Consciousness as an illusion is a bit of a fallacy. The primary function of consciousness is awareness, and awareness is fundamentally impossible to prove or disprove from an outside observation. Science will undoubtedly change how we think of our consciousness as we learn more about our brains, but the core phenomena of "something instead of nothing" from our internal perspective is inexplicable.

Consciousness as a "user" illusion seems to posit that there is a unique, independant user/observer for each of our brains, something like souls.

I wouldn't make the leap that because we are conscious, we have immortal souls. But if I came from nothing, then some essence of me survives when I return to nothing. As Chuang-tzu says:

"Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting point. Existence without limitation is space. Continuity without a starting point is time."

Tags for this video have been changed from 'running, diving, algebra, juice, toddler, inexplicable' to 'running, diving, algebra, juice, toddler, weak ass, inexplicable' - edited by calvados

Here's a working version of this inexplicably creepy "What if David Lynch made music videos" clip: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9f80z_pete-drake-forever_music

The first part is gone, but the rest is there, inexplicably.

http://www.wat.tv/video/the-rolling-stones-cocksucker-xs3z_ovt4_.html

That's part 2. Maybe I should have included that link in the first place.

Yeah his issues are with inkjets but I feel the pain of dealing with printers generally. He should have mentioned incredibly poor UI design, inexplicable buttons and lights and poor manuals.

But inkjets were always a ripoff. Lasers are a much better bet and in my experience are good value for money.

>> ^ponceleon:
I love QI, but every time I watch a clip, I feel embarrassed to be an American. This show just glorifies knowledge, learning, and how it can be fun, funny, and witty... it seems that most of our popular culture glorifies laziness, extreme consumption, stupidity and blind patriotism.
Case in point, languages. America has this INEXPLICABLE phobia of bilingualism. Rather than embrace other languages and encourage our young people to learn them, we are too busy passing laws making English the "official" language and forcing others to learn it.
I'm absolutely sure I'm going to get flamed for this comment, but I just don't think America would ever produce a prime-time show like QI and attract big names to be on it... we are much more likely to have a NASCAR race, hotdog eating contest, or something involving bullshit paranormal "science" like ghost hunting (man, that ghosthunting stuff pisses me off).



Then again I suspect only America could give us The Wire, Deadwood, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. These are things that English tv are unable to match.

Still, I feel your pain.

I really need to get drunk and watch this again. It's so much fun! Perhaps, I'll have to get some weed for next time. This particular scene, I believe, is after they had stopped shooting for a year or so and inexplicably replaced one of the main characters with some completely random guy who just shows up half way through. Awesome-sauce.

I love QI, but every time I watch a clip, I feel embarrassed to be an American. This show just glorifies knowledge, learning, and how it can be fun, funny, and witty... it seems that most of our popular culture glorifies laziness, extreme consumption, stupidity and blind patriotism.

Case in point, languages. America has this INEXPLICABLE phobia of bilingualism. Rather than embrace other languages and encourage our young people to learn them, we are too busy passing laws making English the "official" language and forcing others to learn it.

I'm absolutely sure I'm going to get flamed for this comment, but I just don't think America would ever produce a prime-time show like QI and attract big names to be on it... we are much more likely to have a NASCAR race, hotdog eating contest, or something involving bullshit paranormal "science" like ghost hunting (man, that ghosthunting stuff pisses me off).

I love how people knee-jerk respond that Beck is lying because "of course" they know the shooter is right-wing. He had a gun! That makes him right wing!

Right?

In actuality, he hated FoxNews and Israel. Which party does that more closely ally with these days?

And yeah, the Republican party is the pro-Israel one. Democrats are (inexplicably) pro-Palestine.

Bad things happen to all kinds of people. It's a sad argument to say God doesn't exist because human suffering does.

The most-believed conception of God, the God most major religions believe in, is a benevolent, compassionate creator. Not a distant, hands-off creator. The fundamental truth that bad things happen to good people effectively disproves the former concept. If God values life and rewards virtue, it is inexplicable for him to allow a completely innocent baby to be born with a defect and die hours after exiting the womb. It can't be Satan because God is all-powerful.

This source of doubt has been known for centuries. And the way the christians fought it was to create the idea of "original sin," which said that a baby could be punished for sins made by its oldest ancestor, Adam, despite never having had the chance to sin itself. So not only did this supposedly compassionate God not forgive Adam when he disobeyed him, he found it righteous to randomly kill offspring thousands of generations removed from him.

There are still two problems with this argument: one, it is not just to punish an individual for the actions of another individual. We all have free will, a father's actions should bring punishment on him and not his children. Second, the punishment is still disproportionately administered. Innocent babies die without having a chance to sin while others have been allowed to live lives rife with sin. Now, you might say that God could still make it proportionate in the afterlife. However, that raises the question of why he bothered granting us a mortal life to lose at all. If we can just do all the same things dead as we can when we're alive, what's the freaking point in making two realms of existence?

You rat bastard... not only am I hungry for BBQ now, I'm inexplicably turned on!

Two things I 100% agree on here, and have made as points myself before -

Truman committed genocide, there's no way about it. An offshore demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb would have sufficed. The second bombing on Nagasaki just 3 days later was also utterly inexplicable given the declaration of war on Japan by Russia following the first bombing and the seeming inevitability of surrender.

If the barometer for torture either by waterboarding, walling or stress positions or sleep deprivations is whether it may save American lives, then let all the proponents of it agree to incorporate it into the domestic legal system. If not they're hypocrites at best and racists/xenophobes at worst.

Oooh! You won the inexplicable ant downvote! Congratulations!

You know, I have the VideoSift advanced query for "Neil Diamond" set as my homepage, yet I'm the fourth person to vote for this. Inexplicable.

Such ridiculous nonsense. Yes, maybe we'll find "god" through science, but we certainly never will if we circumvent the entire discovery process by saying "God did it!" and then proceed to not explore anything further.

The answer of "god did it" is simply a shortcut answer for the inexplicable. It's not an explanation of how something was done.

If all these intelligent design proponents really do believe that some kind of higher form of intelligence was responsible for creating life - the question they should then be asking is HOW that higher form of intelligence was able to do it. They should be trying to understand the methods and prove that it was done. If they aren't trying to answer that question, then they aren't scientists at all.

And, also, any "scientist" who claims intelligent design is real and then adamantly claims that it's THEIR god who was the intelligent designer... They are festivaling themselves [Edit: I must have seen the word festival when I wrote that, meant to say festivaling... that was weird] [Edit: Actually, I think I just got Cheese firsted... festival == f00l?]. Crafting intricate apologies and explanations for their ancient superstitions... On the other hand, if someone says they think some kind of intelligence was responsible for creating life, but they aren't sure what... That's reasonable hypothesizing, I suppose, given that they are actually trying to figure out who/what that intelligence was and how it was able to create life.

I'm done ranting now.