>> ^hpqp:

Yes, because parents should make irretrievable decisions about their child's future sex life and "porn star" qualities.
>> ^IAmTheBlurr:
>> ^Kalle:
The loss of sensitivity is welcomed here
Two minutes in heaven are better than one minute in heaven..

Exactly. Living in the US and having traditionalist parents (Christian), I can say that I'm happy with their choice. Sensitivity can be great but being able to last is more important to get a girl off. Besides, I'd prefer to look like a porn star than sea tube worm.


Way to go on reading what you were thinking into what I said. Quit projecting. I didn't make any comment about what parents should or shouldn't do.

>> ^Kalle:

The loss of sensitivity is welcomed here
Two minutes in heaven are better than one minute in heaven..


Exactly. Living in the US and having traditionalist parents (Christian), I can say that I'm happy with their choice. Sensitivity can be great but being able to last is more important to get a girl off. Besides, I'd prefer to look like a porn star than sea tube worm.

If I was a billionaire, I'd create science jobs.

For those who are interested, the blue table thing with the squares and circles is an actual instrument called a "reactable". It's an extremely interesting instrument, it looks like it came from the far future.

http://www.reactable.com/

I just realized that the video size is all messed up.
It doesn't look like you can reply to videos right now.
I would email the admins to have it removed.
Sorry about that, I don't know what happened.

Hey, did you guys hear about that one time when a tree fell in the woods but there wasn't anyone around and everyone asks if it makes a sound... I was totally there for that... it was sick...

>> ^Deano:

You have to be maxing out the psychopath tests to do something like that to an animal. But I don't know how neighbours could let that go for so long despite reporting it. I'd be campaigning to get the animal released asap, not shrugging my shoulders because Animal Control still hadn't shown up.


Exactly!!! Ski-masks, gloves, pistols, and shotguns under the cover of night if needs be.

Seriously!? There were people watching that dog get tortured for "many" years!? I love that she was rescued but watching a dog suffer like that for years and not doing something about it more than making a phone call is like watching someone get raped in an ally three stories below you and doing nothing about it.

I feel horrible and pained for the dog, I feel murderous for the previous "owners", but the people who did nothing more than make a phone call... they're hopeless.

(No, I don’t suspect that you are anti-research, I suspect that you don’t value research or the scientific method as much as people should. If you did, you would find no value in faith. I suspect that you don’t read many science books, if any. I suspect that you don’t follow the most recent information coming out of neural science research labs. I suspect that the only research that you are primarily interested in is the kind of research that supports your pre-existing idea of the nature of reality. I suspect that you don’t actually understand the scientific method. I suspect that you’ve never read “The Demon Haunted World”. I suspect that you don’t really understand causation verses correlation. I suspect that you generally aren’t very skeptically minded and that your definition of “evidence” is loosely constructed. I suspect that you aren’t actually doing anything to falsify your beliefs. I suspect that you identify with your beliefs to the degree that if realized that they weren’t true you would feel a sense of loss of personal identity. I suspect that you value any answer, even if it’s potentially incorrect, over no answer at all. I suspect that you would rather believe in “spirit” than to disbelieve it because, as I suspect, it makes you feel good and it gives you the answer that you want. I suspect that you like the writings of Deepak Chopra and that you probably like movies "The Secret" and "What the Bleep Do We Know". I suspect that you have very little respect for truth and that your beliefs are more about perception rather than what can be known to be factual.

What is ego? I don’t know. I don’t study neurological brain functions as much as I wish I had the time for. The thing is, I’m not the one providing a bunch of nonsense answer about how it’s some sort of separate entity apart from myself, or that it has its own wants and desires part from my own. The burden of proof rests on the person making those claims.

What is reality? From Wikipedia “Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be.” I would use that definition. I would also say that we absolutely can know what is real vs. what is not real by performing rigorous investigations into phenomenon that we observe and that during these investigations we use the scientific method to keep us from lying to ourselves. Contrary to the beliefs of people of “spirituality” and post-modernists, there are things that we can call objectively real and there is such thing as truth, that knowing the truth requires hardcore investigation and that once you know the truth, at least to a very high degree of certainty, you can know what is not true. By definition, reality is the collection of things and phenomenon that are real. Things like fairies, unicorns, leprechauns, flying spaghetti monsters, gods, etc, aren't known to be real, they don't really exist, they aren't a part of reality. Sure, the idea of those things is real, but those things themselves aren't.

What is consciousness? It sounds as if you’re asking me what consciousness is as if consciousness is a thing. Consciousness isn’t a thing; it’s a bi-product of certain biological systems and it can be affected and manipulated by various means. It’s a collective brain state. Consciousness doesn’t exist somewhere in the universe and we’re interacting with it and even if that were true, there isn’t any actual evidence of that being the case. In humans, it is just the sense of awareness of one’s self with respect to others and of the relationship between the mind and the world that we interact with. You talk about consciousness as if it’s some sort of mystical force; it just sounds like magical thinking, attributing animal qualities to the universe. There is nothing magical or mystical about it. This notion that consciousness and the ego are somehow “outside” of us or separate from who we “are” is just a fantasy similar to fairies and unicorns. I know people that believe in actual fairies, the kind with wings, who control certain aspects of our lives. I put spirituality in the same exact camp as belief in fairies, there just isn’t any evidence that it’s actually true.

Who am I? I could say that I am who I define myself to be based on what information that I have about myself combined with the model of myself that is retained in other people’s minds whom I interact with and also the collective actions that I’ve taken and continue to take. It just seems like you’re adding a layer of mysticism over the nature of humans, as if there is something magical about humans over other primates, or other carbon based life forms. Again, there is nothing mystical or magical about who people are.

The reason why I suspect that you are not scientifically minded is because you’re prepared to dismiss ongoing research which may or may not be conclusive but you’re willing to provide your own answers and form your own beliefs based on your own subjective experiences. What good are those answers if they have no basis in reality. Just because there is no definitive consensus doesn’t mean that you can substitute in your own beliefs. Doing that, in and of itself, is irrational. Everything that you’ve said that you believe in has its basis in magical and wishful thinking, not in science, even though you're using scientific terms (incorrectly I might add). If there isn’t a conclusive answer, than why make one up? The only thing that individualized answers to these questions offers to me is evidence of how scientifically illiterate people actually are. Scientifically literate and rational people don’t answer questions that they don’t have objective and research driven answers to and if they do propose an answer when there isn’t something they can be objectively highly certain of, they submit it as conjecture, a mere hypothesis, very little more than an inconclusive guess.

P.S. I agree that Freud is now useless in the light of research from cognitive sciences. The reason for this is primarily because his conclusions were based on subjective and anecdotal information.

P.P.S. In the other comment you talked about your definition of god as being all of the particles and the material in the universe, basically, you're saying that the universe is god. Why not just call the universe the universe rather than attaching something unnecessary to it. I realize that you probably like to look at it that way, that the universe is god but that really isn't necessary and in a way, it isn't very helpful either.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
do you suspect that i am somehow anti-research?
on the contrary my friend.research is the very thing that proves my premise concerning our curiosity and drive to know.the very "spirit" or essence of what i am trying to convey.
do you think that i am fearful that maybe research and a desire for the truth may prove my thesis wrong?
why would i be fearful?
i make only claims of faith not of certitude.
i hold no illusions that my faith can be certified by any verifiable means and hence a main reason why i do not espouse some hidden truth and force others to respect or believe my conclusions.
thats religions job,not mine.

let me ask you these questions:
what is ego?
what is reality?
what is consciousness?
WHO are YOU?

please do not answer with a scientific paper because none of these questions have been answered adequately.they are an ongoing investigation and there has been no definative concensus.
but they are worthy questions,maybe the most important of all questions.
i guess that is relative.
i find them to be very important questions and the answers on an individual basis reveal much about that person.

ps:freud was a cunt.avoid using him as a basis for the ego.his work concerning that particular dynamic has already been eviscerated.

That's all very interesting and poetic but here's the rub...

He makes a lot of truth claims in that video; what research is he basing these truth claims on?

"Research" will be a major theme when I respond to your longer comment. You asked in the longer comment "How do we measure these thing, based on what scale?" Research plays a huge role in knowing that.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
i am going to respond my friend.
it may a take a bit but while i take care of that business,let me share stuart wilde and his take on the ego which i wholeheartedly agree with:

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)

I used to hold the idea that religion is control by way of fear for a long time but I don't anymore. The thing is that, it wasn't until monotheistic religions came on the scene that the fear and guilt aspect of religion showed up. Before the monotheistic religions, most beliefs didn't even have an afterlife that anyone could obtain.

For the better part of human history, the gods were arbiters of earthly events that we found to be larger than ourselves. The ocean was seen as a god, the sky was seen as a god. It's only been in the last 1700 years that fear and guilt have been used as control mechanisms.

I know we've talked about this before but why shouldn't you judge people for the path that they're on. Surely if it were something extreme like murder or rape, you would judge them regarding that path, why should judgement be limited to only extreme examples?

I contend that if you really care about having as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as you possibly can, you'll be weary of subjectivity and subject every bit of information that you believe to be true or that might be new to you with the rigors of extreme objective scrutiny. Why would you want to believe something that you can objectively verify that isn't true.

Here's the think about your paragraph on faith. It isn't arrogance if you are correct. Truth can be found objectively and objectively discovered truth is the only kind that matters. The first question that should come from discovering something subjectively is "how do I know that I'm not delusional?", or "How do I know that I can trust my senses?" Faith can be derived from subjective beliefs, and to me, because of that fact, I see faith as the most self-centered and egotistical thought process in existence. It favors the methods of the individual as being more potent in discovering truth than the rigors of objective verification. It makes the statement "I am important and trust worthy enough to make conclusions based on my limited perception of reality and therefore my conclusion is equally valid to contending views."

The nature of intellectual debates where two people hold two opposing ideas is that one person is correct while the other is incorrect, or they are both incorrect. Isn't it more important to present all of your ideas with other person in order to discover what is correct, or to at least discover that neither are correct?

To be honest, I find that the kind people who think that proclaiming truth is the height of arrogance, don't actually know what it means for something to be objectively true. I find that those people have a wishy-washy outlook on belief in the way that everyone beliefs are equally valid. The creedo being "I have beliefs that are good for me and you have beliefs that are good for you therefore we are equal". I find that kind of view childish in the way that it seems like it's trying to be overly equally. Some beliefs are true, some beliefs are false, and some beliefs are not true (being that they are misinformed or something similar).

If someone believes that 2+2=5, is it arrogance to tell them that they're belief is false?

In reply to this comment by enoch:
religion is control by way of fear.
they pretend to be the gatekeepers and the ONLY people with the key to get through.
this is utter bullshit (try telling a fundamentalist that though....oh wait).
to me evolution and natural selection are more in line with my understanding of a creator than say:adam and eve,gilgamesh or mithra.

my understanding of a creator and my connection to that creator also allows me..in fact compels me..to stick to my own understanding and not judge others the path they are on.(be that christian fundamentalist or atheist).
my path is my own.my understanding is my own as are my conclusions.
i have the humility to understand i do not know everything,far from it and that my existence is about my own experiences and understandings.
and to have the flexibility according to these understandings that they may..at any time..change due to my subjective reality.
so any new information i receive is added and creates a new paradigm.

as for faith.
well..i cant help you there to further your understanding.that is a personal road and any attempt i do make concerning that will only be regarded with your understanding and most likely misunderstood.
so i dont even try.
why would i? to do so would be the height of hubris and arrogance and i would become just like the preachy fundamentalist.
/shivers...no thank you.
i prefer human interaction laced with mutual respect and a full understanding that i may,possibly..be wrong.

anyways.
always great chatting with you about this subject.
it is still one of my faves.
be well brother.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by IAmTheBlurr:
I'm so glad that I read the comments before actually watching the video, sounds like a total waste of time.

yeah.
you most assuredly would not have liked it.
and i dont recommend you try..
your head might explode lol.
i just liked the fact it was not dripping with dogma and the man spoke genuinely.
but you would find his arguments infuriating.

Thanks mang

It's just that I find these arguments sooooo tiring. They're old and it seems like they're being made just so people can feel like they're not loosing a part of their identity.

Yesterday, I got in to an argument with my boss about natural selection. Everything he said is tied to the fact that he identifies with his Jewish heritage and with his view that the bible is literally true. He wears the star of david around his neck and inscribes it into his tools so people know who they belong to. For his beliefs to be false, a huge portion of who he identifies himself to be would be lost.

Regardless of whether or not his beliefs are true, he wont question them because he's making a commitment error. He's already invested a lot of energy into his beliefs, and just like anyone else who makes a huge commitment, he's going to make all of the justifications in the world to continue the commitment rather than cutting his losses and correcting the error in rationality.

I did watch a few 1 minute clips randomly to get a feel for what he's saying and again, it's the same old tired argument for faith but I have a problem with faith. I requires that you believe something with zero evidence. Why is that EVER a good thing. Why should anyone be taught that anyone should believe something with zero evidence? Why (or how) does that idea persist? Shouldn't people be taught that it's always better to disbelieve until there is enough evidence and then set the standard for what constitutes as evidence?

I think this whole discussion stems from, again, the top-down outlook on how things work verses a bottom-up outlook. Humans are used to a top-down outlook. We have parents who are above us, set the rules, protect us, we have ideas first and then we construct physical items based on those ideas, we have government who sets societal rules that we generally obey. Our entire lives as humans is entirely approached in a top-down manor and since that's the only thing that we really know, we tend to project our outlook to the rest of the world. We assume that the universe would have been designed from the top-down, we assume that the universal physical laws must have been set from some other place greater than ourselves, we assume that there must be deities or a deity that is/are our cosmic parent.

In the end, after all of the little clips that I did watch, you're right, I found it totally infuriating but not primarily for the reasons mentioned above. I found infuriating because he's claiming to have a lot of answers but they're primarily based on misconceptions or incomplete information.

It's like the argument I had with my boss yesterday. I explained exactly what the textbook definition of biological evolution through natural selection. When I was done, his response was "That's not natural selection, that's something else". The speaker is doing just that, he's taking thoughts and ideas and redefining them to meet his own criteria for what he thinks they mean and saying "this is the correct way of thinking about it". It's not just moving the goalpost, it's changing the entire way that scores are made. It's beyond frustration.

But I digress, Either there is a god(s), or there aren't. The only way to say that there are with any degree of certainty, is through the accumulation of reproducible and tangible evidence, not through speculation, not through how it makes you or I feel, not through gut feelings, and not through anecdotal evidence. Until the standards are met, belief if irrational. Even if it's true that there is a god(s), belief in any of them is currently irrational.

I'm so glad that I read the comments before actually watching the video, sounds like a total waste of time.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Hope is an a positive position of bias. There is no certainty that unknown things will end up satisfying hopes. Bias is irrational. Being agnostic to uncertainty is the logical/reasonable stance to the unknown or unknowable. So hope, the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best, is irrational.


We’re talking about two different things then. You’re talking about the expected outcome of the hopeful events occurrence not matching initial expectation, and I’m talking about the desire for the event to occur regardless of whether or not expectation meets reality.