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What Do You Believe Even If You Can't Prove It?
An anonymous reader writes "That's what online magazine The Edge - the World Question Center asked over 120 scientists, futurists, and other interesting minds. Their answers are sometimes short and to the point (Bruce Sterling: 'We're in for climatic mayhem'), often long and involved; they cover everything from the existence of God to the nature of black holes. What do you believe, even though you can't prove it?"
That some day, somehow, I will get the elusive First Post.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The female orgasm.
That eventually, somewhere down the line the US government will get better. (Howard Zinn says so)
G.W. Bush
I believe I will have another martini, please. Up, Sapphire, extra olives, and go easy on the vermouth.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I mean, go ahead and prove it, but you'll still be taking it for granted, or you wouldn't bother with a proof.
+1 Ironic
I don't, actually. I believe that they will eat me alive if I give them back their candy.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
"I'm a good writer"
So do I, but there seems to be darned little of it in the software that I see.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
I believe in Christ Jesus and the "End of this Earth" as we know it today. I also believe that many of us will go to hell (the lake of fire) believe it or not.
...that the princess will be in this castle. Or the next one. Or the one after that.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist" -I guess I should leave then
If you mean Intellegent Design, as in purposeful Creation by God: Mod - Insightful
If you mean intelligent design, as in purposeful creation by programmers, analysts and end-users: Mod - Funny
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Did you receive this wisdom from the "Hang In There!" kitten calendar on your fat secretary's desk?
I think I've seen this in at least three different chain letters. You forgot to ask people to forward it.
Unknown host pong.
I believe that little elves are responsible for all of the world's ills. Kennedy was killed by an elf, for example.
Even now, the elves are working on igniting a great volcano under yellostone park!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are difficult-to-impossible-to-fake signs, if you know what to look/feel for. The sex flush is the best one. Pupil size generally increases when it happens too. The vaginal contractions at 0.8s intervals would be very difficult to fake also. Also there's the whole issue of their acting skills.
So... go run some experiments with this new data.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Have fun bitch.
Maybe he likes to play dice? :-)
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Prove it.
Don't anthropomorphise computers and cars, They hate that.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I believe Slashdot's moderation system is fair.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
yeah, but the proof is right there. wrong topic. ;)
Moo.
Yup. I believe that in tense situations groups are only as smart as the dumbest person there, and that all people are fundamentally like sheep.
:)
I can't prove that, but I do fervently believe that
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Halleluja!
Q: Why do women fake their orgasms?
A: Because they think men care.
My wife and I went to a seminar once with her father, a fundamentalist Christian. The speaker was supposed to be talking about the coexistence of Christianity and classical science, with discussion on the dinosaurs and the idea that God created the universe about a week before Adam and Eve, which, according to many bible scholars, was about 6500 years ago. This piqued my interest, so I went along.
The speaker started out talking about how there's this difference of opinion among scholars regarding how old the world is, and that "some people" say that, if you look at the biblical account of six days for the creation of the universe, the "days" are just metaphors for some periods of time that were significant to God, and not literal 24-hour periods that Man knows as "days." He continued to say that this line of thinking leads people to say that the dinosaurs could have lived for millions of years on a God-created Earth, and that they lived and died within the "day" described in the bible where God populated the Earth with animals.
I was just settling in, looking forward to an insightful discussion that had the opportunity to create some bridges with my (non Christian) beliefs on this subject. This would please my father-in-law, and we might have a better understanding of one another. But then, like a hammer, this guy brings out the statement, "But none of it's true!"
WTF?? I asked myself, since no one else would've listened.
The guy went into full rant mode, prattling on about how God created the dinosaur bones in the state we found them and buried them where we found them so we would have something to wonder about when we found them. The universe, he said, was created in exactly six days, meaning 24-hour periods, just like the bible says. Question not the word of God!!
Well, after sitting through the rest of this flood of rubbish, I asked my father-in-law what he thought of the whole thing. "Oh, I think he's right on." Now, I know he doesn't really think that way, but he was caught up in the reverie of the whole thing, mezmerized by a charlatan. The seminar probably warmed his heart for weeks. Many years later, I still won't discuss the topic with him. We have something of an armed truce where religious notions are concerned.
People seem to find it easy to use emphatically-delivered, easy to understand ideas to model their life on. I personally think that the universe is somewhat more complex than that, and like to apply my somewhat limited brain power to thinking about it. Sometimes, though, you run across gems of simplicity that are basic truths. The idea is to know how to identify them when you see them, I think.
Cheers.
JD
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
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goombah99: are you a machine?
Anonymous Coward: I am an Primate.
goombah99: are you sure you are not a machine?
Anonymous Coward: I am an Primate.. Really.