Saturday, September 21, 2013

Continuation...

More comments on the previous post "The Lord's Prayer"

Talking about duality and emotional-intuitive mind versus intellectual-logical mind.

My ying just went yang. Did you hear it?

197 comments:

  1. Was it a grumbling sound? Maybe that was just my hard drive.
    I think that emotion, instinct and intuition have served us well when it comes to avoiding the dangers of being eaten by predators.
    By 'us' of course I mean each of the more ignorant beings, who, little knowledge and primitive means of communication relied primarily on how scenarios make them feel.

    With better communication skills comes knowledge which doesn't get rid of emotion, instinct and intuition at all,
    Knowledge dispels fear. This is the motto of the parachute training school I attended many years ago.
    I think the truth is that training overcomes emotions and instincts.
    I mean we know that it's not very likely that we're going to die on a roller-coaster ride, but there sure is a lot of screaming going on during the ride, right?
    So the instincts and emotions that have served us so well, and still do by the way, since we don't pop out between mama's legs understanding the World around us with the sense of 'knowing it' that we will gain in a few short years.

    These formative years, the emotions, the pains, the pleasures, the comforts and the fears are all still in there 'buried under' or 'hidden away' by our inability at the time to tap into our future much more knowledgeable , logical, trained selves.
    How that conditioning goes, how you 'turn out' is going to be reflected in the person that you are, whether you be confident and relaxed, confident and aggressive, nervous and retiring or nervous and aggressive.

    (I have a feeling that this is helping me, somehow, spelling it out to myself.)

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  2. I like it, especially the "knowledge dispels fear" and "training overcomes emotion and instinct." Proven by the fact that you threw yourself out of perfectly fine airplanes. :-) Of course if your chute didn't open the first time you jumped, you would have learned something completely different. So many decisions get made out of fear of the unknown. Choosing the devil you know rather than risk the devil you don't know. At one time, that was probably a good instinct....don't walk into that cave not knowing what's in there. But that instinct today, "don't take that job across the country, that city, state, place, future is unknown how it will turn out." Well, that's limiting your life and experiences not based on the fact that the unknown can kill you, but because the unknown is....different. I really do believe that instincts can be enormously helpful, but they do have those drawbacks of being erroneous instincts, developed by the wrong information or conditioning to begin with. The chute not opening was a fluke, maybe the odds are that it will never happen again no matter how many times you jump, but every time after - your 1st experience will most likely trigger a reactive instinct of danger, even if you "know better."

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  3. Well, there is the reserve 'chute.
    But more importantly I though I made a correlation between instinct and intuition. Between emotion and intuition.
    This doesn't bode well for intuition at all.
    Of course we all NEED emotion, it's what we call the feedback loop from our senses. Feeling afraid, thank your eyes, nose, ears and base brain functions for all jumping in against your 'logical will'(which we don't really have) and deciding for you that it's time to poop your pants and run like a bastard! LOL

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  4. So what then? Intuition doesn't exist? When a scientist has the answer to a problem that he was stymied with appear in a dream, that's regular logical thought? How do you see that sort of thing?

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  5. Is this not real, then?

    "Lateral thinking
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Jump to: navigation, search
    This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2009)

    Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was coined in 1967 by Edward de Bono.

    According to de Bono, lateral thinking deliberately distances itself from standard perceptions of creativity as either "vertical" logic (the classic method for problem solving: working out the solution step-by-step from the given data) or "horizontal" imagination (having a thousand ideas but being unconcerned with the detailed implementation of them)."
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking

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  6. So, according to Wiki itself, no one has actually thought of a way of proving that there is such a thing! To 'lateral think' is to 'lateral think'.
    It's kind of like explaining magnetism in terms of electricity then explaining electricity in terms of magnetism, except, we can do that because there are these forces which we can demonstrate.
    Saying that there is lateral thinking and logical thinking but we can't really explain lateral thinking to you since that would make it some kind of logical thinking which it is not.
    See?

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  7. It seems to me that "instinct" and/or "lateral thinking" are attempts to describe a real phenomenon, but that they do not necessarily mean that either of these mental mechanisms are somehow outside of traditional logic or eality testing. Your example, Brian, of the scientist who wakes up from a deam in which he/she suddnely "intuits" the solution to a problem that has plagued him/her for months, most likely results from thinking that is unfettered by the "instinctual" limits we have learned to place upon "wild ideas" when we are awake. At any given point in our lives, we are the sum total of all of our inbred and evolutional mental factors, as well as every experience and teaching from parents, other members of our "tribe", whether we remember them consciuosly or not. We may well have read/heard/experienced something at such a subliminal level as to have been unaware of the experience at the time.
    No matter what you choose to call it, once such a "gut feeling" or "intuition" comes to mind, we must use our traditional logical thinking methods to test it for truth or reality, which is, after all, the scientific (logical) method.

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  8. Excellent summary, as always Harvey!

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  9. There's another thing to consider. Most intuitive ideas are bad. We remember the few that aren't, but not the vast number that aren't. It's classic cognitive bias. Once these ideas run head on into regression testing vs reality or the body of known facts, most fall off the map. This is true even of the greatest thinkers. And we probably think of them as great because one of their ideas won the knowledge lotto through independent verification.

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  10. DoH!

    Sub - "We remember the few that aren't, but not the vast number that are (bad)." for sentence 2. Makes more sense.

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  11. There's another thing to consider. Most intuitive ideas are bad. -Pliny

    No matter what you choose to call it, once such a "gut feeling" or "intuition" comes to mind, we must use our traditional logical thinking methods to test it for truth or reality, which is, after all, the scientific (logical) method. -Harvey
    -----------------------------
    Pliny, Harvey had the answer to your point, which I agree with btw... most are bad, which is why you need to test the ideas... Also if you've made a logical person out of yourself that isn't prone to flights of fancy, your intuitions will have a lesser percentage of 'bad' answers.

    Pboy, of course you can't prove the existence of intuitive mind with some sort of evidence. We are (I had assumed) been discussing the *apparent* way that the mind works, with intuition supplementing logic. It's not something you can find the gene for and test it out, but it does (I think) make sense considering how people think and how much credence they give 'gut' feelings and so forth.

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  12. I mean, I assume we all know that just believing in 'gut instinct' or 'common sense' answers to problems or questions is the very basis of wrongheadedness. It's where all the problems come from. A lack of critical thinking ability with which to test these answers is the problem. I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. I still think that well-trained intuitions are the very source of creative thinking, and are indispensable to high-level problem-solving.

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  13. Coincidentally a couple of my FaceBook friends are talking about how to get through to 'values' people(intuitive people?) by not talking about facts because 'values' people tend to just dig their heels in if they feel you are clobbering over the head with facts.

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  14. When you figure out how to get through to "values" people, will you let me know? LOL
    The "we don't need no stinkin' facts" crowd is a pretty large contingent these days. If facts and logic don't get through, on what level can you bring light to gun control, birth control, ACA, equality rights, feeding hungry people, etc? Of course I doubt the sincerity of many of the "values" people at the top....the Elmer Gantrys of politics and religion are just running a scam for their own agendas that have nothing to do with values. The TPGOP, conservatives, religion people (all pretty much the same group) that follow along have the unique ability to hold 2 opposing views at the same time and see no conflict.
    "God loves everybody and forgives all sins" and "God abhors homosexuality, and you will burn in hell". "Jesus took in and ministered to the least among us" but "what do you mean you need food, we're not paying for you to take from us."

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  15. Yep, if you're a really smart 'values' person, you might declare any policy you don't like, 'FAILED!', especially if it hasn't been implemented, hasn't been tested..
    You might decide that 'truth' is what feels right and lies are just not meant to be 'factual statements'.
    Ted Cruz actually told the Senate a child's values story where one character would not eat green eggs and ham, but in the end was persuaded to eat green eggs and ham. This story demonstrates the principle that everyone can be persuaded, that values themselves are not consistent, that it is okay to have opposing values, such as, "I'm a Christian, I was taught, 'Feed the hungry'!", and, "I'm a libertarian, you losers deserve nothing from me!", as you say Jude.

    But I think there's supposed to be a subtle difference between 'fact/value' people(where values override facts, I think) and 'logic/intuition' people(where logic overrides intuition)
    Religion controls people because they value their 'personal relationship with Jesus', they value their ability to petition God for favors, and so on more than they value the human quest for knowledge and understanding that has nothing to do with those Godly values.
    What use is denying evolution if it's not that evolution says nothing about their Godly values? How many of us are studying biochemistry, genetics, meteorology, etc. of an evening after a busy day, compared to the non-task of going to a Bible study and hearing once again about the Good News that you're 'SAVED' and that all those sciencey people are studiously working their way into HELL. Better to be willfully ignorant, have values and go to Heaven of course, compared to all that brain-crunching work it takes to understand reality and end up in Hell anyways right?

    (back away from the keyboard Ian, you're ranting now! LOL)

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  16. The central Christian mythology - the good shepherd and his sheep
    The reverend tends his flock. A constant reminder of the hierarchy.
    So remember that value voters is just a modern name for sheep.

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  17. Harvey said,
    Brian,
    Mike cannot accept that any of us unbelievers can possibly "prosper" without Jesus (as Mike perceives him). His fascination with this blog and all of us involved therein points out his lack of certainty that he "has it right". Like all Christians, he is not concerned about our "souls"; only his own hoped for heavenly reward. His inability to get us to agree with his take on the next life shakes his very core beliefs, let alone that none of us has as yet been struck down by his God.
    ______________________________________________

    Harvey those are your thoughts not mine.
    It would appear that you all do quite well for yourselves without God in your lives, but then again so does drug dealers / thieves / movie stars / and so on. What does this prove? Ambition and opportunity thrive in America….All who are willing can reap the benefits.
    Again you are wrong about my reasons for visiting this blog. Your belief or non belief rather has no impact on my faith whatsoever. In fact my faith is anchored in Jesus and His promises. Jesus was concerned enough about your souls that He was willing to die for you yet you could care less. So why criticize me when you are the one who cares not for your own soul. Why would God want to strike you down Harvey? We will all be dead soon enough…

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  18. Actually Ian we read the Bible because we enjoy it, and it has proven to be very accurate, not only in historical fact but also in mans quest for reason. The Bible is a closed book to unbelievers the riches of God are hidden from your eyes.

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  19. "He was willing to die for you yet you could care less." says Mike.

    Actually I don't think I could care less about what you think a non-existent God-man was willing to do, but not really.

    "He went deep into the garden, and He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then, He said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with Me." And going a little farther, he fell on His face and prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt."

    ".. not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Apparently God-man was not as willing as you are making him out to be.
    But God saideth to Jesus, "Guess you're going to have to taketh one for the team."

    Don't you ever get fed up being wrong MIke?

    "..we read the Bible because we enjoy it, and it has proven to be very accurate.."
    Is the Bible accurate that Jesus would have ditched that chore of dying for my sins like hot shit, or are you accurate when you say Jesus was 'willing' to die for me?

    Plus according to your same booklets Jesus isn't really dead, isn't that right? If you don't believe in 'really dead', why is Jesus dying impressive at all?

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  20. Awe look, Ian thinks he said something smart .

    What you have failed to see….. Once again because it is hidden from your eyes along with all the other deep riches of truth recorded in the Bible.

    Let me try to enlighten you Ian and the rest of you as well.
    Yes Jesus did pray in the Garden to His Father saying “ IF “ it be possible let this cup pass from me, never the less not my will but thine be done.

    This proves what…..Jesus showed at that moment He was in fact both Man and the Son of God.
    His man nature being weak so God sent an Angel to strengthen Him, And His God nature in submitting to the will of God being the only fit subject worthy to die on the cross for the sins of man because He was without sin. And yes Ian Jesus did not remain in the Grave He arose the third day as He said He would.
    If He had not arose from the Grave then He could not of delivered man from His sins…. Sin is the sting of death and by His resurrection He overcame death Hell and the grave. No wonder we sing Oh victory in Jesus our savior for ever

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  21. Mike:
    You sing that song because you want and need to be part of as large a group of "believers" as you can muster. If you fear what will become of you after your own death, what better personal ego support can you find than to buy into a myth that says "You will be forgiven and enter into eternal life if you "find" a personal relationship with an imaginary (for which read a product of your own mind) being and pay continual lip service to this belief to anyone you can coerce into listening to you." Since there can be no real verification that you "have it right" duirng your time in this reality, it behooves you to talk the talk and, perhaps in your case, to walk the walk so that everyone around you sees how commited and sincere you are in your beliefs. Since you have pointed out "So why criticize me when you are the one who cares not for your own soul. Why would God want to strike you down Harvey? We will all be dead soon enough…", I cannot see any other reason why you still need to proselytize the rest of us.


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  22. But Mike, I did say a couple of smart things since you don't deny what I said was true since I backed it up with a direct quote, that's what it says.

    You are just saying what I said about it from another perspective, a believer's perspective.
    I say Jesus is a God-man, and he WASN'T 'willing to die for me'. You say, "Ha, smartypants, that was his human nature, not wanting to die is natural, but he was also God, so THERE!"
    We're saying the exact same thing, using the exact same evidence, but you're putting the spin on it that isn't an eye-witness account, some reports from eye-witnesses, no, it's a preconceived perspective.
    Even if there happened to be a reporter, some unnamed scribe, noting away that Jesus went to the Garden, noting away that the guys he brought with him all fell asleep, noting away that Jesus didn't WANT to go through with it and reporting to the guy who penned the Book of John some 100 years after the supposed events, even supposing that this is all true, and Jesus was a God-man, that guy that you worship didn't WANT to do it, that's what this story is saying.
    Spinning it into some kind of 'revelation' that the human side of Jesus is weak and didn't want to die, isn't helping your case that Jesus did want to die.
    You refuse to see this because YOU are blinded by YOUR belief.

    The second 'smart' point I made was this. If we are 'dual beings', part flesh and part eternal spirit, then there is no real death.
    Let's imagine for a second that I died, and came back to 'see' you as a ghost. Is my ghost not me? If your eternal spirit isn't you and my eternal spirit isn't me, all this 'belief' and 'praying' and such is for nothing, for you.
    So, believing that we are all eternal spirits 'trapped' in a flesh body for a short time, dying in the flesh is no big thing at all, we all go on as spirits, right?

    You can't have that cake, eternal spirit, and eat it, be afraid of death in the flesh, at the same time. If you are, you're just confusing the two.
    What does it mean that Jesus died for our sins since Jesus is the Logos, the Word, and he is here to TELL US that we are eternal spirits which live FOREVER? It's Confusion Technique at it's finest!
    What of the saints and apostles who bravely faced death in the flesh by torture because THEY KNEW that they were spirits in the material world? They had more faith than Jesus, apparently. They didn't relent and say, "My flesh is weak, I can tell my torturers that I do not believe, to save myself.", no, at least one of them is purported to have been sat down on a red hot seat and laughed at his torturers, who exclaimed in fright, "Why do you mock us?"
    If that is true there is at least one follower of Jesus who had more faith than Jesus himself!
    Isn't that right? Doesn't that have a ring of truth?
    Naw, you're going to spin the facts to suit your foregone conclusion, aren't you?

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  23. I don't believe in the spirit realm, I don't believe that our streaming consciousness can live on after our bodily functioning has stopped.

    You obviously do Mike.

    This means that I read the stories in the Gospels from my perspective and you read them from yours. We can read the exact same lines from the exact same story and you're going to see something that isn't there.
    Now you might say that I'm reading it out of 'context', this 'context' being that it was already explained earlier that Jesus performed miracles, Jesus had already proved that he was 'The Son of Man'(whatever that means)(wasn't he the Son of God, make up your mind here!).
    But I don't believe those miracles happened. There were no eye-witness reports that angels came to visit Mary and Joseph, no eye-witness reports for the authors of one or two versions of the Gospel to diligently copy down. There were no eye-witness reports that Mary was a virgin. Can we really imagine some reporters following Mary around to be sure that Mary hadn't had sex? That's just not possible, right?
    So, you cannot use a story about Jesus claiming that it's eye-witness reporting, then if I object that eye-witness reporting was impossible, say, "Oh ye of little faith!", right?

    All the miracle stories boil down to this, in my opinion. There were no great unbiased 'reporters' of that era writing down the specific miracles of Jesus, no one of importance 'eye-witnessing away', no. Just stories made up for the faithful who already believe, who already believe that there is a spirit realm, who already believe the premise of the stories.
    So, is it faith that 'allows' you to believe, or is it eye-witness accounts, or does it simply collapse of it's own accord if you read it at all critically?

    You want it both ways, cake and eat it too. This means that you will not, you CANNOT examine one of the stories critically, you have to pretend to examine it 'in faith', from the perspective that it's true, spinning any criticism of it back around to what you already believe.

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  24. "Awe look, Ian thinks he said something smart ."
    This is silly bullying by you,
    I think I'll use this on the next J.W. that knocks on my door.
    Pfft, no. I couldn't bring myself to be a huge asshole to a stranger who means well, after all. I'd feel 'dirty'.
    The only way to live with yourself, if you're the kind of bully that you are, would be to project it on to your 'victims', right?
    It's us that are the snarky assholes, isn't it Mike, not you, not you.
    WE'D say something childish and bullying like, ""Awe look, he thinks he said something smart .", not you, right?

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  25. Mike,

    Anybody can be wrong. And when people are wrong, they often deny it to themselves. In other words, they still believe they're right. All the way down to the bottom of their souls, they believe they're right. Especially if they're involved in a religious belief... I mean, just look at Muslim extremists for an example.
    So if anybody can be wrong, but many cannot believe it when they are, I have to ask you, how in hell can you be SURE that you're not just one of those people? How can you KNOW that you're not totally, even comically wrong?
    You simply can't. So being so sure that you aren't, well, that's just not an intelligent attitude, is it?
    We all have examined our own beliefs, and that's why we're not believers. You are not PERMITTED (by your religion) to examine yours.

    And that's just sad, Mike.

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  26. Mike, if I look to your actions, and not your pretty words about your faith, what I just saw was you being a total bully asshole to Ian.

    Not the actions of a man of God, surely. No way. Perhaps your belief in God is just you praying to your own egotism, because it's certainly not making a holy man out of you. Your actions are nothing similar to anything that your Jesus would have done. However, they are a lot like the actions of the Pharisees of his day.

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  27. I can't get passed the atheist roundup of "drug dealers, thieves and movie stars." That's our peer group according to Observant? LMAO Go visit a prison and ask the atheists to raise their hands.... I did a quick google search of real information and numbers , because we atheists don't just throw mindless shit out......... The latest poll of 218,167 prisoners taken on April, 2013 resulted in 0.02% of prisoners who identify as atheist. On the other hand, our numbers swell in the ranks of science, medicine and academics. (Google it yourself, I'm not your intern, just showed you how it's done the first time.) It is quite apparent that supporting ones religious beliefs requires one to bear false witness against your neighbors, and never ever questioning whether your view of others has any basis in fact or reality, and actually checking to see if it does..
    Of course Hitler was a christian, the KKK claims to be a christian organization, and all those pedophile priests are Catholic. Funny that no one can come up with any comparable organized group of atheists, huh? Oh, as for movie stars, I have no idea, nor care....but I'm pretty sure all the porn stars yell out "OH GOD" a lot. LOL

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  28. Mike's attitude gives him away.
    Let's say that we were talking about something that was obviously true to one side and so obviously false to the other, like money in the bank.
    Let's imagine that Mike is telling us that he is a billionaire and none of us believe him.
    We give our reasons why we think that Mike isn't a billionaire, why is he bothering to care what we think? Wouldn't you imagine that a billionaire has more important shit to do than hang around and convince us of his richitude? That kind of thing.

    Now let's imagine he really is a billionaire. Is Mike going to bother snarking away at us about how wrong we are? I don't think so. I think that if Mike really was a billionaire, bothered to read our comments about how we thought he wasn't, he'd just laugh and say to himself, "Whatever.", to himself, then go do something more interesting.
    And, I don't think that he'd be popping in every now and then to snark away at us for not having faith that he's stinking rich, that he's got it made in the shade.
    Can you just imagine, Mike, a genuine billionaire coming on here to comment, "Still don't believe me, losers, haha, you think you're all so fucking smart, am too a billionaire!"

    Now being rich as an analogy to being 'saved', isn't very good in that part of Mike's religion is to spread his faith, but he could just move on and find people more inclined to believe .
    Get a FaceBook page and call it, "Mike's CALLING!", and comment away preaching 'til your heart's content! It's THAT EASY, I could do it myself if I wanted to get some followers and preach my brand of Christianity, really!

    And the good part is, you'd never have to be snarky again! If some atheist comes to your page and tries to be snarky with YOU, you just kick them off, never hear from them again.

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    1. This is precisely my point, Brian. If Mike and other "believers" were truly at peace with their interpretation of reality and history/Scripture, they would have absolutely no reason to try to convince any of the rest of us to agree with them. Moreover,the Inquisition and other persecutions of history aside, religion would have no reason to force or coerce "belief", let alone try to legislate its observance within a Democracy founded upon separation of Church and State. Mike simply represents a microcosm of the fear and uncertainty of which most religionists can never truly free themselves. It's all about fear of death and the unknown.

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  29. I'm not suggesting that you, Brian, kick anyone off your blog. Actually I was surprised that you kicked Eric off, or told him not to bother commenting or whatever it was.

    Mike, can snark away if he likes. Hopefully, one day he'll look back at his comments and realize that he's not 'fighting' for the sake of HIS LORD, no, he's just countering 'smart' with 'smartass', since he doesn't know the difference, he's such a simpleton that the difference is beyond his tiny mind.
    See how easy it is to belittle someone, Mike? Likely no, pinhead! (Oops, did it again, Shit-fer-brains, oops, sorry, sorry..LOL)

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  30. Yeah, I regret that, the Eric thing. I shouldn't have done that. I couldn't stand his constant lying for the Lord... but still, no excuse to boot him. Sorry about that. I know that he was at least entertaining for a lot of people here.

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  31. Harvey, Ian,

    I think that Mike's version of Christianity is this: He has this belief (christian dogma that he approves of) but also he has another concurrent belief that those who deny this dogma should be shunned, reviled, and hated for that. He belongs to the SuperExclusive God Club and anybody that isn't a member is The Enemy, and Influenced by Satan. He's GOOD, and so by the process of elimination everybody that doesn't believe the things that he does is EVIL, and must needs be opposed with one's dying breath. He sees this blog as nothing less than a Den of Iniquity, and pretends he's Jesus and we're the Money Changers in the Temple. It's all abut the sheer ego rush of Righteous Indignation. He's addicted to it.

    Sorry Mike... that's how I see you. If you disagree, let me know.

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  32. Also it seems that he's constantly amazing himself with how well he does against us in these arguments; he's so sure that he's right and that he possesses the Truth that nothing we can do can dissuade him of the feeling of utter superiority over us, since after all, God Is On His Side and all.
    It might also help that he doesn't seem 'with it' enough to recognize the difference between a fact and a belief.

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  33. No worries Brian, you likely saved us all from going round and round in circles with Eric.

    There's always the possibility that Mike isn't here to try to convert us, he's just here to be a dick, just to entertain himself and practice turning the 'difficult' concepts, turned on their heads by us, gently back on their feet, while calling us stupid, of course.(That's the BESTEST part, right Mike?)

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  34. Oh, no way is he here trying to convert us. I've never agreed with that.

    We represent nothing more or less than Mike's fascination with the Dark Side.

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  35. No worries Brian, you likely saved us all from going round and round in circles with Eric.
    ------------------
    Not "saved." More like "finally stopped." Problem is, I kinda think you and the others enjoyed that. To me it was actually physically nauseating. I can't stand liars, and seeing someone that brought the whole thing to that level, a Red Belt of Bullshit as it were, was to much for me over time. And not only that, but since it is apparent that he has a good mind, I hated to be a daily witness of what he was devoting it all to. What a fucking waste. Like watching Einstein blow a donkey. Not pretty.

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  36. Seemed weird to me that he studied all this scholastic philosophy, had mad debating skills, but then he's touting C.S.Lewis and then telling us that Lewis' book was an oversimplification of his Thomism.
    Trouble with mad debating skills is that they're just persuasion, perspective, politics really. And it seems as if it's is fine to just out and out lie to step on your opponent in a debate. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

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  37. I know. and it really used to sicken me how he would try to lie God into being. And his lies were such that you could never *prove* that he was lying, because he always had another level of lies ready beneath the first one, and another level below that, and so on for multiple levels, so that in order to prove the first one a lie you had to first prove the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth one a lie. It's a misdirection technique. You'd get so lost in the maze of lies so that you'd forget the whole point you were trying to make.
    He used to give me that feeling, like when a sleazy used car salesman was trying to *massage* you into buying more than you could afford. Like after a while, all you wanted to do was to pop him one in the mouth and leave.

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  38. So I guess I popped him in the mouth (metaphorically) and forced him to leave. Oops.

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  39. Oh well, he went on some other blogs as EricRC for a while, haven't seen much of him lately.

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    1. He's probably busy applying over and over to be Dinesh D'Souza's butt-boy. I think that's the general direction of his ambitions.

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  40. I can't stand liars or idiots either B. It's a big reason I don't post much anymore. Few people really want to have an actual discussion on the Web. So anymore if somebody pisses me off in the comments section, I track down their image icon and use it for a new comic character wearing a condom on their head, or something like that....

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  41. Imagine you own a cube 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 foot, and it represents the three dimensions of space.
    You step into a room and place the cube representing that volume of space on a table and I ask you to close your eyes for a second. You open your eyes and I ask you, "Has that volume of space moved?"
    "Why no, you say, there it is, right on the table, where it has been since I placed it there."
    Now, imagine that room is actually the compartment of a train, and the train starts moving, is that volume of space moving?
    "No, not compared to you and me, it's not."
    But the cube just represents a volume of space, the cube isn't actually a volume of space at all. The same cube of space can't be in two towns at the same time, right. The same cube of space can't be moving along with a train since the train is moving through space or across space.

    If we were the only things that were still, we can imagine that cube made of wire mesh, anchored to the bed of a river, and the river is the liquid equivalent of space.

    If I asked you now about that specific volume of water, the water contained by the wire mesh, is it the same specific volume of water, you'd see that no, it is never the same water within the mesh, the water is constantly moving downstream.

    So space seems still to us, but it isn't, it's relatively still. The cube on the table and us looking at it are all travelling through space at the same time making it seem that it's the same space, we're all in the same space-frame.

    Now if we have two cubes representing a volume of space and one is at the train station the other being on the train, we can see that as the train heads off, the people with one cube see their space-frame as still, and the other moving, and vice-versa.
    I'm going to take a second here to point out the obvious, most people have heard of Einstein and Relativity and this seems to be much like that, so why the baby-step explanation?
    Well we're so used to our surroundings that we don't think of ourselves as moving through space when we're sitting around, there seems to be two meanings of a volume of space, one relative to the slow moving things around us and another relative to say the volume of space at a particular spot somewhere around the rotation of the planet, relative to that plus the spot we're passing along our orbit around the Sun, and so on and so forth.
    The entire planet is never actually in the same volume of space from moment to moment.
    This means, if we're to be completely literal, there are three dimensions of space, but they're not 'still' dimensions. Literally they're up at a certain velocity/acceleration, side to side at a certain velocity and forward at some velocity/acceleration, and this all just relative to some point which we choose to call our frame of reference, our space-frame.
    Time is more or less constant for everything within the same space-frame, everything that isn't radiant energy that is, because radiant energy isn't 'really' there.
    Sure we can see a fire burning and feel the heat but imagine one photon of light or infra-red, how long did it take to appear, zip through the intervening space and be gone forever as a tiny increase in the energy of your retina or on your skin?

    The photons themselves only really exist to us, in our space-frame, when they are already gone, when they've transferred the energy to the back of our eye, continuously allowing us to see the world(space-frame) around us.

    Think of it, if we go to a farmer's field we might see male sheep, think of the ramifications! (sad joke)
    I'm not sure what is meant by space-time, if by it we mean space-frames in which each dimension of space is a velocity/acceleration.
    Either way, if it is or not, we're still not including gravity and who knows what else?

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  42. (puts on tricorner tinfoil hat) Or it could all be consciousness, reality as a dreamlike state... (doffs tinfoil hat)

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  43. Well we're so used to our surroundings that we don't think of ourselves as moving through space when we're sitting around
    ---------------
    Really? Gee, I do. I'm keenly aware of the lack of any reference point for what might constitute 'stillness' in space.

    One might imagine being able to assign one if one were able to see the borders of this universe, if it is physical in nature as you all assume. But that seems denied to us, at least for now.

    I like to think of the conundrum of the universe. Infinity.

    As has been pointed out here, it's not a number. And it contains, or at least it can contain, an infinite number of 'smaller" infinities.

    Now, is the universe infinite in size? Let's take it up a notch just for the fun of it. Let's ask instead if the Ultimate Overarching UNIVERSE (which may contain many or even infinite smaller "bubble" universes such as our own) is infinite in size?

    There are only two possibilities, yes or no, so let's explore both.

    If it is infinite in size, well, how can we imagine an infinite space? No boundries? Absent topological trickery (surface-of-a-sphere kind of space as seen from higher dimensions) it is quite literally impossible to imagine an infinite space. The mind balks.

    If it's not infinite in size, what lies beyond it? By definition, nothing whatsoever, not even 'empty' space. So you could theoretically pilot a ship right up to the border of it and have to stop, because there's nothing beyond that point. The mind balks.

    Same exact thing with TIME. If infinite, then there is no beginning to time and no end. If you could journey into the past, you could do so for an infinite "distance" and never come to the beginning of it. The mind balks.

    But if it's not, then you COULD find (in your trusty Tardis time-traveling phonebooth) the very BEGINNING of time, with no-time before it. And you could find the very end of all time, with no-time after it. The mind balks.

    So the problem either lies in our minds, or our assumptions about reality.

    I choose the latter. You choose what again?

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  44. Now, to scale. If this universe is a bubble in a far larger "super-universe," then what is that place like? Let's take the easy guess and say that that too is a bubble in a larger "super-duper-universe." Where does that end? So either at some point you reach the largest 'universe' or you never do. Either way, the mind balks. Or if it's not, if the next largest plane of existence is the last one, then WHERE DID THAT PLANE COME FROM?

    My mind just got tired of balking.

    Or it's all interplay of consciousness, which instead of being an epiphenomenon of matter, is the primal ground of all being, and we are deceived by ourselves and our limited vision into believing that the reverse is true.

    Now, finally, my mind isn't balking.

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  45. PS: What with the stiff opposition I have received here before with my "Big Brain Speculation" I'm no longer even sure that when I once again bring them up, whether I'm doing so to try to have the argument whether it can be true or not, or if I'm doing so just to stimulate the opposition here into a logic-frenzy of nay-saying. For that too is entertaining, no?

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  46. "Now, finally, my mind isn't balking. "

    Thank goodness for that!

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  47. I'm watching one of those car modification shows. It's fascinating. Who sat around and thought, "Now what could I do to my '92 Pinto to make it 27% faster, 34% higher and 17% jazzier than the manufacturers ever dreamed of?"???

    For the low, low price of $4500, (assuming you already have a fully equipped shop, band saw, mig welder, flux capacitor, well, we know you know), you can have a POS Pinto that the other insane nutbars will instantly recognize as 'having been tweaked'!!!!

    There really ARE guys who sit around, smoking .. um..um.. salvia .. is.. the only substance I can imagine.. thinking, "Well played Dodge, to come up with the 2001 Charger, but I can make it better!"
    .. much later, now that we've stripped the transmission down to the 23401 individual pieces, don't forget to strip the threads on the Johnson rod(we don't need them anymore{WE DON'T??? WTF?], we'll use the band saw to avoid chopping digits off while we mig-weld in the flim-flam spacer.. don't forget to spray your nuts with WD-40(they taste more.. 'gearhead', well, mine do anyways) on to the Miller, Digital Elite Series sprocket, which doesn't come with the kit .. (blah, blah, blah).. and now your car is ready to be painted with a luscious red big titty demonette on the passenger side and a complementing luscious blue big titty angel on the other side.

    My eyebrows just cannot get any higher and I'm thinking, "What just happened there?". while a fuel pump company touts their new product, just in time for me to think, "There's after-market fuel pump companies????"

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  48. Just then on a commercial, a Dodge Charger zipped by on my T.V. and I as I was reading over my comment. SYNCHRONICITY!!!

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  49. "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt." - Jesus

    You know what? People don't say things because they assume that they're going to be written down and analyzed later for their content. If someone were, for example, a God-man, he'd be more likely to say, "My human side fears physical death, but my God side assures me that everything will be fine, and so, I am here to assure you that you too will be fine after physical death."
    Then the disciples would be all, "Oh, I GET IT!", instead of the bumbling, "What do you mean, Jesus, spit it against the fucking wall so we can read it, you dork! Hey, you're fucking GOD, what's with all this 'mysterious' crap anyways? Are you some kind of con artiste???"
    .. and the Jews, you know, the Scribes, the Pharisees, they thought Jesus was a gyp! Who would have thought that religious morons who bang their heads on a wall could be wrong about GOD?
    The mind boggles.

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  50. Emma made the mistake of saying, "I don't love you.", while I'm drinking.
    She listened to three times Skeeter, then I said, "Enough of that.I'll play something different. Then I played Karen Carpenter's version.
    I'm hilarious when I have some rum.
    .. yea.. hilarious.. (whoooo)

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  51. Here's some shit from Jesus Daily FaceBook page.

    "Type JESUS if He watches over you!!!!!!! Then click Share if you're not ashamed for your Friends to know. I am not ashamed of Jesus!!!"
    (no comments, LMAO. I don't think one Christian who visited this page realized that they were supposed to comment, 'JESUS'. What a bunch of pinheads. 9,632 'shares' though.)

    "Jesus Daily Like if Jesus is in control!!!!!!!"
    (Wooo, that one got a couple of thousand likes.)
    I believe that 'Jesus' controls their minds alright! Just not in a good way.

    "We get many requests to pray for sick babies. Write Amen if you pray for them.

    They deserve our prayers. May God heal them!

    1 Like = 1 Prayer
    1 Share = 2 Prayers "
    (This along with a picture of a very immature preemie. Sad fucks. Why does God need to be pleaded with in order to help, if HE is able?)

    "Jesus Daily Like if Jesus crushes Satan!"
    (There you have it, the mindset of Jesus-lovers. If you don't love Jesus, they'll do their best to help crush you too!)

    Don't you also think it's ironic that it's these same evil bastards that are always trying to cut programs for the old, the sick and the poor in an effort to reduce their taxes, which they'd rather give to their tax-free organization, and that's not the worst part, their God/Jesus extolls them to help the poor, feed the hungry, cure the sick and support the old.
    It must be opposite day every frickin' Sunday! LOL
    Oh, you give to your church, you say? Fuck you!

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  52. Jesus' Facebook page.....there's gotta be a Pliny Pictorial in there somewhere! I'd write more, but my mind is still balking.... :-)

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  53. Oh god... Jesus' facebook page?

    They're really just idiot children.

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  54. Just started reading Brian Greene's new book, "The Hidden reality." About modern theories that seem to support the idea of multiple universes.

    He says that there's a possibility of there being an alternate universe that is made of pure mathematics.

    How far is that from 'made of consciousness' I wonder?

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  55. What would that even mean, an alternate universe made of pure mathematics? Math is just concepts.With some food and water, thanks to our Sun, we can maintain our bodily existence which allows us to have concepts, ideas, notions.

    Even without such ideas this universe is meaningless to all but living beings, and they create their own meaning of it, if any.

    Imagine the closest we could have to 'just a consciousness'. A person who was deaf, dumb, blind, who had no nervous system, who was taken out of the womb and was being kept alive with machines. What ideas could such a person have? Without help they would simply not breathe, without being fed, they just wouldn't eat. In fact they'd likely have to be fed intravenously, and even then, who is to say if their kidneys and other organs would function without feed-back?

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  56. What would that even mean, an alternate universe made of pure mathematics?
    -----------------
    I'd say the idea is meaningless, unless you invoke consciousness as the ground of all being, or something similar. The salient point to me is that the idea is totally taken *seriously* as one possibility by today's quantum physics researchers, so apparently they can take it seriously even if you cannot. I prefer to remain open even to things that are counter-intuitive.

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  57. Oddly enough while on salvia I have had several experiences wherein I've seen and sensed this universe to be entirely mathematical, each point's existence determined solely by probabilities and not actually being 'real' in the sense that we perceive it to be. The first time it happened, I thought "someday perhaps we'll have the mathematics to describe this."

    Now, the thing is, I'd never heard that take on it before, until today where I'm reading that it's considered one possibility among many. So it's "out there..."

    The point being, it's still seriously considered, regardless of how silly it may sound to you or me.

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  58. Incidentally, Brian Green is mainstream, not fringe. A lot of researchers give credence to the idea of multiple universes, due to the mathematics pointing toward that, and among those there are different schools of thought on how that is laid out. Like six or seven different ways. Everything from alternate earths existing vast differences away in an infinite universe that must necessarily statistically exist given the infinite size of the universe, down to alternate universes *right here and now* occupying the same space and time, just out of phase with ours so we can't perceive them, except perhaps as "dark matter" which some think may be the result of nearby universes exerting their gravitational energy on ours.

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  59. My point about the baby with zero input from the outside world and perhaps no input from other feedback loops, it's would have nothing to be conscious of. A baby, with no input at all, just the heart/lungs functioning, would have no consciousness, nothing to think about, nothing to react to, no basis to gain a foothold into the world of action/reaction/consideration/pain/pleasure/etc. that we live in.

    Consciousness isn't an essence, it isn't a thing. We are conscious OF the feedback from our eyes, nose, ears, skin and so on.
    With nothing to think of, there is no consciousness.
    I think that as life evolved from the most primitive, those which have no feedback loops at all, to those with primitive feedback loops, cell's shrinking on the sunny side causing the plant to turn towards the Sun, on and on to aware, reactive beings, then with communication skills, social beings, right to the 'ultimate', some who think about it in reverse, as if it started from consciousness and worked backwards as if consciousness were an essence added to our physical, emotional, instinctive selves.

    I think language, having an inner voice, is to blame for this notion that there's a thing called consciousness.

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  60. And you could be totally wrong. No way we can know that that baby doesn't have some kind of consciousness, admittedly not developed normally, but the idea that it is something, that it realizes that it *is.* Hell, I bet plants do. Y'ever see a sped-up film of a dodder plant "hunting?" It is obvious that it's making *decisions.* No other explanation for it.
    And I can't even dismiss the possibility that a rock is not composed of a sense of 'rockness' at it's most basic level. I keep my mind open, but I assure you that that's not the same thing as 'empty.' Considering all possibilities and believing none seems optimal to me. We're too limited and imperfect to actually *know* anything for certain.

    You insist on defining consciousness as a product of matter and nerves and brains and such, and that is where I disagree with you. So basically, I say that you could be wrong, and that consciousness comes first, and you reply "but this is how consciousness works" as if you can be sure of that, as if it's not possible that you are wrong. I do not see such confidence in one's own opinions to be a good thing. It blinds you to possibilities. You adamantly refuse to think outside of your box no matter how I try to get you to do so, even hypothetically.
    Nothing personal, just an observation.

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  61. I mean, if I were in your position I think that I'd tell my flaky friend Brian that it's highly unlikely that he is right about the universe, and why you think that is so. Not tell him that it's not possible. That, telling me it's not possible, or even just being convinced of that yourself, is nothing less than a leap of faith on your part. And you know how I feel about faith.

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  62. I think language, having an inner voice, is to blame for this notion that there's a thing called consciousness.
    ----------------------------
    By that measure a baby isn't *really* conscious until it learns the language. Preposterous. If it can feel pain or pleasure or seek out nourishment, it's conscious for sure.

    An amoeba actively hunts, avoids pain, seeks an optimal environment, and so on. It possesses consciousness.

    We humans are just terribly prejudiced, and only want to recognize human consciousness as "real."

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  63. Jude - related to Jesus' facebook page from July of this year

    http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2013/07/face-music-book-20.html

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  64. "By that measure a baby isn't *really* conscious until it learns the language. Preposterous. If it can feel pain or pleasure or seek out nourishment, it's conscious for sure."
    No. By that logic a baby is conscious because consciousness is an evolving process involving our natural feed-back loops, connecting neurons, memories and such.

    Not a 'thing'.

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  65. Pliny, "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist"

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  66. I believe that consciousness is awareness plus visual memory plus auditory memory plus touch memory, plus more automatic functions arousal, suspicion and so on, all able to be vetoed by the part that allows us to focus.
    You, starting with consciousness as a 'thing' which can bootstrap itself up, is the ridiculous, wait, preposterous, notion.
    I'm just not 'opening my mind' to the possibilities? Pfft. YOU are just taking a walk on the wild side, baby.
    Let me get this straight, we live in a universe composed of three dimensions of space and what we call a dimension of time, space-time.
    All this, bootstrapped up from a spaceless, timeless consciousness? You think this is at all reasonable?

    I understand that if physical reality can bootstrap up life, it may seem equivalent to a great consciousness bootstrapping up all the material, then THAT bootstrapping up life, when than brought forth conscious beings, but, Ockham's Razor, Brian, why the extra step, where'd the great consciousness come from, and why?

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  67. thanks Ian the one below works for me

    http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2013/07/face-music-book-20.html

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  68. Anyway, Brian, awareness is the most important part of consciousness. You can be aware as aware can be, but if you don't learn, haven't learned from stuff you were aware of yesterday, well, what good is that? And there are specific areas of the brain to deal with this.
    No brain, no 'dealing with this'.
    You NEED your brain, Brian. You might be right, a frickin' rock might be aware as far as we know, but so what? Tell you what, mathematics isn't aware, that's backwards, we are aware of math.
    How would, how could spaceless-timeless awareness, nevermind consciousness, which would add lots of complexity, what's to be aware OF in a spaceless-timelessness.
    I have an answer, Nothing at all. Awareness stuck in nothingness. That's a mind-boggling idea straight from our space-time continuum here, but that would be worthless without memory, and memories work through TIME, no?

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  69. Pliny...LMAO! e-contrition...priceless! :-)

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  70. Brian, I believe in the possibility of other dimensions. But will be very disappointed if it is about math. :-( If there is a whole dimension of mathmatics, there had better be one of donuts to make up for it. :-) Kidding aside, I really do think there could be others, and that maybe we do get accidental glimpses of them now and again.

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  71. I'd like you to imagine a video camera as analogous to 'awareness'. As time goes by the camera faithfully shows a monitor what is happening, where it is pointed at.
    If you take off for a pee and come back, there's no way for just a camera attached to a monitor to tell us anything about what went on. At least the camera IS aware! If there happens to be someone with a brain watching, that brain is aware and has memory too!
    Now a video camera with a recorder has the advantage of showing us what the camera was aware of over a period of time. Now we're far from consciousness here, but we have a blind, non-decision making awareness with memory.
    We'd need to add to this to get consciousness, right?
    Unless it's all just some kind of magic? Right?

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  72. Tell you what, mathematics isn't aware, that's backwards, we are aware of math.
    -------------------
    And yet they postulate a universe of mathematics. So these scientists aren't dismissing it, and I think they also know the nature of math.

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  73. "..there had better be one of donuts to make up for it. :-"
    ROFLMAO!

    Good one Jude.

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  74. "And yet they postulate a universe of mathematics. So these scientists aren't dismissing it, and I think they also know the nature of math."
    I dunno Brian, if there's no awareness, it doesn't matter how much math there is. Hey, if there's no awareness(at least) it doesn't matter how much matter there is either.
    We're not looking for life, Jim, but not as we know it, on the Moon.

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  75. I'd rather believe that these smart guys are imagining us stupid, like stock market multimillionaires, who are, apparently genius level(170 I.Q.) but sociopaths, than that we can give life to something that IS a set of ideas instead of something that has ideas. Who is to say that they don't believe 'something' spiritual, who is to say that they don't want to convince themselves so bad that they'll try to convince anyone who will listen, just like Jesus-lovers do.
    They pray on the idea that most people are overwhelmed by math at the algebra level, say 2 out of three, don't know much about math, then the last third, 2 out of three of those are bamboozled by circle functions, sin, cos, tan and calculus.

    Then there's all those formulae that they flash by on science shows with all those esoteric Greek letters, "Ooooo.. it's math, it must be true, but beyond my ken!", bullshit. Right?

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  76. Here's a point I made on an FB thread just now.
    Suppose you are a Christian and you believe that Jesus sacrificed Himself for your sins, and you believe that He will return in GLORY at the end of the world.
    If it were put to a vote, would you vote for the end of the World now, or would you vote for us to continue in our evil Satanic ways??

    If you have enough faith, surely you'd vote for the end of the World, right? If, on the other hand are one of those hypocritical low-life who pretend to believe because it's convenient, you'd think, "Nono, we can't have the end of the World right now, we cannot CAUSE the end of the World, what if Jesus DOESN'T show up?"

    Basically, if you're a Christian and you're driving the bus, do you aim that bus at a brick wall? What if there are enough insane Christians, 'true believers'? You know it's possible for some insane religious nuts to fly airplanes into buildings killing over 3000 people, simply because they believed, right?

    We cannot say, "No, that's not possible with OUR religion, we don't accept nutjobs!", Right?

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  77. Me:-Of course we all NEED emotion, it's what we call the feedback loop from our senses.
    You:-So what then? Intuition doesn't exist?
    ...........................................................................

    This is your actual answer to my statement.
    I could go down the list showing you where I said something, you changed perspective on it as if it were a black or white issue, a false dichotomy, and dismissing it.

    You said something similar about a baby not having consciousness If it can't read and my believing that being preposterous.
    But I didn't say what you're accusing me of there.
    You're arguing your case as if most people believe, want to believe, in spite of common sense.

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  78. That's your paranoia showing. I argue my case as I feel and think. And it amazes me that you dismiss science as easily as you do my speculations whenever it gets too strange for you. I'm intentionally telling you about real strangeness in science and you can't even give it credence, which is funny to me because I do it so that you can see that actual science isn't that much less strange than my speculations are, so what do you do? You dismiss the science, too!

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  79. Me:-Of course we all NEED emotion, it's what we call the feedback loop from our senses.
    You:-So what then? Intuition doesn't exist?


    It's YOU that shifts perspective. Emotion and intuition are not identical things, so stop pretending that they are. Intuition is a function of the emotional side, best served by including logic as well to temper it. I guess since you can't believe in it, you feel free to assign it any value that you want.

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  80. "Ooooo.. it's math, it must be true, but beyond my ken!", bullshit. Right?
    ---------------
    I hope you're joking.

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  81. ".. it amazes me that you dismiss science .."

    Would you say that 'science' and 'a scientist' are exactly the same?

    "..Emotion and intuition are not identical things.."

    I didn't say they were identical. I spoke about emotion and you were the one equating the two when you asked, "You:-So what then? Intuition doesn't exist?"

    That's my point that you seem to insist on dancing around.

    The thing about babies not having consciousness since they can't read is you misunderstanding what I said, not me wrongly assigning values or somesuch.

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  82. Heck, to me it seems that since *you* can't understand the math, you are dismissing it as snake oil. Am I reading that wrong somehow? You seem to be mocking the scientists here, not me. I point out that real science is getting very strange, as strange as anything I can come up with, and you (shockingly!) dismiss that too? Wow.
    Tell me if I'm getting that right, because if I am, then you sir, are a BELIEVER. A believer in their own view of reality over that of science. Because the sciene is too uncomfortable for you. Wow.

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  83. Since they can't speak and therefore don't have an inner voice, I meant.

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    1. I know I'm being silly for saying this, and just giving you ammo, but I must say it. On salvia I can experience *no mind.* The zen thing. What that is, is me not having a fucking memory in my head, not even my name, no words, no structured thoughts, nothing but awareness, a tiny point of consciousness floating in a void. Pure awareness. So that's possible for a human, why not have it be the natural state of things BEFORE they tack on the higher functions through evolution? Makes sense. So I might know how it feels to be a rock. (lol) No doubt you now credit me with the intelligence of one.

      Delete
  84. Would you say that 'science' and 'a scientist' are exactly the same?
    ----------------------
    Are you paying attention here? This is the consensus among researchers now, that the multiverse is likely the right answer, just a matter of which kind. Brian Green remains very neutral, if not on your side here; a realist. He NEVER says anything about consciousness being the answer because he doesn't believe that, just as you do not. He is quoting the research, with extensive attributions and footnotes... this isn't me falling in love with a crackpot theory and selecting it over the more reasonable ones. There aren't any reasonable ones. Get it? What I'm telling you is that the actual science here, is as strange as anything that I can come up with. The scientists don't like that, but they are forced to admit that that's all there is, and so they must give it credence because that's how science works. The data and the math all point to there being multiple planes of reality, in some form. Since I haven't yet read the part of the book about the "math universe" I can't yet tell you what that is all about yet, but hey, you're already dismissing it.

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  85. There is not enough 'understanding math' in the universe to get math to 'be' another universe.
    That's kind of like saying that sure God exists if we define God to be the idea itself that God exists.

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    1. Before the earth came to be, there wasn't any understanding (that we know of) in the universe, so by your logic the Big Bang never happened?

      Delete
  86. I'd rather believe that these smart guys are imagining us stupid,
    -------------
    Key word: "believe"
    Because hey, it would make you feel better.

    You'd rather, and so would have Einstein. God does not throw dice, remember? Only he does, and he throws them where nobody is looking. (Hawking)

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  87. Speaker Boehner:- The American people shall not be denied. They want to take a two foot long dildo and shove it up their own bums until it completely wrecks their insides. The American people may not have voted for the President to say they want to do this, they didn't vote for a majority of the Senate to say they want to do this, but they voted for a minority of die-hard assholes to make sure you know what they want! Get out your two foot dildoes, America! Stand by, the rest of the World! It's fuck-yourself-up-the-ass-with-a-Stars-and-Stripes-dildo time for you too!

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  88. Hey, my wife just had a great idea! Let's start a Satan Facebook Page!!! Oh Please, Can We?

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    1. There is a facebook page called 'Satan'. They just post cartoons though.

      Delete
  89. Without having read the part yet about the math universe, I can still imagine one, a universe in which everything is probabilities, because I've seen it smack dab in front of me. What I'm surprised about is that science has postulated one, too.

    Don't forget the wave function. What is the 'wave' part? What is the cloud that a particle becomes when not being measured? Is it a cloud of dispersed bits of the particle? No. It is a cloud of probability. Pure math. Pure math that collapses into a particle. Don't take my word for it; look it up for yourself.

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  90. ...and that cloud of probability can and does interfere with itself when we run an experiment that causes it to do so, like the double-slit.

    A wave of statistical probability condenses into a particle. That's the current paradigm.

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  91. Simply because the best model we have for sub-atomic particles involves probability, that DOESN'T make this universe a universe of mathematics.

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  92. You can define anything in terms of probability. What are the chances that you're living right now talking to me about probability? There's an answer to that, a probabilistic answer.

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  93. So, was that lame-sauce the supposed universe of mathematics?

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  94. It's clear that the probabilities interfere with each other.

    And no, I haven't read that part of the book yet. Be patient, grasshopper.

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  95. lame-sauce
    ----------------------
    Do I argue like this? Do I call you lame? You seem happy to mock me. I'll let you have that. Maybe you need it.

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  96. Okay, further reading reveals that the state of the science right now is that a majority of researchers are seeing evidence for a multiverse or an omniverse.

    They're quite specific. They're not merely suggesting other universes. They are specifically saying "other universes in which there are copies of all of us." Nearly identical or even totally identical other universes.

    How do you feel about that, I wonder? That's my question to you. How do you feel about that? Because frankly I can't see you buying it. Too far 'out there' for someone like you. Am I wrong?

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    1. On further reading (on websites this time) it appears that while a decent percentage of researchers buy into the multiverse thing, whether it's a majority or not remains up in the air. Still, a significant percentage, including Hawking, do.

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  97. Apparently the most mathematically likely version is sort-of a double whammy. A 'patchwork' or 'quilted' multiverse that we live in, inside of an inflationary multiverse with other parallel universes in it as well. It points to this universe being infinite in size so that there are other earths somewhere incredibly far away that statistically must be identical to ours in every way, PLUS there are also *other* infinite universes like ours in which there are exact copies of earth and of all of us, plus copies of those copies, plus of course in both cases there are near-copies, slightly similar copies, and copies that are almost totally different, and everything in between.
    That's a lot to swallow.

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  98. Interesting to me is that apparently, it can be shown mathematically that you can have an infinite, very rapidly expanding inflationary "universe" in which there are "bubbles," each of which is a universe like ours, more or less, that can be infinite in size. So yes, that implies that these bubble universes are not infinite in size *from the outside,* from the point of view of the inflationary universe they're imbedded in, but can be infinite in size when seen from the inside! This is because in the larger multiverse, when observing the finite bubbles, they are finite in size but infinite in time, and there is a relativity between time and space, so that inside the bubbles that infinite time is translated into infinite distance instead. So infinite in size on the inside, infinite in time on the outside. Weird.

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  99. "He(Brian Green) says that there's a possibility of there being an alternate universe that is made of pure mathematics."

    And you haven't seen yourself, since you wrote the sentence above, how you've been busy moving goalposts all over the place.
    At one point it's OUR universe that is a universe of mathematics since, well, 'probability'.
    I seriously doubt that Green meant that this universe is a universe of math, don't you?
    Same thing goes for your multi-verses, you seem to be saying that mathematicians thinks this shit up, therefore 'a universe of mathematics'? Really,
    It doesn't follow, that because mathematicians dream up the universe as more exotic, therefore a universe of mathematics.
    You seem to be trying to twist my POV round to me saying that there are no mathematical models whatsoever of this universe and potential other universes.

    Where's the mathematical model of a mathematical universe then? Nono, we model what's there and speculate about what we don't know, isn't that right?

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  100. And you haven't seen yourself, since you wrote the sentence above, how you've been busy moving goalposts all over the place.
    -No, I haven't.


    At one point it's OUR universe that is a universe of mathematics since, well, 'probability'.
    -I drew a conclusion from the idea that one could exist elsewhere, that we might be in one now and not be aware of it. That's all. Perhaps I should have been more clear.


    I seriously doubt that Green meant that this universe is a universe of math, don't you?
    -He wasn't saying that, and I didn't say that he was saying that. As I said above, I was drawing a speculative conclusion.


    Same thing goes for your multi-verses, you seem to be saying that mathematicians thinks this shit up, therefore 'a universe of mathematics'? Really,
    It doesn't follow, that because mathematicians dream up the universe as more exotic, therefore a universe of mathematics.
    You seem to be trying to twist my POV round to me saying that there are no mathematical models whatsoever of this universe and potential other universes.
    -There is a school of thought out there among physicists that a totally mathematical universe can exist. (Brian Green is quoting other scientists with all of these types, by the way, so it's not merely him... in fact he's not letting on yet which one he thinks is most likely, although so far he seems to lean toward the "quilted + inflationary (dual) type.)
    I haven't gotten to the "mathematical universe" section yet in the book; I have one more type of alternate universe before that one, "branes" apparently. I'm very much looking forward to it though.


    Where's the mathematical model of a mathematical universe then? Nono, we model what's there and speculate about what we don't know, isn't that right?
    -There is one apparently, and I'll likely read about it sometime tonight or tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

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  101. Is it that you loved to argue with Eric so much that you project that need onto me when I get "flaky?" That you see me as a twister of words like he is because that's what you like to face off with?

    I'm not contrived, dude. I'm the genuine article, a real flake. Get used to it. And I say "speculate" because I can prove nothing, but that doesn't deter me from doing it because at the very least, it's more fun. This is important: My own seeming vacillation is not due to me trying to move goalposts, it's due to me not being certain myself and instead throwing out thoughts that interest me and are exciting to me in their possibilities. I do sense somehow that there's more to this reality than meets the eye, but beyond that strong suspicion I can't prove anything much, even to myself. The main reason for all of this talk about Brian Green's book was not to convince you, it was simply to show you that there are a lot of researchers, mainstream and not considered flakes, that have theories that are no less counterintuitive and strange than my own thoughts, and that there are even some of said researchers that think that consciousness plays a role in the manifestation of reality to us. That and to point out how many of them actually take the idea of a multiverse with other versions of us living "out there somewhere" seriously. That's all I've been trying to get you to admit, that even the 'serious' researchers are pretty far out there lately in what they actually consider possible. The implication is of course, if that's the possible, and my own thoughts are no stranger, then my thoughts are also possible.

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  102. "My own seeming vacillation is not due to me trying to move goalposts, it's due to me not being certain myself and instead throwing out thoughts that interest me and are exciting to me in their possibilities. I do sense somehow that there's more to this reality than meets the eye, but beyond that strong suspicion I can't prove anything much, even to myself."

    On reading the above, i realized that it was a pretty good example of me vacillating.

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  103. Let's try that again.

    My own seeming vacillation is not due to me trying to move goalposts, it's due to me not being certain myself and instead throwing out thoughts that I like to consider as possible answers, possible answers that interest me and are exciting to me in their implications.

    I mean, I could just agree with you and we'd never talk.

    I do still consider your view as a high-order possibility, while of course not committing to any one answer myself. However I prefer to think that reality is more interesting than you do, based I guess on my intuition. Which you don't believe has any value in decision making. Oh well.

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  104. That's the same Brian Greens who shows us a model of time marching steadily on, where the past is 'there, and the 'future' is 'there', then using it to prove that the past and future are 'there'.

    Let me give an even more ridiculous version, "Here's time marching forward from the Big Bang, with a giant dildo right through the middle of it. Now no matter when we lived, If we're living now, or in the future. There's a dildo!

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  105. There is indeed, a dildo. One cannot deny the fact. Cogito, ergo dildo.

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  106. Don't you think that that model was ridiculous? He had the Big Bang, check, slices of time from the Big Bang up til now, now, then past now, on into the future.

    With this model, no matter what he conjures, there's time, all set out like a loaf of sliced bread, the past, he solemnly declares, is as real as the present, and the future is real too.
    (not a probability, Brian, real.)
    But as Brian Greene has set it up, it is a sleight of hand trick.
    There's the 'slicing the bread at an angle', where now, when the alien across the universe begins moving away from us, the bread is now sliced at a different angle where our now is way back in the past.
    Now did you catch the trick? "The alien across the universe 'begins to move' away.."

    Brian Greene is an astro-physicist who is willing to make a prediction with a model that already HAS that same prediction built into it, (slices of time), using a hypothetical alien who lives in a steady-state universe which he knows does NOT EXIST!

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  107. Brian Greene also knows that when we look at the light coming to our telescopes from far across the universe, we're looking at the universe as it was so many billions of years ago.
    As we see it, it is harshly red-shifted, indicating that AT THAT TIME the universe was moving rapidly away from us.
    If suddenly the alien, who is so advanced and can control huge events(let's say), he stops his galaxy in it's tracks and reverses it's course. What we would see through our telescopes is, no change, no change for some billions of years until the none-red-shifted light started appearing in our telescopes.

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    1. I read this three times, and I have yet to see your point.

      ???

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    2. Okay, my point is that, sure the light reaching our telescopes is billions of years old but that doesn't make the 'now' that the distant galaxies be billions of years ago, as Greene seems to be implying, in his model, no.
      It's just that the light we are receiving is billions of years old, is all.
      Similarly, if we look at Andromeda, which is careening towards us, we're not seeing Andromeda 'in the future' or 'as it will be'., all we see is it's blue-shift.
      To imagine that an alien on an Andromedan system would look at us and see our future, or that his and our now would actually be our future, doesn't make sense.

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  108. I like your idea that you're just playing mind-games with yourself, and not me, it's that switch in perspective that religionists use all the time in their debating, it's a favorite debating strategy of theirs, and ours actually.
    We say, from a common-sense perspective this is how we should see it, no?
    e.g. When Jesus was in the Garden he prayed to God three times to not have to go through with it. This does not bode well for their belief that Jesus IS God and did it for us.
    Believers believe it from a believers perspective and brush that off as his cowardly human nature. So is the God in this Man-God not really in touch with his Man part here?
    So what they do is change perspective of this so called reporting, so called accounting of the events, to, "Well, Jesus just said he was scared to go through with it to demonstrate, to remind us that men are frail and afraid of death."
    But they don't believe in death, or so they claim, right? NO, they believe that their soul will continue on for good or bad, forever.

    Anyways, your change in perspective comes and goes, mostly to do with what Brian Greene and other scientists are SPECULATING, but from your perspective what they're saying is almost SACRED and how DARE I poo-poo it, since it agrees with you.

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  109. I was wondering, Brian, what if 'they' made artificial intelligences, artificial consciousness? Would that be awkward for your theory or no?
    Just imagine a computer which recalled details of it's interactions and observations, a computer which focused on problems, postulated hypotheses and proposed experiments to defend or defeat those hypotheses.
    I think there might be those who would despise such a being since it would remove the mystery of our non-verbal years, our formative years, which, while still with us in some way are likely distorted emotional 'gut' feelings which, whether we like it or no, inform our intuition.
    Let's imagine that this intelligent machine, once switched on, is actually conscious, aware and self-aware. I think if there were zero input to this switched on consciousness, there would be no activity, it'd be meaningless to say that it was conscious. BUT, if we were to add many feed-back loops, the more the merrier, give it something to think about, well...

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  110. It would not be actually conscious, no matter how close the appearance was to it. So no threat to me. It would be a simulacra of consciousness.

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  111. but from your perspective what they're saying is almost SACRED and how DARE I poo-poo it, since it agrees with you.
    ------------------
    No, considering how this is the actual research being done, and how it's not merely speculation but the thoughts of many serious researchers in the field that result from mathematical research, and how seriously this is taken about among scientists, and how Brian Green is just reporting the consensus of many scientists in his book, when you poo-poo it, when you summarily dismiss it as if your common sense trumps all scientific speculation and trumps the mathematics, when you do that, it makes you look unintelligent, and I'm a bit embarrassed for you. Sorry.

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  112. Like the bit about time and the slices of the loaf and walking away from you on a planet far, far away.

    You take it literally and ask, "how can they say that because there is too much random motion anyhow, so there is no way a distant planet would be 'still' in relation to the earth, so the idea of walking toward you or away from you is a joke." So it's dismissed.
    But he was simplifying. If all those things were not problems, and if it were possible to have the two planets 'still' in relation to each other, that's how time would behave, according to the tested mathematics.
    You dismiss it, and even laugh about it. Sounds like a believer to me.

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    1. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that this part, the part about how time behaves over vast distances, is settled science and not still a matter of informed speculation as are the 'multiverse' ideas. So there's that.

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  113. I'll repeat my question since you were distracted by being absorbed in creative mocking.

    Do you believe that a multiverse of any kind is possible or do you dismiss that as well?

    You know, if you were a school teacher, your favorite part of the day would be when you *dismiss* the students for the day.

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  114. I love it how the guy that dismisses science on the basis of lack of hard evidence, who has no hard evidence himself but his gut instincts, also disparages the idea of gut instincts having any value.

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  115. I talked about Brian Green's book because I wanted to show you that scientific speculation that is taken seriously among many researchers, possibly even a majority of them now, is as FUCKING NUTS as any of my ideas.

    So you managed to discount that as well. Wow. That, I did not expect. I mean, you can doubt it, but dismiss it as if you know better? Wow.

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  116. I like your idea that you're just playing mind-games with yourself, and not me, it's that switch in perspective that religionists use all the time in their debating, it's a favorite debating strategy of theirs, and ours actually.
    ----------------
    Quite simply, my mind tends to jump around a lot, so often there are areas of my arguments in which there is a lack of coherence. This you take for a debating tactic.
    Whatever. I think I get my points across just fine. If you wanna mistake that for an Eric-like sidestep dance, so be it.

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  117. One of the tasks of the Large Hadron Collider, is to possibly provide proof for or against one type of multiverse scenario.

    So somebody's taking this shit seriously, even if you aren't.

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  118. Multi-verse, the universe being a projection of the event horizon of a black hole in some 'real' universe, quantum mind, these things are pure speculation, same thing as physics doesn't 'say' that the universe has to run one way and not the other.

    And nice tu quoque. Hardly ever see that from the saner side. From the insane side, all the time, especially when we're talking about the 'even more insane'.

    What the standard response from the not so crazy Reps. when we're discussing Palin, Bachmann, Cruz et al?
    The other side is just as bad!!! Tu quoque!
    Except where's their list of 'even more insane'?

    Okay, on the Brian Greene stuff, I might as well be talking to myself when it comes to that.
    The universe of mathematics, have you read that chapter yet?
    As I understand it you yourself were willing to admit that you're speculating, Not anymore I see. You can read my objections to Greene. You're objection seems to be an appeal to authority.
    A bit of a straw-man, "An alien on a planet far far away.."
    And much like Eric and his defense of C.S.Lewis, '.. but Lewis was a Thomist which you're just too uneducated to understand..', your, 'But it's MATH don't you know?', doesn't impress me. Should it?

    And dark matter/dark energy. Wait it's both too light, it needs all this stuff to hold together, AND, it's too heavy, we don't understand why it's flying apart?
    There may well be dark matter and dark energy but it sounds to me more of something Lewis Carroll would think up, can you not, at least see that?

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  119. I see that you are incapable of getting out of your rut.

    My 'tu quoque' was merely my pointing out that scientific speculation is no less crazy sounding than my own. The authority that I appeal to, is a worthy one. Science itself. I do not BELIEVE it, but I think DISMISSING it as you do is as bad as believing it blindly. It needs to be taken seriously before it can be dismissed. It *is* taken seriously by serious people that understand the math, and since I do not, I must need refer to them. Sorry if that upsets you.

    Hey, let's do this the easy way. You win. You've worn me out. Congratulations. I won't bother to talk about it anymore. It's futile.

    Do you still even want to know about the math universe when I get that far? Likely not. I mean, all you are looking forward to is popping that balloon when it floats by.

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    1. (nah, I'll still talk about it... only because it's fun, though...)

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  120. But it's MATH don't you know?', doesn't impress me. Should it?
    ---------------
    There is a difference between blind speculation and speculation that comes about because it offers the solution to seemingly unsolvable mathematical dilemmas. The latter, while not proven true by that, still speak with more authority than blind speculation. They must be taken seriously before disregarding them.

    If that doesn't impress you enough to at least not dismiss it all out of hand, to at least explore it a bit in your mind, then I see that as a flaw in your thinking. I see a pattern of 'preferential belief' in you. You cling to your comfort zone. Common enough, but I thought better of you, that's all.

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  121. As I understand it you yourself were willing to admit that you're speculating, Not anymore I see.
    --------------------
    So you're seeing all this as a statement of my belief in it?

    But, if I believe in all of this, it negates my "all is consciousness" speculations. Do you seriously believe that I've changed my mind about all of that?

    No, I point these things out precisely because they are all as counterintuitive as my own thoughts, not because I believe them. They seem to me to introduce unnecessary complexity into what I see as potentially a much simpler picture: that All Is Consciousness, and the interplay of said consciousness. These scientific theories are presented to you by me as a way of showing that the actual science here is as crazy sounding as my thoughts, and not for the reason of getting you to believe the science, nor to get you to think that I believe it. However my attempt falls flat for the simple reason that you can see no difference between scientific speculation based on hard mathematics that solves real-world dilemmas, and blind pull-it-out-of-your-ass speculation.

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  122. I think that science is running up against the hard shoals of a universe based in consciousness and not wanting to admit it to itself, so therefore we have speculations that manage to exceed that in incredibility.

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  123. Early researchers in Quantum Physics like Max Planck and Neils Bohr and many others were of the opinion that consciousness played a role in reality. Several of them became mystics because of it. Now today there is a very small minority of such scientists that still think that may be the case, vastly outnumbered by those that dismiss it. Why do the minority still think that way if it's been disproven?
    The answer is that it has never been disproven. Instead it was dismissed out of hand by the majority because it was too darned flaky. So instead now we have that majority finding itself back in flake land *because* it is pursuing the "no way can that be true" path. All path lead to flaky in this area.

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  124. using a hypothetical alien who lives in a steady-state universe which he knows does NOT EXIST!
    ---------------------
    Dude, when you first heard of Schrodinger's Cat, did you call the ASPCA?

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  125. In my "all is consciousness" viewpoint, none of the theories are currently true, however when one of them rises to the point of general believability and then gets proven by some mechanism, that one will be true. Or at least, as true as anything that we've established to be true in our universal collective mind.

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  126. These 'gentle' put-downs go 'so' unnoticed.

    e.g. ..........................................................................

    using a hypothetical alien who lives in a steady-state universe which he knows does NOT EXIST!
    ---------------------
    Dude, when you first heard of Schrodinger's Cat, did you call the ASPCA?"
    .......................................................................
    The cat is equivalent to a non-existent steady state universe?
    Oh, wait, I see what you did there.

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  127. A barb is not a put-down.

    You reject 'alien' because it is preposterous-sounding, so I bring up the equally preposterous cat. And you take that personally too. Um, okay.

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    1. More accurately, you rejected alien and the steady-state situation because you decided to take it literally, and so I made a joke out of you also taking the cat's death literally.
      Seems legal to me.

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  128. You're still hung up on 'steady state' even though I explained to you how that was him simplifying, eliminating the details to illustrate the basics?

    Why is that? I explained it, and there's nothing more to it. He talks about that all the time, how the art of physics is knowing what parts to ignore in order to simplify things.

    So tell it to me again as if it matters, I guess.

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  129. The idea of the alien and the steady-state universe parable is that if given a steady state, this is how much time would still fluctuate. Now that we can know that, we can extend the concept to the wildly chaotic universe we have with all the zillion variables, and *just imagine* how much *more* time must fluctuate between two distant bodies.

    No?

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  130. Oh, you're down to, 'a cutting remark'(barb) is not a disparaging remark(put down).
    There's that perspective again.
    Still on that steady state 'thing',(barb or put down, you decide, I've decided), apparently I can't tell the similarity between two characters in two 'thought experiments', since you claim I called them 'non-existent', but you KNOW that it was the steady-state universe that is the non-existence that I was referring to.

    To suggest that I am such an fool that I was imagining beings in thought experiments 'real', is cutting and disparaging, especially since I used to be sure that it would be easy for you to know this.

    Just a 'barb'?
    They say if you can't take it, don't dish it out.
    Lay off the drugs man, your brain is getting addled!

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    1. A barb is a tease, done in affection. Not a put down, no matter what you want to believe.

      Delete
    2. but you KNOW that it was the steady-state universe that is the non-existence that I was referring to.
      ------------------
      So you get thought experiments and simplifying in order to illustrate a point, and yet you're still talking about your steady state thing when that was part of the thought experiment.

      Sure. Why not?

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  131. Now here's a thought. I'm not commenting away 'barbs' here.
    Can I make you see the obvious, that Brian Greene's time model is just so wrong in so many ways, especially since he's an astro-physicist.
    Now you telling me that Greene is just too much of a brainiac to be wrong is exactly equivalent to Eric telling me that Aquinas was just too much of a brainiac to be wrong.

    BTW, was the brain being addled with drugs a barb or a put-down? I thought 'barb', but I'm only going by your standards here.

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    1. especially since he's an astro-physicist.
      -------------------
      So here we have the compliment to an appeal to authority; dismissing authority on the basis of it not being the correct authority.
      He has access to all the information out there on time, and is explaining it adequately. I don't automatically believe him or automatically think he's right due to his credentials but I do trust his opinion on the matter more than my own, which is utterly ignorant on these subjects as compared to him.

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    2. BTW, was the brain being addled with drugs a barb or a put-down? I thought 'barb', but I'm only going by your standards here.
      -----------------
      It's your opinion of me, and I know it, so I don't really care about the details. If you say it with affection it's a barb, a teasing comment; if not, then not. Whatever.

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  132. Plus studying time is in the purview of quantum physics researchers, is it not? So I would say that he by all rights should be an authority on it as well.

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  133. As I understand it, an actual horologist repairs and sells watches and clocks, so Brian Greene is all there is.

    :-)

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  134. Well, he's a superstring theorist. So, what evidence is there that superstrings exist? What would one predict from there actually being superstrings? Anything? Anything? Beuller?

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  135. Well, they solve the math better than other ways, I suppose. It's not like you can fill a bowl with them and add sauce.

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  136. Brian Greene, "Think of our universe as if it were a huge slice of bread, with all the stars and all the galaxies sprinkled across its surface. The math of string theory suggests this picture, along with the possibility that there are other universes, other slices of bread, all constituting a big cosmic loaf."

    So everything boils down to models involving a loaf of bread? Maybe he is the offspring of many generations of bakers and he has visions of the delicious bread his fore-fathers made.
    What's next, "Think of the superstring theory as the gluten theory..there may well be gluten-free universes out there."?

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  137. Maybe he thinks that people are too dumb to get it any other way but over-simplifying, and hey, even then there'll be some goofball that will scoff at it... oh.. wait...

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  138. If it's a material universe/multiverse like you think it is, then with infinite universes there will be universes of every possible configuration, physically possible given the laws of nature which are likely consistent from one to the other. Maybe even a gluten-free one. Or a gluten-allergy-free one.

    If it's a consciousness universe/multiverse, then with infinite universes you will be able to find ALL universes regardless of possibility. So you could find Oz.

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  139. He does use bread a lot, I guess. I suppose since what he's trying to get across is the idea of 'slices' so it seems an obvious choice.

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  140. Funny thing, every time I used to read about the universe expanding, they always illustrated that with raisin bread. Each galaxy is a raisin. Loaf rises, all raisins recede from each other. No slices though.
    I guess bread is a good teaching aid for this stuff.

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  141. .. and then you get to toast it and eat it. Delicious, delicious raisin bread! Darn it, I ate my last raisin muffin yesterday. Thanks a lot Brians for making me hungry! Here I just ate a big bowl of bubbling quantum theory model porridge for breakfast a couple of hours ago.
    Talk about getting Cosmos and Quantum theories shoved down your throat! LOL (wait, I shoved it down my own throat!!)

    " .. upon the sconce, inside the tub, with head in bucket, not far from Nantucket, above my chamber door, quoth the Molson drenched Moose, "NEVERMORE!" - faux Poe." (not connected with any of these comments at all.)

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  142. Wow. Okay.... Pretty funny.

    Hey, here's real evidence or at least a strong indication that there are other universes, and not just a few, many more than the number of photons in this one.

    You know how scientists used to wonder why the earth was 93 million miles from the sun? How perfect for us! Why is it that special distance? Design?
    No of course, it's random chance, because there are zillions of planets varying in distance from the sun, and we wouldn't be on any of them that were too close to or too far away from their sun, because life as we know it would not be possible without liquid water.
    Now, you've heard the christians saying how strange it is that this universe is "fine-tuned" in such a way that many values (such as the cosmological constant or the value of the electromagnetic field) are precisely right for the evolution of life like ours? Is it God creating everything? Must be...

    Here's where I see a real "need" for the Multiverse. The only way that talking point is neatly defeated, is with a HUGE number of parallel universes! More than 10 to the power of 130 or so, and likely as much as ten to the power of 500. We need there to be that many, for the same reason that we needed there to be so many planets at varying distances from their sun; to explain how we happened to get so "lucky!" Without an enormous number of other universes, we're pretty much stuck explaining why we happened to have all the right values. With the large number of other universes, it's easy. We wouldn't be here to notice it if we didn't happen to evolve in one of the universes that was amenable to our evolution.

    That's pretty sound reasoning.

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  143. A Molson-drenched moose...

    How uniquely Canadian!

    Makes me miss Bob and Doug McKenzie... love that back-bacon...

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  144. Well, I have a much easier explanation. We wouldn't be here to ponder how 'lucky' we are to be here if we weren't here to ponder it.

    As thinking social beings it's as natural to wonder why we are here and why things work the way they do and come to some consensus about it. Now we have to take into account everything around us including each other, birds, animals, fish, insects and plants. We have to take into account the Sun, the Moon and the stars and the weather.
    Now asking why things are leads to the question of how things work, which is easily confused with the question of how things are designed to work.

    Thinking of the World, the Sun, Moon, planets and stars around us as a design there are two questions, who designed this and what did the designer design it for?

    The answer to the last part seems to be, 'for us', it was designed for us to ponder these questions. The answer to the first part, if the answer to the second part is true, is a being who must be large enough and powerful enough to design all of it.

    And on that goes where you end up with a large percent of the population believing that kind of shit.
    What's this got to do with fine-tuning? Well, fine-tuning is the design/designer argument revisited. For fine-tuning there needs to be a fine-tuner, so it's the same damn thing from a slightly different angle, a slightly different starting point.

    Anyone using the fine-tuning argument for God is also likely to lie or exaggerate just how fine-tuned things seem to be. For example the Earth's orbit could have a range of plus or minus 5 or 10 million miles, so that seems a lot less 'fine'.
    It's a reverse argument for God in that people using it already believe in God and are looking for ways to convince others, to proselytize.

    To me this doesn't discount a multi-verse at all, it just means that a multi-verse isn't necessary.

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  145. Yea I thought Canadians were 'known' for their strong beer and a moose in a tub above a door is ludicrous. Not sure what they weigh, some 1200 pounds or more? He'd have to have been mighty drunk to get up there.

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  146. He might have climbed up there himself and died of fright because Sarah Palin was after him.

    Or not, I guess.... that's Alaska. Do moose migrate?

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  147. Um, no but they might be one big interactive community, apparently they bellow pretty loud. I'm thinking like pass the message, not 'loud enough to hear from New Foundland. There MAY be Sasquatch involved but that's a rumor from the Cabin Fever' set, not the sasquatch themselves who may not actually exist.

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  148. That reminds me of "101 Dalmatians" where the dogs have like a 'barking grapevine' and transmit messages. I think that was the movie. Been a while.

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  149. I think I'm on the eighth alternate universe scenario. Just got through with the "Quantum Multiverse." I think that one's my favorite. Of course, you can have more than one type being real at the same time, like they think the inflationary multiverse would also create many (infinite) quilted multiverses. So two levels of multiverse. But the quantum one is where all choices we make and all events that happen to us cause both (or many) results to become real in actual separate universes... so all decisions or happenings cause a 'split' of our universe in which one of us gets one result and one of us gets the other result. Hard to wrap your head around all of that... it means that literally everything fucking happens somewhere. Every single thing that can happen, happens somewhere. This one most closely conforms to my salvia visions too, not that that's evidence of anything more than another reason that I like it.

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  150. That's not bringing consciousness into the mix, by the way. I mean, I can do that, I can see a role for it, but the researchers aren't. And I respect that. No need to.

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  151. You doubt in the existence of alternate universes?

    Oh ye doubter who doubts in his doubting way of doubtness...

    In the very near future perhaps you will be able to see for yourself absolute objective evidence of alternate universes. For 'tis possible that you shall with your own doubting eyes see the evidence writ large in the sky that will at last dispel all your damnable doubts.

    Would seeing two universes collide, leaving one in tatters and the other irrevocably changed forever, be enough for you?

    Well, that just may (I hope) happen in mere days.

    The Debt Ceiling is coming up.

    We may just be about to see the bubble universe of the tea party collide with our own universe.

    I can but hope.

    For already we see signs and portents augering a huge and rapid shift in public opinion against the tea party minority. This shutdown is already creating more outcry than ever I had hoped for, and a concurrent increase in republican congresspersons saying stupid things in public. (Didja see the guy from Texas scold a park ranger at the National Mall for daring to close the exhibit that he himself voted for closing?)

    This might just build up into something, and the tea party is at a level of idiocy and anger that I haven't seen before.... desperation.... they INSIST that they get a re-do of the last election or they're gonna blow the place to kingdom come.

    I'm telling you, there's serious CHAOS at work here. The Golden Apple of Discord has been thrown into the hall of gods and they all just might kill each other in their quest to be the 'fairest.'

    Watch the skies! Watch the skies!

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  152. (Chaos is extremely underrated and unjustly maligned, by the way)

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  153. Point being, the debt ceiling smackdown will hurt us a lot. And I feel terrible for all the people around the world that will feel the pain. But what else could possibly solve this CANCER that this country has called by many names but amounting to evil believers that reject reality and want to re-shape the world into their distorted nightmares?

    It just may be the stick across our heads that we fucking need. We need our fucking PRIDE deflated a little bit, and if that happens, everybody will know who to blame it on. The rightwing attempts to pin this on Reid or Obama or democrats in general are falling flatter than a pancake. That won't get any better as the people both start to feel the pain of it all AND start to realize that after all, ObamaCare is pretty fucking good compared to what we used to have.

    The variables are all set in place, the timing is right... bubble bubble, toil and trouble.... muah hah hah hah hah....

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  154. I don't know Brian, those Teabaggers are 'values' folk, they can have both sides of an argument in their heads at the same time, and, they were voted in by people who think just like them.
    They're busy congratulating themselves that they caused the shutdown AND cursing Obama and the Senate for causing the shutdown.
    Can they even pick a side at this point?
    I doubt it, they're fucking insane.

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  155. That's the point. It might finally become apparent that they're fucking insane. To most people.

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  156. The trouble with most people is that they don't realize they are part 'values' people too. A professional 'values' person can try to convince you that you have the same 'values' or that it's all just 'crazy', those 'crazy' government people, but you and I, we love mom and apple pie, the Stars and Stripes, God and country, don't we?
    No? Well you're un-American! (hint, most people won't say 'no'.)

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  157. That might not play as well when we're not number one financially anymore, as in, a huge downgrade and our bond market falling apart.

    We need a fall before we can rise again.

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  158. QUOTE
    "You know how scientists used to wonder why the earth was 93 million miles from the sun? How perfect for us! Why is it that special distance? Design?
    No of course, it's random chance, because there are zillions of planets varying in distance from the sun, and we wouldn't be on any of them that were too close to or too far away from their sun, because life as we know it would not be possible without liquid water.
    Now, you've heard the Christians saying how strange it is that this universe is "fine-tuned" in such a way that many values (such as the cosmological constant or the value of the electromagnetic field) are precisely right for the evolution of life like ours? Is it God creating everything? Must be...

    Here's where I see a real "need" for the Multiverse. The only way that talking point is neatly defeated, is with a HUGE number of parallel universes! More than 10 to the power of 130 or so, and likely as much as ten to the power of 500. We need there to be that many, for the same reason that we needed there to be so many planets at varying distances from their sun; to explain how we happened to get so "lucky!" Without an enormous number of other universes, we're pretty much stuck explaining why we happened to have all the right values. With the large number of other universes, it's easy. We wouldn't be here to notice it if we didn't happen to evolve in one of the universes that was amenable to our evolution.

    That's pretty sound reasoning."

    ################################

    The multiverse theory does seem to explain fine tuning. There is another possible explanation. Our entire universe is a simulation with a fine tuning designer. Supposedly, in a few decades we will have the computing power to simulate worlds with a whole lot of detail. We might be able to simulate self aware creatures.

    Somebody conceived an experiment that could show scientifically if our world is a simulation, but I can't remember the results. Maybe the experiment isn't finished. Or maybe the elites had the scientists silenced. < just joking.

    I'm getting so old that I don't really give a damn about anything. As long as I can fine tune me some football and pizza, I'm content.

    The govt shutdown thing is scary. What it's doing is forcing other nations to see us as a dying empire; and if that happens then the value of the dollar will decrease. Americans are getting dumber while at the same time becoming more armed.

    I'm not sure if the republican party will ever win another presidency. Maybe with a Hispanic republican.

    St. Brian, you talk about people who die -- who then go on to another parallel universe -- in effect, never dying. I have a problem with this. The person who dies actually feels the existential pain of death, therefore a death actually occurred. The guy who then pops up in a parallel universe with no knowledge of the previous death may have cheated death, but he has also cheated the concept of life. And the dead body is still stinking up at least one world.

    I have a hard time conceiving the value in the eternity of an individuals life. The whole Christian message deals with eternal life.
    "Believe in Jesus and have eternal life."
    I think the eradication of suffering has more value than eternal life.

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  159. Yeah dude, I have a problem with it for the same reasons. And I just mentioned that on the other blog because it seemed appropriate, not because I believed it to be true. I had just read an article on it (quantum immortality).

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  160. So if this is a simulation, then what is the actual reality of the designers like? What's that universe like?

    To me that just pushes the question back. I don't buy it. I think this reality is as real as it gets, which is possibly no more real than a very real seeming dream that we're invested in completely.

    Or science is on the right track and I'm all wet. Always a possibility. I can always just be wrong, right?

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  161. Plus, a technologically superior designer smacks too much of god for me to like that scenario.

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  162. I didn't read any of Brian Greene's book today, took a break and read another book, a fantasy novel in a series that I'd been reading that was released today... I'll be back at it tomorrow. I wanna hear about that universe of mathematics.

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  163. "To me that just pushes the question back. I don't buy it. I think this reality is as real as it gets, which is possibly no more real than a very real seeming dream that we're invested in completely. "

    I don't really buy the simulation argument either. I also think this reality is as real as it gets, but I'm still holding on to my salviaesque ideas about parallel worlds.

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    1. Oh, I see the idea of parallel worlds to be totally possible, with no need for any designer or designers of any kind.

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  164. "So if this is a simulation, then what is the actual reality of the designers like? What's that universe like? "

    That's a good theoretical question. That's why we have sci fi writers.

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  165. "Plus, a technologically superior designer smacks too much of god for me to like that scenario."

    You're right. It's got that God stink on it.

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  166. I just watched 'Oblivion'. The reviews were mostly thumbs down, but the rabble seem to like it. I thought it was excellent on many levels. I can see why Cruise signed up for it. He probably saw something in it that resonated with Scientology.

    St Brian, if you go after Scientology, you might get a DDoS attack. (smiley face)

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  167. I'm not a Scientologist.

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  168. Okay, the "mathematical universe" is kinda lame. It does hinge upon the idea that it is possible that mathematics is "real" as in, a real tangible thing. Apparently even among physicists that's not a settled matter. So say this reality was a computer simulation; in that event everything that we are, that we do, that we observe, and that we think, is coded in mathematics somewhere on the supercomputer that is running the simulation. Now remove the computer and the idea of a simulation, and you realize that all things can be coded into math. So what if the ultimate nature of the Universe is not based in matter or energy but in mathematical processes?

    It's just as hard to accept as a world of consciousness, and even harder in my opinion.

    And yes, as it turned out, he WAS talking about THIS universe possibly being mathematical in nature.

    So that's about it. Weak sauce.

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  169. I mean, maybe math is not a 'thing' but perhaps a basic property of the universe, that dictates it's unfolding as we perceive it. That's closer to the idea.

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  170. So "somewhere" "out there" a mathematical process is going on that maintains me as a human being and dictates that I be here now thinking these thoughts and typing these words.

    Shit, I prefer consciousness.

    Although, both might be melded into one truth, since maybe a universe of math IS a universe of consciousness, in the sense that perhaps there needs to be a 'cosmic mind' in which all these equations are running that create reality.

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  171. The one that I give the most credence to out of the nine or ten possible types of alternate universe scenarios is the quantum multiverse, in which all aspects of the waveform are realized in separate universes. That one is what I 'see' on salvia, too. That one most closely corresponds with the visions that I have of alternate universes. Not that that proves a damned thing.

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  172. "Shit, I prefer consciousness."
    Me too.

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  173. So, to counteract the Dems. unwillingness to 'negotiate' Obamacare, they're wanting all the social programs on the table.
    Still don't think that they're willing to burn the house to the ground in order to save the house from burning?

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  174. https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/14JavH4Rk7k%26hl=en_US%26fs=1%26

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  175. NEW POST IS UP!

    Pboy, I'll get to that video soon, haven't had the time yet.

    NEW POST.

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