it is chemicals in the brain? What basis do you have to say that having a spiritual experience is not considering it is based upon the science of the Universe? Spiritual, God, dark matter, death, even consciousness are terms that ill defined with monkey brains.

I think you believe that "spiritual" must mean dogmatic religion. Science in itself can be "spiritual", contemplating the Universe can be "spiritual". I repeat that term because at this point in our culture-less society that term is taboo. I know some people consider FUCKING to be "spiritual". I am not implying that I believe in any religion, I do not, at all. DMT is like experiencing the Universe in your own head. It is the one and only experience that is convincing enough to say that we know very little, it is the most humbling and powerful experience there is. And if there is one using endogenous chemicals, more powerful, I do not want to even know about it, myself.

I cannot figure out what you are trying to debate? That there is no science behind DMT? That there is nothing to DMT? That "spiritual" does not exist? What is your point of this continued conversation? That you are scared of psychedelics? Why do you think such an experience would have been programmed into our head, the most powerful experience a person can have? How do you think DNA evolved over so many years, you ever read Francis Cricks, who helped found DNA, what his theory for DNA was? Panspermia. Yeah. The Universe is a lot trickier than just our basic Science.

One thing is clear, you are never going to know what I am talking about until you have that experience. Why not? It has never killed anyone... you will think you have died because what you are witnessing is alien and defies explanation. It will be so awesome, that you will not even care that you died or think you have died. People should do it, even if it is just to be in awe of what your own vessel is capable of doing.

Sigh. Its not that I dont want a "spiritual experience", its just that the "spiritual" DOES NOT EXIST. This is chemicals reacting with the neurons in your brain, making you think you are experiencing "spiritual" things. It doesn't matter that you go "you just dont understand,man, try it yourself" blahblahblah. I dont have to. Because whatever subjective experience I'll have or you've had, will not change some basic facts that we all have to deal with: That we , along with our brains and our consciousness, are evolved biological phenomena that abide by the laws of physics. We even know that the brain is a fallible instrument thats just SO easy to fool, you dont even need drugs. Right now there are literally billions of people who are wasting almost their entire life believing in nonsense, They use laptops, mobile phones, planes and they've seen the freaking moonlanding, and they think a freaking Palestinian zombie was the son of god who rescued us from collective sin because a couple ate a fruit recommended by a talking snake.
And that's not even the dumbest religion.
People believe such bullshit because they are not really thinking straight , not taking in the facts discovered by science, not understanding the process by which such discoveries are made, not understanding the carefulness by which they are doublechecked, not understanding the implications that such discoveries have.

science is self correcting... its not a logical fallacy to say "it works", because producing results is what science is concerned with... and testing hypotheses, which is NEVER ENDING...

If two models agree with observation, neither one can be considered more real than the other. A person can use whichever model is more convenient in the situation under consideration."

All of science assumes there is such a thing as uniformity in nature. If tomorrow the laws of physics stopped working science couldn't self-correct that..it would become useless. The question was, what justifies the scientific method..and pragmatism doesn't justify it. You have to be able to answer why it will continue to work without using a logical fallacy to justify it.

you will run into limits with a faith based system which the scientific method will accelerate by due to use of logic and model-dependent realism.

In the case of Christianity, there aren't any limits. It was because of the Christian assumption that there is a Lawgiver who created an orderly Universe based on laws which helped birth the scientific method in the first place. Now science still operates with the assumption of an orderly Universe based on laws, but it denies the Lawgiver that created them without explaining why they should exist in the first place.

simple, no??? what do i win?? eternal torment in this form by having to exist with ignorant animals who deny their true existence?? Cool... somedays i wish i hadnt bit that apple, but it is done... and i take some comfort knowing that reincarnation is literally true for the physical world, but this planet is getting a little crowded ill never see the end or the start all i am is a middle... when can i sleep eternal...

Are you of the Hindu faith? Why do you believe in reincarnation?

I wouldn't say a tech demo has to center individual effects necessarily (as in enumerating and highlighting them) necessarily, but it does have to run in real time on *something*. I'll accept a little give-tand-take there (like it was rendered at half-real time and sped up for the video or something). Otherwise, it may as well just be raytracing. It's obviously all hand-animated too anyways, so whether or not its rendered real time is almost moot.

That said, apart from some questionable art direction, it does look pretty cool. I look forward to the time, 8 or 10 years from now, when cut-scenes rendered in real time look like this.

Fancy rendering effects are great and all, but we need more physics stuff if we're going to advance gameplay. Not just solid-body, stuff tessellating with the bits bouncing around, but actual modeling of of environments taking into account the physics of how stuff works. Entire levels built of structures that obey the laws of physics made of materials with realistic properties. Wires carrying current, pipes with flowing water, load bearing beams and framing, fuel tanks with flammable liquids and gasses... that sort of thing,

I want to play a game where my imagination is the limit. Apologies for the rambling. Had a couple glasses of wine. Anyways, you know what I mean,

Ugh.. "Quantum Physics", theres that buzzword used where it has no place again. you could just as well have said "this is Advanced plumbing come to life", as you clearly have no idea what quantum mechanics is.

Look, its not like scientists just ignore consciousness or the brain, we actually know quite a bit about it in general. We know, for instance that our brains are built with the same carbon, hydrogen, phosphorous,oxygen and other elements that make up the other parts of our bodies, and every other living thing on earth. And we know that these elements adhere to the laws of physics, an there is no reason to expect them to be able to break those laws of physics just because they are put together to form a brain.

This hippie pothead stuff about forgotten magical realms that can be reached through shamanism, if you believe that shit, well, go ahead. But it IS pseudoscience, and nonsense to most people who have an actual interest in actual science. Putting people like that on the same stage as actual scientists and thereby lending them the credibility of a platform that is known for presenting actual science, is not a good idea for that platform if they want to keep their status as promoters of science.

I have no problems with you believing this stuff shagen454, and you are clearly passionate about it. more power to you for it. However, you cannot demand I buy into this or "SHUT MY FUCKING MOUTH", Besides everything else, my only point in my first comment was to correct the idea that TED was "banning" this thing, and I only tried to explain that TED considered it unscientific, and why. Theres no need to get all worked up at me for it. Well, atleast you could have waited til after this comment, where I actually spoke my mind more directly.

The laws of physics take a break

This video has been declared a duplicate by the original submitter; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by Fletch.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Sean-Carroll-on-laws-of-physics-and-the-meaning-of-life

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Sean-Carroll-on-laws-of-physics-and-the-meaning-of-life

Unfair argument! Cats do not abide by the laws of physics.