Also, there's a massive difference in the amount of time you spend with each. A few minutes with the vacuum versus hours or tens of hours for some gamers each week.
Finally, it's not really that frustrating if something interrupts your vacuuming session, certainly not compared to a crashed game.
As a single guy with an income of $30k to $40k, even with the student loan interest, I still paid federal taxes. I don't know what you're talking about it being a big gain.
They should pay you to walk around and be their good luck charm.
This is also commonly referred to as the mechanic effect. I get it some too, but only for computers, and definitely not for cars. I've been called into rooms because a jammed printer with angry blinking lights needed attention, and as I passed the threshold to the room the light went green and it started printing. Everyone, including me, agrees that jammed printers don't behave that way, but it's happened to me three times. (Over the course of fifteen years, but still.)
I think that frequently these arguments between atheists and agnostics theists get confusing because there are so many different types of atheists, agnostics, and theists, and these words mean different things to different people.... If somebody simply says "I don't know if god exists or not because I need proof", then he is an agnostic.
There seems to be a roughly even split between the "agnostics are sensible and atheists are militant" camp and the "agnostics are wishy-washy and atheists are sensible" camp. I see a lot of pointless semantic bickering among people who almost entirely agree with each other on all the actual key points.
My ideal religion would do nothing other than give me nice pleasing thoughts to think about, and has no bearing on history or science. For example, it seems probable that we will never really know what happens after we die. This might make a good area to have a belief, if living with the unknown is too unbearable. I personally have not found a religion that meets my stringent criteria, nor do I know how to get my mind how to believe something just because I wish I could, so I currently consider myself an agnostic but am willing to change if I discover a suitable belief system.
If you can make sure it also stays out of politics, let me know when you find it because I'll be the next to sign up. And if you haven't seen it, you might enjoy the movie "The Invention of Lying," which is a goofy romantic comedy but is wrapped around the concept of a character trying to deal with a similar situation.
I wish this would get posted and modded up first, and stop all the "well here's *MY* definition of what atheism is" back-and-forth that comes up every time. I would say the bickering over definition might be helpful if people learned from it, but I see the same names posting the same things over and over. I also wish people who didn't self-identify as part of a group would stop thinking they've got useful definitions of that group, whether it's atheist, feminist, or alien life form.
Shame. I highly recommend his book, "Surely You're Joking, Mister Feynman." It's interesting and funny, great tales of crazy ideas and safecracking adventures, and good science, too. It convinced me to major in physics, I liked it so much.
The future is a function of time, which is very well documented and observed. Thinking about the future requires some assumptions about time continuing as it has been, but since time is a key component of our universe I don't think that's unreasonable. To call an aspect of time undetectable in the same way a divine being is undetectable is an analogy I don't accept.
The assumption you are making, however, is that anything which we can't establish any proof for is real somehow constitutes a greater likelihood that it is made up.
I'd argue that discussion about the likelihood of it being made up is the wrong direction to take. I think the important question is, in the complete absence of evidence, what is the sensible course of action? And that answer is obviously to act as if the undetectable doesn't exist.
At any rate, I generally don't worry about hauntings since they seem to be allergic to me anyway.
No kidding. I was thrilled when a friend was getting married, and a bunch of people were spending a weekend at an old "haunted" house in Galveston. I'd heard stories about an apparition at the foot of the bed, people waking up with a long straight line scratched all the way down their back, and with sudden noises in the middle of the night which sounded like an entire bookshelf tipped over, with of course no physical change to show for it. I walked around all weekend waiting for something unusual to happen, but didn't detect a single thing out of the ordinary other than entirely human wedding interactions.
I think there's a couple of different types of unknown things, which often get lumped together in these kinds of discussions.
1) One type is claims of a repeatable ability, which I think is what Randi focuses on. In these cases, someone is saying "I can do X, even though there's no theory for why this should be possible". They're making a claim that it's a reliable, repeatable process. In other words, they're basically saying it *is* science, in a way, just one that's not understood yet. These sort of things absolutely should be put to the test. Also, because there's such a long track record of scams and fraud, you do build up a certain defiance to such propositions as they continually and repeatedly fail, making subsequent claims seem even more extraordinary. Still, if they can be tested, then if there's ever a valid process or ability, it can be found.
2) There's also stuff like you describe, which is something weird and simply unknown. Without a certain repeatability or consistency it's hard to actually put things to the test. There's an awful lot we do understand about how the universe works, and thus it's pretty easy, in the absence of a lot of evidence, to lean toward the assumption one of those knowable forces is at play, just acting in a way that's not being detected, rather than to assume it's some unknown force at play. A handful of personal observations is interesting, perhaps personally affecting, and makes a good story, but there's not enough there to drastically change the perceptions of the masses at large, and for good reasons it shouldn't. The best you can hope for is some way to investigate and record what's going on, and either build up some evidence or (more likely) figure out what known force is actually at play.
Either way, someone hearing this stuff second hand doesn't have much they can do with such anecdotes. That's not to say I disbelieve you. Honestly, in cases like these I mostly wish I'd been there to see it myself, out of the urge to investigate. But without any detailed evidence about what's going on, the most rational answers are either to go agnostic and just say "that's weird and we don't know" or play the odds and say "it's more likely to be a known force acting in an undetected way than an unknown force". I think it's a much less rational answer to try to pin the explanation on an unknown force, and a really huge stretch to say, specifically, "I know a ghost did it," thus ruling out all sorts of other possible unknown forces.
You know what? I've been posting here for five years, and I finally get my first post, and this is the crap I get in thanks? That's it, I quit. This dashslot game sucked anyway.
I can tell you if you take four years of Spanish and then try a semester of German, all the German will go in the same "language that's not English" slot in your brain, and you'll get the two mixed up badly. "Nostromos gehen por cervesa, ja?" But it won't touch your English abilities.
I noticed the double zvyyvba in there as translation for "million million". It's got a nice pattern to it. I think it should be the new substitute for xyzzy. It's also what I'm going to pick from now on whenever I get to a site that already has the first 100 instances of my name plus number taken and I need some random username. The best part is it'll have a secret hidden meaning only obsessive ROT-13'ers will ever recognize.
There are deep truths in what you say. I wonder sometimes what horrible things it says about the human condition that so many of our best ideas come from the mind's desperate attempts to escape our immediate surroundings. Thank goodness I can't play iPhone games in the shower or I'd never have a creative idea at all these days.
In a less cynical mindset, I might argue that things like long walks and showers are taking care of the body in order to free the mind (so, not boredom, just not overwhelming it with distractions), and you could achieve similar benefits any time you give yourself a few minutes to think freely.
That may be a correct statement of logic, but it's useless as philosophy. Philosophy with any value, or even an attempt at giving value, IS going to make assumptions and IS going to lead to conclusions. I think you and the GP are looking at different contexts.
Slashdot Mirror
What happens then? They make a sequel, of course.
Ha ha ha! I think this is the funniest thing I've read all week.
Also, there's a massive difference in the amount of time you spend with each. A few minutes with the vacuum versus hours or tens of hours for some gamers each week.
Finally, it's not really that frustrating if something interrupts your vacuuming session, certainly not compared to a crashed game.
As a single guy with an income of $30k to $40k, even with the student loan interest, I still paid federal taxes. I don't know what you're talking about it being a big gain.
They should pay you to walk around and be their good luck charm.
This is also commonly referred to as the mechanic effect. I get it some too, but only for computers, and definitely not for cars. I've been called into rooms because a jammed printer with angry blinking lights needed attention, and as I passed the threshold to the room the light went green and it started printing. Everyone, including me, agrees that jammed printers don't behave that way, but it's happened to me three times. (Over the course of fifteen years, but still.)
I think that frequently these arguments between atheists and agnostics theists get confusing because there are so many different types of atheists, agnostics, and theists, and these words mean different things to different people. ... If somebody simply says "I don't know if god exists or not because I need proof", then he is an agnostic.
There seems to be a roughly even split between the "agnostics are sensible and atheists are militant" camp and the "agnostics are wishy-washy and atheists are sensible" camp. I see a lot of pointless semantic bickering among people who almost entirely agree with each other on all the actual key points.
My ideal religion would do nothing other than give me nice pleasing thoughts to think about, and has no bearing on history or science. For example, it seems probable that we will never really know what happens after we die. This might make a good area to have a belief, if living with the unknown is too unbearable. I personally have not found a religion that meets my stringent criteria, nor do I know how to get my mind how to believe something just because I wish I could, so I currently consider myself an agnostic but am willing to change if I discover a suitable belief system.
If you can make sure it also stays out of politics, let me know when you find it because I'll be the next to sign up. And if you haven't seen it, you might enjoy the movie "The Invention of Lying," which is a goofy romantic comedy but is wrapped around the concept of a character trying to deal with a similar situation.
I wish this would get posted and modded up first, and stop all the "well here's *MY* definition of what atheism is" back-and-forth that comes up every time. I would say the bickering over definition might be helpful if people learned from it, but I see the same names posting the same things over and over. I also wish people who didn't self-identify as part of a group would stop thinking they've got useful definitions of that group, whether it's atheist, feminist, or alien life form.
I think I smell a new Tuesday late-night independent channel crime drama! "Vampire FBI: Supernatural Victims Unit"
Robert Anton Wilson is co-author of the Illuminatus! trilogy. That's about as zany and non-serious as anything I've ever read.
Shame. I highly recommend his book, "Surely You're Joking, Mister Feynman." It's interesting and funny, great tales of crazy ideas and safecracking adventures, and good science, too. It convinced me to major in physics, I liked it so much.
The future is a function of time, which is very well documented and observed. Thinking about the future requires some assumptions about time continuing as it has been, but since time is a key component of our universe I don't think that's unreasonable. To call an aspect of time undetectable in the same way a divine being is undetectable is an analogy I don't accept.
The assumption you are making, however, is that anything which we can't establish any proof for is real somehow constitutes a greater likelihood that it is made up.
I'd argue that discussion about the likelihood of it being made up is the wrong direction to take. I think the important question is, in the complete absence of evidence, what is the sensible course of action? And that answer is obviously to act as if the undetectable doesn't exist.
At any rate, I generally don't worry about hauntings since they seem to be allergic to me anyway.
No kidding. I was thrilled when a friend was getting married, and a bunch of people were spending a weekend at an old "haunted" house in Galveston. I'd heard stories about an apparition at the foot of the bed, people waking up with a long straight line scratched all the way down their back, and with sudden noises in the middle of the night which sounded like an entire bookshelf tipped over, with of course no physical change to show for it. I walked around all weekend waiting for something unusual to happen, but didn't detect a single thing out of the ordinary other than entirely human wedding interactions.
I think there's a couple of different types of unknown things, which often get lumped together in these kinds of discussions.
1) One type is claims of a repeatable ability, which I think is what Randi focuses on. In these cases, someone is saying "I can do X, even though there's no theory for why this should be possible". They're making a claim that it's a reliable, repeatable process. In other words, they're basically saying it *is* science, in a way, just one that's not understood yet. These sort of things absolutely should be put to the test. Also, because there's such a long track record of scams and fraud, you do build up a certain defiance to such propositions as they continually and repeatedly fail, making subsequent claims seem even more extraordinary. Still, if they can be tested, then if there's ever a valid process or ability, it can be found.
2) There's also stuff like you describe, which is something weird and simply unknown. Without a certain repeatability or consistency it's hard to actually put things to the test. There's an awful lot we do understand about how the universe works, and thus it's pretty easy, in the absence of a lot of evidence, to lean toward the assumption one of those knowable forces is at play, just acting in a way that's not being detected, rather than to assume it's some unknown force at play. A handful of personal observations is interesting, perhaps personally affecting, and makes a good story, but there's not enough there to drastically change the perceptions of the masses at large, and for good reasons it shouldn't. The best you can hope for is some way to investigate and record what's going on, and either build up some evidence or (more likely) figure out what known force is actually at play.
Either way, someone hearing this stuff second hand doesn't have much they can do with such anecdotes. That's not to say I disbelieve you. Honestly, in cases like these I mostly wish I'd been there to see it myself, out of the urge to investigate. But without any detailed evidence about what's going on, the most rational answers are either to go agnostic and just say "that's weird and we don't know" or play the odds and say "it's more likely to be a known force acting in an undetected way than an unknown force". I think it's a much less rational answer to try to pin the explanation on an unknown force, and a really huge stretch to say, specifically, "I know a ghost did it," thus ruling out all sorts of other possible unknown forces.
Great, now you're giving everybody my password right after I've posted the user name.
Couldn't say. It was a secret code in a very early video game, and since then a lot of other games have snuck it in somewhere.
You know what? I've been posting here for five years, and I finally get my first post, and this is the crap I get in thanks? That's it, I quit. This dashslot game sucked anyway.
I can tell you if you take four years of Spanish and then try a semester of German, all the German will go in the same "language that's not English" slot in your brain, and you'll get the two mixed up badly. "Nostromos gehen por cervesa, ja?" But it won't touch your English abilities.
That's okay, I'm sure zvyyvba01 will still be available.
I noticed the double zvyyvba in there as translation for "million million". It's got a nice pattern to it. I think it should be the new substitute for xyzzy. It's also what I'm going to pick from now on whenever I get to a site that already has the first 100 instances of my name plus number taken and I need some random username. The best part is it'll have a secret hidden meaning only obsessive ROT-13'ers will ever recognize.
Subject says it all!
He he he he he.
Seriously, though, wait until tomorrow. It'll all go away.
Totally insecure. That's why I just run a quadruple pass ROT-13. That's three times more secure than regular ROT-13.
There are deep truths in what you say. I wonder sometimes what horrible things it says about the human condition that so many of our best ideas come from the mind's desperate attempts to escape our immediate surroundings. Thank goodness I can't play iPhone games in the shower or I'd never have a creative idea at all these days.
In a less cynical mindset, I might argue that things like long walks and showers are taking care of the body in order to free the mind (so, not boredom, just not overwhelming it with distractions), and you could achieve similar benefits any time you give yourself a few minutes to think freely.
1. If X then X.
That may be a correct statement of logic, but it's useless as philosophy. Philosophy with any value, or even an attempt at giving value, IS going to make assumptions and IS going to lead to conclusions. I think you and the GP are looking at different contexts.
Digi-smithereens?