Wow for once a british voice actually pissed me off. I think it's his apathetic tone.

I understand why people don't want to pay for services -- The misappropriation of funds due to lack of transparency, and the sheer size of the number of transactions, makes it impossible to really know anything.

It is not an insurmountable problem. I'm pretty sure you could do it with PeopleSoft and some fancy SQL work. If you could follow that 2 cents to where it goes, you could then make the claim it was wasted.

I'll never understand why people don't get the connection between the insane gas prices last year and taxes:

One is willing to pay a random, exorbitant increase...for nothing... but won't... if it specifically goes to local services. Transparency will take care of this problem. "wow i helped to fund that". Pride may well ensue.

The problem now is NO ONE knows anything about anything, at all, when it comes to where the money comes and goes. No one. Not the government, and certainly not citizens who barely have time to stop working long enough to watch the evening news.

It would be a true wonder we got this far on the backs of honest hardworking people... if those same people weren't purposely misinformed to allow perpetual abuse of their funds.

We all know generally where the problem is: Military spending and no bid contracts. But what can we do about it when fear is such a strong .. commodity... for the dishonest among us?

I for one, have conceptualized a "truth machine", which, while not detecting lying humans by their physiological responses... would capture, catalogue, and be able to cross index and recall data and facilitate only logical discourse between all people. It will put a stop to people who can speak with golden tongues, or contradict themselves and pretend they didnt, or who make illogical assertions based on fear, by allowing instant recall of data. It involves digital recording and an element of human indexing of data -- very similar to what we have on videosift, in that there is a wealth of data on many things that can be recalled to some extent to prove and strengthen positions. One must be able to say, NO that is WRONG. And here is irrefutably why.

A lofty goal, but then again I am a computer science major in an age of unprecedented techonological advancement. With Obama's encouragement of education and sciences, along with SSD technology and exponentially better and cheaper tech... the manipulation of data by the dishonest will come to an end. All people must be connected and able to access all data to make the best decision.

It will be done. Of course, a real truth machine would be cool too. Read the book of the same name. Really fucking great.

In reply to this comment by Crake:
In reply to this comment by griefer_queafer:
>> ^Crake:
Too much concept, and not enough craft.



GQ:
Wow. I wholeheartedly disagree. Do you know how much craft goes into something like this? I agree that much of its substance lies in the conceptual, but my god man, that is a beautifully crafted art object. Check out the documentary PBS's art:21 did on him. You may appreciate the work more if you see how much knowledge and artistry goes into his pieces.

CRAKE:
Sorry for the terse comment, I just used your video as an occasion to whine about a pet peeve of mine, that a lot of artists these days only do just enough work to convey some concept or message, and don't particularly care about the quality of the end result.
The half-hearted mushroom cloud is a good example - or Damien Hirst paying some contractor to do the actual hands-on work of making his pieces.

Not much love seems to go into it, is what I'm saying, I guess.

Nah. Its cool. No offense taken. I don't post videos for everyone to just agree with my tastes. I like my tastes to be challenged. I actually killed the video because I found one that I absolutely had to post, but it had already been posted. So its gone now

In any case, there is a way in which much art these days seems half-hearted, as you would put it. And though I still don't agree that Qiang's work in any way constitutes a half-hearted attempt at conveying an idea or feeling, I understand where you are coming from. Hirst IS a particularly good example, and its easy to hate him when he is selling his shit for record-setting prices. Westy pointed out that the piece ended up looking like a giant piece of floating crap at the end. I think that is part of the point. For a moment, it is really beautiful, but that is really fading. Blah blah blah. I don't know... i bet it would have looked amazing if the quality of the video was better.

In reply to this comment by griefer_queafer:
>> ^Crake:
Too much concept, and not enough craft.


Wow. I wholeheartedly disagree. Do you know how much craft goes into something like this? I agree that much of its substance lies in the conceptual, but my god man, that is a beautifully crafted art object. Check out the documentary PBS's art:21 did on him. You may appreciate the work more if you see how much knowledge and artistry goes into his pieces.

Sorry for the terse comment, I just used your video as an occasion to whine about a pet peeve of mine, that a lot of artists these days only do just enough work to convey some concept or message, and don't particularly care about the quality of the end result.
The half-hearted mushroom cloud is a good example - or Damien Hirst paying some contractor to do the actual hands-on work of making his pieces.

Not much love seems to go into it, is what I'm saying, I guess.

>> ^Crake:
Too much concept, and not enough craft.


Wow. I wholeheartedly disagree. Do you know how much craft goes into something like this? I agree that much of its substance lies in the conceptual, but my god man, that is a beautifully crafted art object. Check out the documentary PBS's art:21 did on him. You may appreciate the work more if you see how much knowledge and artistry goes into his pieces.

Michael had his own cutting-edge music studio in his home. His own personal studio. It was featured in a rare interview with him that I haven't been able to find again. You can bet he has hundreds and more songs recorded and archived that we've never heard. That's what he did, That was his life, his hobby, his pastime. On top of that, riffs and beats, and unfinished stuff that can be mixed into many more productions and music. We'll be hearing from him for years!

Michael in my opinion, is like many of the geniuses I have met in my life - And I have had the pleasure to meet several. People with genius talents are socially inept and awkward when it comes to everyday stuff you and I take for granted. They have huge overdeveloped areas of one interest and that has become their one way of functioning and all else flows through that.

Through his music, he has been Amazing, Creative, Fantastic, Mind Blowing, Conceptual, Empathetic, Worldly, Sympathetic to world issues and causes and had a special place in his heart for kids.

He didn't get a childhood, he was forced into music as if it was all that was all that existed. His only fault is that he was good at it and used it as a shield from his fathers anger and did what he was told. As a young mind, his music developed unfathomable amounts but his social skills never evolved. It has been proven that with personal and emotional trauma, the mind is forced to stop developing past that point until that trauma is dealt with. Michael's challenging childhood forced him further into his music and his talents (which was great for us), but at a cost we may never understand (for him).

I for one, have always judged him by his artistic achievements in style, dance and music and chose to ignore the high-profile gossip and drudgery.

His death leaves a huge hole in the heart of the industry! RIP

It looks like a conceptual render to me. I saw this a while ago, and although it certainly looks like Jade, I've not seen it confirmed that this is actually BG&E2.

thank you for the great comment doc!
i still do not expect that vid to be sifted,but i have posted a few things of late that come from a more esoteric point of view.
i am not trying to promote them as my own,but i find differing views fascinating.i notice a tendency for atheism on the sift,and in my opinion,that can be just as staunch in its inability to budge as religious fundamentalism.as you stated,what do we KNOW about the soul?...nothing.
i am not an atheist,and would never be so arrogant to state i KNOW anything concerning such matters.i may be opinionated,but i am not rigid in my conceptual beliefs,how can i?there is so much we dont know.
thanks again DOC,i appreciate your input.
till next time.
namaste.

In reply to this comment by Doc_M:
First of all, those self-images are NOT his "false self." They are defining characteristics, ethics, and values that found his beliefs. They are not trivial and they are not simply things that "worry" him.

I love chem but since it is such a difficult subject to get the layperson caught up on because if its abstract nature, my math skills had always been far beyond my chem needs. They touch on things like Schrodinger's equation, electron cloud probability function, etc. but they never really tied it into math. At least at those more general levels. Physics on the other hand is easier to conceptualize so they just kinda jumped right into the calc.

As a gross conceptual gesture, urban living is much better for long term survival of the species and the planet. Here in America we have malignant urban sprawl, everyone with a parcel of land with a cheaply constructed house and leaking septic and oil tanks and an over-fertalized lawn. A forty minute commute in an emission-spewing SUV, no sidewalks and strip malls you can't walk to. I've just returned from a couple of large European cites and the difference is breathtaking. A proliferation of bicycles and public transport, bounteous pedestrian traffic, food and groceries close enough that you can carry them home. Almost no one is obese. So much more efficient. But Europe has had a thousand years to build it's infrastructure. I bet if you went to the grounds of the cathedral five hundred years ago, we'd have thought of them as shantytowns too.

But, yeah. This could have been at least a half an hour's worth of information.

He's using "inevitable" in an interesting sense, but one that completely avoids the fundamental question of free will.

He may be right in the sense that this ability to avoid things is all society really needs. We don't really need libertarian (not talking about the political sense) free will within our conceptual apparatus.

But there's no reason to equivocate on "inevitable" in this way.


Dennett is an okay philosopher. He's adequate, but as this clip shows, not really the best.

Caller was trying to relate two unrelated properties of a thing. The two properties are "conceptual" and "physical". Things can be either conceptual or non-conceptual. Things also can be either physical or non-physical. A thing can therefore have 2x2 combinations of these properties: conceptual and physical, non-conceptual and physical, conceptual and non-physical, and non-conceptual and non-physical. It's unfortunate the host didn't recognize this, I think he was just too flustered to come back to it.

Asking for a third option between "conceptual or physical" is comparing apples to oranges. That is, unless conceptual is non-physical and non-conceptual is physical, which is not necessarily true according to the host's argument (because of the definition of "conceptual" meaning "of the mind").

One could say that there is a third option available between physical and non-physical, that being the idea of "null" or "unknown" or "undefined", but it could then be argued that just because it isn't known to us doesn't mean that it isn't "known" to someone, something else, or to the universe.

Fun video until the caller stopped listening and stopped considering the host's points. I'm impressed with the way they sling terminology around... they obviously did well in ancient philosophy.

I'm wondering why he didnt pull the old philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest, and noone is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? The whole argument seems to be over this. The caller is clearly not getting it. His logic seems to be that logic needs to actually be stated or conceptualized or be physical in some sense in order to "exist". The thing about abstracts is precisely that they dont really exist the way physical objects or thoughts or statements exists, thats why we call them abstracts.

>> ^budzos:
D'Souza's "three basic faith-based principles upon which science is suspended" are utter fucking nonsense. Each one boils down to a logical fallacy, first and foremost being the straw man... I don't think any prominent thinkers are putting forth the idea that the universe is conscious, and I don't think anyone with intelligence is even able to confuse the laws of physics with the laws of man.
He's just a FUCK. ARRGH I CANT STAND THE BULLSHIT.


He does not say that the universe is conscious. He says it is rational. That is, it can be measured, chopped up conceptually into discrete chunks, bits of it can be mathematically compared to other bits, it shows order, and so on. The universe need not be conscious to be rational.

The three "faith-based principles" he mentions are indeed fundamental requirements for science as we know it. (Sort of. The third is only essential for the most popular notions about science, not for doing science itself.) However, the principles are not Christian in origin. They are Greek, from Athens rather than Jerusalem. The the universe is rational, and that the mind corresponds to it, can be found in Plato and Aristotle. That it shows a uniquely mathematical order can be found in Pythagoras.

The principles made their way into modern science through the Renaissance. The creators of modern science, men like Galileo and Kepler, were profoundly interested in Pythagorean theories of the universe.

my first was that theres two figures enjoying a blowjob, so i thought that was the joke first.
but it is still conceptually much stronger than the sent in ones, except maybe the goatsee one, very powerful image that

these guys had... brilliant conceptualization/marketing and super depressing fun rage... fuck i cant listen to this stuff anymore even though i just did. damn it. chester reminds me of ed furlong from A.H.X. for some reason.