One point Snowden missed the opportunity of making (or just made too poorly for it to be noticeable) is the one about the paradox implicit in the "surveillance which aims to protect our freedom" *becomes* "surveillance that strips us of our freedom."

Egads...
That's sad.
They build the 747 on spec---I guess we just didn't have enough fires to support it.
Though paradoxically, this year, we might.

http://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-universe/the-paradox-of-multiple-goldilocks-zones-or-did-the-universe-know-we-were-coming

"But today, I can view my second grade teacher's statement from a different point of view. Today, astronomers have identified over 500 planets orbiting other stars, and they are all too close or too far from their mother star. Most of them, we think, cannot support life as we know it. So it is unnecessary to invoke God.

But now, cosmologists are facing this paradox again, but from a cosmic perspective. It turns out that the fundamental parameters of the universe appear to be perfectly "fine-tuned." For example, if the nuclear force were any stronger, the sun would have simply burned out billions of years ago, and if it were any weaker the sun wouldn't have ignited to begin with. The Nuclear Force is tuned Just Right. Similarly, if gravity were any stronger, the Universe would have most likely collapsed in on itself in a big crunch; and if it were any weaker, everything would have simply frozen over in a big freeze. The Gravitational Force is Just Right."

The evidence shows the Universe is not an accident; the observation of fine-tuning leads naturally to the conclusion that there must be a FineTuner, much in the same way that the evidence of a painting leads us to the conclusion that there must be a painter. The favorable circumstances of the laws that allow life to flourish on planet Earth are by design.

Applying the principle of Occams Razor, postulating the existence of multiple unobserved universes to try to account for our favorable circumstances should be ruled out in favor of a theory of a Creator because there are fewer assumptions needed and there is greater explanatory power. Once the existence of even "apparent" fine-tuning has been observed, ruling out the theory of a Creator is illogical and contrary to reason according to the principle of parsimony.

It's kind of an unfortunate paradox that the more you practice these things, the more compliant you become to the actual movements. So, in a way, you become less resistant to protect yourself from injury and also to allow your partner to focus on their movements...but in the end, you become more susceptible to the techniques than an unpracticed person.

It's like dance partners. Being the best dancer in the world may allow you to move an unskilled partner in a manner that mimics skill but you're not going to pull off any complex movements.

I have all the respect in the world for what these guys do but I think they'd agree that they're just messing around and showing off some stuff that doesn't work so elegantly in real life.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Paradox-of-Choice-by-Renata-Salecl-RSA

Renata Salecl -- The Paradox of Choice has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.

The Paradox of Choice by Renata Salecl (RSA) has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims.

Less complex than the UI of any Paradox Interactive game.

The paradox that most interests me here is why his hair looks like that.

On the one hand, it looks like a man with an infinite lack of sight styled his hair during a hurricane, but on the other hand he has finite 20/20 vision with his glasses on. How can that be?

agreed.
and its the fundamental flaw i find is ecclestiastical theosophy.
externalization.
that somehow through suffering we find grace.
absolution through redemption.
but in BOTH cases it is the externalization of god that intervenes.

which can be interpreted (and often is) that if their is suffering it is gods will.
which i find extremely paradoxical because then that negates free will at all.

Around 5:45 Julian says that free-form strategy games cannot guarantee that the player will always have something interesting to do, and that, in his view at least, you couldn't get away with that sort of game anymore today.

Paradox Interactive with their Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis and Victoria franchises are still up and running. Hearts of Iron 3, in particular, seems more popular than ever, after the release of the third add-on, "Their Finest Hour". And if anything, HOI3 is even more of a sandbox than the original XCOM.

Similarly, Bohemia Interactive's Arma series as a comparable counterpart in the field of first person shooters is gaining massive popularity as well, even though it incorporates extensive "downtimes" for players.

You can't churn out annual iterations and expect AAA-rate numbers of sold copies, but the community is still large enough to warrent a couple of these franchises.

Ah...hes explaining it by saying .99 recurring = 1. Thats fair enough I guess, but the paradox is purely a thought experiment. It doesnt hold up in real world.

Beautiful. It's enough to turn one vegan. Of course the paradox is, were we all to do so, the cow, sheep, pig, hen etc, would no longer be needed. Hmmm, dilemma.

Yes I saw what people refer to as THEM. I knew of entities entering what some call the afterlife or the breakthrough reality by fission reaction in head experience. But, I thought I was going to see angels or something of that nature.

My breakthrough was terrifying because I had thought I had gotten to know the nature of this drug. And if anyone attempts to play around with it, it can seem like magic, or an alien computer program that shows you the most beautiful landscapes, sacred geometry, infinite electrical grids, the universe. It is as though something is coaxing us into this experience. And what I mean by this is that on my first breakthrough it began normal. I hit it with my EYES closed. Two seconds in there was a huge blue/white pure energy tunnel that appeared and I was excited, oh shit this is going to be huge.

The next thing that happened was instead of going forward like I usually had into the mandala, sacred geometry grid or whatever it is to begin with, it fell to the ground, like a painting in a black room. And I was instantly freaked out. WTF is going on? The place where a beautiful pure light grid existed in an infinite way had just fallen to the floor. Then blackness. My eyes were closed. That blackness began to unfold. That blackness slipped off the wall and unfolded a box that revealed the actual room around me that I was sitting in. Again, my eyes were closed. Then the box unfolded around me. And room went by by as the box trapped me in it and the floor of this dimension was removed. It seemed like a conspiracy,a GOTCHA moment and instantly I thought, why am I doing this again? TOO LATE. I was thinking what the hell is going on, like some alien had coaxed me into this and was capturing my entirety on purpose.

The floor had been removed traveling at lightspeed, like I was a quantum magnet reaching its destination somewhere in the middle of the universe, dissolving through unknown dimensions, I could never have believed this possible and kept thinking, HOLY SHIT, ITS REAL. The box came undone as everything around me was destroyed like all nuclear bombs had gone off on Earth. Then the frequencies began, like a jet engine taking off. There was no way I was going to survive this. From a low drone to the most high pitch sound I had ever heard it blasted me apart. I died. I died materially and consciously. I splattered the instant that frequency reached its unbearably powerful threshold. SPLAT. Up until this point, from my room to this point. I had been literally screaming for dear life in my head. Like I never had before, not like a rollercoaster but holy shit, I am going to die. My subconscious melted completely whilst I saw the quantum physiology of the space around me. Something there was physically turning off my consciousness. And then it went dark.

And then I woke up. And they were there. And at the time even in another life, in another dimension I was still freaking out and they told me like they do everyone, to calm down it is OK. They are the paradox. They are either the root of who you are or they are aliens that make one sound crazy. They are the ones that give you deep lessons on how to live life and yet, you see, we are here talking about them and that makes us sound absolutely batshit crazy but anyone who has seen them will say. THEY WERE FOR REAL with all of their being. And then you ask, so who are they? My main concern has been forgetting them and concentrate on what they taught me. Nothing could have ever prepared me. And actually do not wish for any atheist to do this.

But, if they must go around acting like they know something for fact that cannot be proven, that there is a God or not, well they are just about as good as someone like me taking a drug and coming back saying something is real when there is no way to prove it is real. The main diffierence being I SAW it, I FELT it, I HEARD it. And no Christian in my own personal knowledge has seen, heard, or felt something on this level, and to me certainly means atheists are flat out wrong, like I said I was agnostic. And I have been atheist for long stretches of life. But, like I am saying. It could be aliens out there trying to guide us into its vortex and steal our souls because we venture into a new frequency we normally do not. It could be just a psychedelic and all those percentages of brain activity we do not use creates an infinite experience, a huge puzzle that the brain likes playing with itself and it plays it out with you and you just have to go along for the ride, no turning back. It could be the program that we receive upon birth and death. I have no idea of what this shit is. Except, that it has been used for thousands of years in the Amazon with expert shamans and that it challenges the very seat of atheism and challenges the participant on the grandest scale. It is one whacked out puzzle. But, so is the universe and consciousness.