I don't think it's really that bad to come to the correct answer in 10, even 15 minutes to what is essentially a vague guessing game?

Numbers in ascending order isn't really a Black Swan scenario, this isn't something people couldn't fathom existing, it's just an arbitrary rule he decided on in a system all the people were familiar with, numbers.

All it really showed was people are slow to activate their critical thinking skills when randomly stopped in the street, once they get warmed up with a few throw-away guesses, there reasoning becomes more complex.

I don't see anything unusual about that, especially since half the problem was actually just deceptive word play.

His black swan is radioactive.

Awwwww, Sarah was hurt-poor old bitchy Jewish princess-Krag-Magda defense still rockin' that frame, and so sincere for an oldster-Oh and, pull that wimmin-card too, way to fall-out respectfully.....All fours and grovel baby!! Love your graceful swan-moves...stay as fresh as you can til you turn full-on ass!

Very fun.

The ones I spotted were:

Pong, Asteroids, Battlezone, Mario, Gameboy boot screen, Quake, Quake 3, Silent Hill, Limbo, FEZ, Portal, Minecraft, The Unfinished Swan, Super Hexagon, Thomas Was Alone, Half-Life and Braid.

Some could be:
Snake, Rez, Yoshis Island, Dear Esther.

The one at 0:32 is bothering me as I'm sure it's something I played a lot as a kid. Also 00:59 makes me think of the original GTA but I think it's something else from around the same time.

That's not what I was saying at all though perhaps I explained poorly.

So imagine you are in a 0 gravity environment. You have 2 balls (lol) one has a mass of 1 kg the other a mass of 100kg. You throw both equally hard. What happens?

One ball travels away from you at 100x less the velocity of the other. This is intertia, it is an effect of mass not gravity. Gravity is an additional force but it's absence would not change the fact that a big heavy space suit requires a significant force to move at a usefully velocity in the 1st place.

It was perhaps misleading to use the example of a fulcrum (lever) but in this context it's quite illustrative. If it was 0 gravity you could apply a tiny force to a massive object and just wait however long it takes to get it where you want (like an infinitely long lever). When gravity becomes a factor duration becomes more and more of a concern (like the fulcrum of the lever gets shorter and shorter).

Concequence: the lower the gravity the easier (less work/deltaV) it is to move an object. However a massive object still requires a proportional large force to move in a useful way (in this case fast enough to overcome 0.16g for long enough to get upright).

I'm not saying gravity has no effect (quite the opposite) I'm saying big heavy thing requires big heavy force to shift even in reduced gravity environments.


As for bases on the moon, mars, stargates, ueo's, void whales, phobos being hollow (phobos is some crazy shit), hexagon on Saturn etc. Etc. I'm not outright dismissive, but to treat it as anything but food for thought/entertainment is a little worrying to say the least. What do you have to go on there other than the testimony of other people who claim to have been involved or whatever?

There's no hard data avaliable to the likes of you and I on such things. Many of these ideas cannot be entirely refuted, but nor can they be confirmed either. That puts us squarely in the realm of superstition and religion.

I'm a part time discordian/khaos magus/git wizard so I do have more time than most for superstition and flights of fantasy but I steer well clear of treating any of that kind of think as objective fact.

The realms of materialism and idealism should stay entirely separate except when they converge and compliment each other e.g. If I can imagine a black swan and then go out and find one (after performing the necessary experiments to disprove any other possible explanations for why it might seem black) then I can tell others that black swans are definitely a real thing. The same cannot be said for say the flying spaghetti monster or the chocolate tea pot orbiting the sun even though believing in such things makes my life more interesting under certain circumstances (and such liberated thought processes can eventually lead to as yet undiscovered ideas which may indeed prove to be "true" or helpful).

"Given all theories of the universe are absurd, it is better to speak in the language of one which Is patently absurd so as to mortify the metaphysical man." -Alaistair Crowley

Translation: if your going to indulge stuff like this don't take it or yourself too seriously or you will go mental!

Praise be to pope Bob!
23

On one hand, it's Aronofsky, who I really like as a director, and have seen every movie except The Black Swan. The Fountain is actually one of my favorite movies.

On the other hand, it's one of the stupidest biblical stories for which I have absolutely no respect at any level.

He still has time to insure that his swan-styley lecture circuit will consists of stops primarily abroad or insulated within the U.N as well
Piece a mottled work

This looks amazing. I had thought that The Last of Us was this console generation's swan song, but I may have been very wrong.

GTA V, looks incredibly promising.

If you live in a country that has ghetto people, you should get a gun unless you don't care about risk management and black swans (outlier events which have unacceptable outcomes when they do occur).

As far as home invasions go, this "brutal" one was extremely tame: http://videosift.com/video/Home-Invasion-in-Millburn-NJ-caught-on-nanny-cam-brutal

I think you're probably right or close to it. Swans are normally pretty ornery, dick-ish birds... I don't believe they would be this magnanimous...

Swans, not geese. Also, I don't believe they are feeding the fish, rather they are moistening the dry food and the fish are being opportunistic bastards.

There are no absolute logical principles <---- including that one. This is simply another way of describing the problem of induction and under determination. Like so many philosophical arguments you have attacked my position based upon the language it was described in and not due to its underlying thought process. This has resulted in a fallacy. Language merely conveys knowledge, it does not in an of itself contain it (and excellent example incidentally of what I was talking about).

Your argument eats itself. If there aren't any absolute laws of logic (including that one), then there are no rules period, and thus no logic. If there is no such thing as logic then I could say "The cucumber faints west in the umbrage" and it would be an entirely valid response to anything you say. Yet you continue to make absolute statements like:

"All principles (save the observation "thinking exists") can only ever derived by induction."

"This is the case because one can never know for certain if any or all of ones experiences are fabrications"

"you can't ever be certain about any judgement one makes about the universe or anything in it because one cannot observe an exhaustive perspective"

The sea cucumber faints west in the umbrage, my friend.

All principles (save the observation "thinking exists") can only ever derived by induction. This is the case because one can never know for certain if any or all of ones experiences are fabrications, and furthermore that they never encompass all possible variables/possibilities. To put it another way, you can't ever be certain about any judgement one makes about the universe or anything in it because one cannot observe an exhaustive perspective (i.e. all of time and space for the thing in question). Thus there may always exist an example that could falsify your assumption. e.g. if I inducted that all swans are white because I had only ever seen white swans I would ultimately be incorrect as black swans can be observed to exist. Unless you can verify the entirety of existence across time there might always exist and experience/example to falsify any objective assertion. (you could be a brain in a jar, you can't prove 100% that your not)

No, I can't 100 percent prove I am not actually a circus peanut dreaming I'm a man, but it doesn't matter what I can prove to you. What matters is what is true. You have absolute freedom to live in total denial of reality if you want to, but reality isn't what we dictate it is. Just because you have no way of figuring it out doesn't mean no one does. The one who does have it figured out is God, because He created it. Because He is God He can make us absolutely certain of who He is and what He wants from us, transcending all physical or mental rationale.

^ Pardon me? Did you even read what I wrote by way of explanation for that? What part of "everything is permitted" even remotely precludes me (or anyone) from anything, let alone arguing against Christianity?!?!?

If everything is permitted then it is equally valid not to permit, which means you have no argument. Your way isn't better than any other way according to your logic so all that you can argue is that you prefer it.

What I felt I'd explained fairly clearly was the idea that the only demonstrable moral authority was yourself, or to put it another way that there are no moral authorities to be found anywhere else but within peoples minds.
Even if God himself speaks to you directly, that is an experience reducible only to the mind because ALL EXPERIENCES WITHIN HUMAN CONCEPTION OCCUR IN or at best VIA THE MIND!

I can't prove God exists to you, but He can. God isn't hiding from you; He has been knocking on your door your entire life. It's your choice whether you want to open the door, but you are going to meet Him one day regardless of what you choose.

Nothing has ever happened to any human being anywhere that was not experienced entirely in the mind (notice I didn't say "brain" ). When you see a chair you don't see the photons of light hitting your retina, you see something your mind made up to be representative (at best) of whatever phenomenon your eyes detected.

With that in mind (<- mind lol), "everything is permitted". The universe will continue on, unmoved by our moralities (or lack of). Only other humans will cry or rejoice at your actions and only within the sovereignty of your own mind will you find an irrefutable and absolute moral judge...

I was created before I had a mind. The Universe has a beginning, it was created, and the Creator is the judge.

Apart from all the same major dates for festivals and holy days (25th dec etc.),

The Catholics borrowed those from the Pagans..you won't find those in the bible.

the entire symbology of dieing on a cross for three days then being resurrected, the "last supper" with 12 disciples, 3 wise men from the east bearing gifts. etc. etc.

Sources?

I'd have more time for the Christian counter argument that the Mithraists stole this stuff from them if the same themes, dates and symoblogy didn't pop up in ancient cultures going back a few 1000 years over and over and over. The list of Messianic figures with the above characteristics in western folklore & myth is so long its almost a joke! & naturally is no co-incidence as they are describing the movement of the heavens (specifically the sun) by way of allegory. Speaking of which..

Let's see some sources..

But then the Catholic Church did it level best to suppress and destroy any trace of Gnosticism through the ages so its no surprise to me that you're not entirely familiar with it. (most people haven't even heard of it and those that do tend to be under the misapprehension that its a Christian thing (again understandable under the circumstances))

I know exactly what it is and I am very familar with it.

I'll come with you a little on that one. Before Rex Mundi (Jehova) showed up to fk everything up for them the Kabbalistic (and essentially Pagan) Jews possessed great wisdom and insight. Naturally not all of this was lost! (though after Solomon passed it would appear a regrettably large amount was)

Abraham is the father of the Jewish people and he worshiped the LORD.

I'm not sure I even want to grace that with a response. How could you possibly know what came from the mouth of God to a man 2000 years ago? If you say "because it says in the bible" please don't expect a sensible reply (I'm happy to fight non-sense with none-sense)

Because I know Him personally and His Spirit lives within me.

^This one amused be greatly. I would say Buddhism & Zoroastranism were clearly superior for exactly that reason but that's not what I think you were alluding to? I assume you were suggesting that certain parts of the whole Jesus shebang could only have come from Jesus/God/Holy spirit because he made himself the centre of attention?

To be a Christian is to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Therefore there is no Christianity without Him. He is the only way to know God:

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

He wasn't pointing to Himself, He was pointing to God.

This is why I make a very distinct separation between the "Jesus" and the "Christ". Christ (or anointed one) goes back at least to Egypt. Horus is clearly "Christ" by basically any sensible measure I can think of, and by "Christ" I mean the "Sun of God" i.e. the freaking Sun.

This also forms the basis for an "as above so below" parable/allegory for the spiritual journey to enlightenment. You can find your way to heaven and God via the "Sun of God's" wisdom. No Miracle performing hippie Jew's were required before and I fail to see how sprouting the same fundamental idea just with a figurehead for a disenfranchised Jewish noble family anchored to everything helps?

You do realize that the word son and the word sun, in hebrew or in egyptian, aren't even remotely similar don't you? The word Christ does mean the anointed one, that is what the Messiah is. Jesus *is* the Christ. In regards to Horus being Christ, and a lot of other things you said, please take a look at this:

http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/part-one/#horus

Are there some pearl's of Jesus's wisdom I missed? Thus far I have yet to come across anything that didn't strike me as either a rewording of things wise men had preached for 1000's of years previously, or a power play by an unscrupulous or deluded individual.

Read the gospel of John and pray to God and ask Him to help you understand it.

I happen to know its hotly contested even to this day but lets for the sake of this just take it as a given. When I said "at best a fabrication" it was because I consider the historical figure to be an impostor and a fraud. If anyone was a "true" messiah then John the Baptist and moreover Simon Magus are far better contenders but then that's a colossal can of worms I'm not sure I can be bothered to open at the moment.

John the baptist said he wasn't the Messiah and Simon was outdone by Philip.

I'll just say in summary that I am of the opinion that Mr. Ben Yosef and his crew were plotting to return the house of David to power but largely failed in the end as the Roman establishment usurped most of the legacy they tried to create (though not entirely).

The missing part of this theory is the explanation for the empty tomb.

Either way they worshiped and championed a being (Psychological archetype) which I feel I have little choice but to call Satan i.e. the God of Abraham. This alone is a pretty major indictment for me and any historic figure that puts said "being" at the center of their belief system will garner my suspicion.

How can the God that appeared to Abraham be anything but malevolent if the accounts in the Torah and Quran are accurate?

The quran isn't accurate, but if you read the Old Testament without humanistic glasses on, you'll find it was the humans who were malevolent and God was who long suffering with them.

@ shinyblurry

This had already turned into an essay and I didn't want to take up even more room by quoting you verbatim so I've tried to break it down to save space.



1. "Except that?"

There are no absolute logical principles <---- including that one.
This is simply another way of describing the problem of induction and under determination. Like so many philosophical arguments you have attacked my position based upon the language it was described in and not due to its underlying thought process. This has resulted in a fallacy. Language merely conveys knowledge, it does not in an of itself contain it (and excellent example incidentally of what I was talking about).

2. "Is that absolutely true?"

All principles (save the observation "thinking exists") can only ever derived by induction. This is the case because one can never know for certain if any or all of ones experiences are fabrications, and furthermore that they never encompass all possible variables/possibilities. To put it another way, you can't ever be certain about any judgement one makes about the universe or anything in it because one cannot observe an exhaustive perspective (i.e. all of time and space for the thing in question). Thus there may always exist an example that could falsify your assumption. e.g. if I inducted that all swans are white because I had only ever seen white swans I would ultimately be incorrect as black swans can be observed to exist. Unless you can verify the entirety of existence across time there might always exist and experience/example to falsify any objective assertion. (you could be a brain in a jar, you can't prove 100% that your not)


3. "Including not permitting..which means you have no further argument against Christianity."

^ Pardon me? Did you even read what I wrote by way of explanation for that? What part of "everything is permitted" even remotely precludes me (or anyone) from anything, let alone arguing against Christianity?!?!?

What I felt I'd explained fairly clearly was the idea that the only demonstrable moral authority was yourself, or to put it another way that there are no moral authorities to be found anywhere else but within peoples minds.
Even if God himself speaks to you directly, that is an experience reducible only to the mind because ALL EXPERIENCES WITHIN HUMAN CONCEPTION OCCUR IN or at best VIA THE MIND!

Nothing has ever happened to any human being anywhere that was not experienced entirely in the mind (notice I didn't say "brain" ). When you see a chair you don't see the photons of light hitting your retina, you see something your mind made up to be representative (at best) of whatever phenomenon your eyes detected.

With that in mind (<- mind lol), "everything is permitted". The universe will continue on, unmoved by our moralities (or lack of). Only other humans will cry or rejoice at your actions and only within the sovereignty of your own mind will you find an irrefutable and absolute moral judge...

As for the other bits

A. "The earliest records of Mithraism bear no similarity to Christianity at all....."

Apart from all the same major dates for festivals and holy days (25th dec etc.), the entire symbology of dieing on a cross for three days then being resurrected, the "last supper" with 12 disciples, 3 wise men from the east bearing gifts. etc. etc.

I'd have more time for the Christian counter argument that the Mithraists stole this stuff from them if the same themes, dates and symoblogy didn't pop up in ancient cultures going back a few 1000 years over and over and over. The list of Messianic figures with the above characteristics in western folklore & myth is so long its almost a joke! & naturally is no co-incidence as they are describing the movement of the heavens (specifically the sun) by way of allegory. Speaking of which............

Pagan & Gnostic traditions are deeply intertwined to the point where one could consider many examples to be one and the same. Mithraism would be one such example. Pagan just means many Gods/worship of nature & archetypes in the human psyche. Mithraism fulfils this definition but it also fulfils the Gnostic one i.e. it teaches that one finds god of and within oneself, not as an external force, or indeed a force which is separate from oneself.

But then the Catholic Church did it level best to suppress and destroy any trace of Gnosticism through the ages so its no surprise to me that you're not entirely familiar with it. (most people haven't even heard of it and those that do tend to be under the misapprehension that its a Christian thing (again understandable under the circumstances))


B. "Actually, they came from a progressive revelation of Judiasm which preceeded all of that."

I'll come with you a little on that one. Before Rex Mundi (Jehova) showed up to fk everything up for them the Kabbalistic (and essentially Pagan) Jews possessed great wisdom and insight. Naturally not all of this was lost! (though after Solomon passed it would appear a regrettably large amount was)


C. "What Jesus did not teach that came from Judiasm was wholly His and entirely unique, and they came from the mouth of God Himself."


I'm not sure I even want to grace that with a response. How could you possibly know what came from the mouth of God to a man 2000 years ago? If you say "because it says in the bible" please don't expect a sensible reply (I'm happy to fight non-sense with none-sense)


D. "The difference is Jesus Himself. You could take buddha out of buddhism, or zoroaster out of zoroastrianism and you would still have something. Without Jesus there is no Christianity."

^This one amused be greatly. I would say Buddhism & Zoroastranism were clearly superior for exactly that reason but that's not what I think you were alluding to? I assume you were suggesting that certain parts of the whole Jesus shebang could only have come from Jesus/God/Holy spirit because he made himself the centre of attention?
This is why I make a very distinct separation between the "Jesus" and the "Christ". Christ (or anointed one) goes back at least to Egypt. Horus is clearly "Christ" by basically any sensible measure I can think of, and by "Christ" I mean the "Sun of God" i.e. the freaking Sun.
This also forms the basis for an "as above so below" parable/allegory for the spiritual journey to enlightenment. You can find your way to heaven and God via the "Sun of God's" wisdom. No Miracle performing hippie Jew's were required before and I fail to see how sprouting the same fundamental idea just with a figurehead for a disenfranchised Jewish noble family anchored to everything helps?

Are there some pearl's of Jesus's wisdom I missed? Thus far I have yet to come across anything that didn't strike me as either a rewording of things wise men had preached for 1000's of years previously, or a power play by an unscrupulous or deluded individual.


E. "The Jesus myth theory isn't taken seriously by even skeptical bible scholars. There is more evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ than for Alexander the Great."

I happen to know its hotly contested even to this day but lets for the sake of this just take it as a given. When I said "at best a fabrication" it was because I consider the historical figure to be an impostor and a fraud. If anyone was a "true" messiah then John the Baptist and moreover Simon Magus are far better contenders but then that's a colossal can of worms I'm not sure I can be bothered to open at the moment. I'll just say in summary that I am of the opinion that Mr. Ben Yosef and his crew were plotting to return the house of David to power but largely failed in the end as the Roman establishment usurped most of the legacy they tried to create (though not entirely).
Either way they worshiped and championed a being (Psychological archetype) which I feel I have little choice but to call Satan i.e. the God of Abraham. This alone is a pretty major indictment for me and any historic figure that puts said "being" at the center of their belief system will garner my suspicion.

How can the God that appeared to Abraham be anything but malevolent if the accounts in the Torah and Quran are accurate?

(I hope that made sense towards the end, getting very late & tired here...)

Swans can be pretty vicious too. A nearby lake was notorious for the big motherfrakkin' swan that would go out of its way to terrorize anyone who came to the beach there.
That said, an easy way to scare them off... use a blanket, jacket, or similar and hold it up in front of you like a wall and advance on them. Better yet, if you shake it slightly like you're closing in to pounce.
Like most animals they will react to your increased size by backing away.

Tried the mysterious enigmatic loner thing. Wasn't much fun, because everybody knows that the mysterious kid that hangs out alone is either shy and wants to hide it, or a possible serial killer waiting to happen.

Its also my dating strategy. Brood in some dark corner, look deep and thoughtful. Attract a girl that wants a puzzle project "I wonder what is under that strangers multiple shells/walls/defences". This has worked about twice in all my years.

Anywai, I have a lot of social anxiety. I really care what people I've just met and might never see again think of me. And its stupid. I actually like being with people though. I discovered this after an extended period of solitude and I went pretty stir crazy. The trouble is being with people I dont already know very well is exhausting. Maybe everybody is like that and they just do a better hiding it, but needless to say I am jealous of those that seem to be able to swan around socialising effortlessly.

ps. Does anybody actually enjoy smalltalk? I was under the impression that the whole world accepted it as some sort of necessary evil. It never occurred to me that some might actually like it. Its just probing for a commonality and once you get there its like bam, now we can start a real conversation.