Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Scottish on October 23, 2005, 10:30:14 am
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It's long been held that a Theory is only right until someone comes along and proves it wrong, yes?
So does that mean there's a God because no-one's come along and proven there isn't?
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There isn't a God.
This is also true, because nobody has come along to prove there is.
That's where the problem is... as far as I'm concerned.
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Hmmm. But going by a law of 'more evidence means more right' then the accumulation of other religions saying the Judaistic concept of Yahweh and his subsequent 'reworkings' is completely wrong, Science wins.
There is no 'God'.
But conversely, the accumulation of those religions holds vastly more weight than Science, so Science loses and God comes back to life.
Maybe that's what happened at the Crucifiction.
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God is outside science. By nature it/she/he/them exists within a construct beyond measurement or human conception, and intended to be such. Depending on your cynicism towards religion, that's either for reasons of needing Belief-with-a-capital-B, or because scientific investigation could destroy the control a belief structure wields over its followers.
So God - or Odin, or Allah, or Shiva, etc - is not a theory in any case because it cannot be proven or disproven. I'd argue that faith is essentially worthless if it can be proven anyways, because the value of it is in the effort of belief.
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Yep.
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Originally posted by Scottish
It's long been held that a Theory is only right until someone comes along and proves it wrong, yes?
So does that mean there's a God because no-one's come along and proven there isn't?
Nope. You've got it all the wrong way around.
An unsupported claim is an assertion. If you can gather scientific, testable evidence then it becomes a hypothesis. If you can gather enough evidence that it's the only hypothesis left standing (or that the others only differ on minor details) you can call it a theory. A theory remains the best answer we have to explain what we can observe until new evidence comes along to prove it wrong. At that point the theory is either discarded (if there is a better explaination) or still used as the best explaination but with the advisory that we know that it is deeply flawed and may not always give the right answer (If no one knows why the hell it's not working).
That God exists is an assertion. There is no scientific proof for his existance that can stand up to peer review. It hasn't ever got around to even becoming a scientific hypothesis. There simply isn't enough testable evidence for that.
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'God exists' is a Theory, just not a Scientific one.
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Well, we are talking about it in the realms of empirical evidence, aren't we?
The 'theory is correct until disproven' is basically the scientific one (deriving from the scientific or empirical methodology), unless you want to stretch to very vague and essentially meaningless generalisations for proof or disproof. Within context, that'd refer to scientific hypothesis, because AFAIK the only other meaning of 'theory' not relating to testable or tested evidence(empirical investigation) is belief.
In which case it'd be 'God exists' to be a belief, which is correct, but then potentially excludes the concepts of proof or disproof.
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Originally posted by Scottish
'God exists' is a Theory, just not a Scientific one.
Then it has nothing to do with science at all. Would you attempt to win a game of chess with backgammon pieces and dice?
You can't just shoehorn God into science by claiming that it's not a scientific theory. The only things in science are scientific theories.
Science has never attempted to disprove the existance of God because there has never been any evidence that required it to be disproved.
Faith is a complete seperate matter from science same as the two board games I mentioned.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Then it has nothing to do with science at all. Would you attempt to win a game of chess with backgammon pieces and dice?
If I could, you would only whine about me not following the rules of Chess.
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A Quick Science-VS-Religion Question
These are never quick...
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Yeah, but a 'Big Debate' thread woulda been closed instantly.
It's all in the marketting....
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Originally posted by Scottish
If I could, you would only whine about me not following the rules of Chess.
Nope. I'm a bully remember. Just before being checkmated I'd knock all your pieces over, overturn the board and claim victory :D
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I take it you've never seen Bottom?
Spiderman always wins against Frozen Prawns.
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Of course I've seen Bottom. Who say you get to be Spiderman? *Waves fist menacingly*
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It's my fictional antique ivory/plastic/frozen-prawn 'chess' set!
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So the real question is, can faith co-exist alongside Science. If faith/belief exists beyond science, and does not need explainations and proofs, can a modern human being believe in quantum physics, evolution and all that good stuff, but be guided by faith in those areas where Science, by it's very nature, can not and does not go. Into the realm of the "why". That's basically my position
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Originally posted by Scottish
It's long been held that a Theory is only right until someone comes along and proves it wrong, yes?
So does that mean there's a God because no-one's come along and proven there isn't?
Depends on which theory.
If you mean Scientific Theory, then God is neither; it's like saying that on the other side of the galaxy is a race of four-legged aliens, noone can prove or disprove you.
But if you mean a theory in common usage (which is basicallya guess backed up by reasons from a hunch to a concrete fact) then you could say that yes, God is a theory.
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Originally posted by Scottish
It's long been held that a Theory is only right until someone comes along and proves it wrong, yes?
So does that mean there's a God because no-one's come along and proven there isn't?
wrong
A theory is considered "correct" if it A) Fits the observed evidenced and B) Not contradicted by other evidence
The "existance of God" doesn't fit qualification A
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Burning bush? Wall of fire? Two huge stone tablets with stuff written on them?
You might not be able to observe them, but someone did. So it fits.
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Scottish: did _you_ observe them? Did anyone you know observe them? can anyone PROVE they were observed?
Just beause it is written in a book doesn't make it true.
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That's only valid if we take a literal reading of the Bible as being 100% true. There's a lot there - especially Old Testament stuff - that's as much myth as it is history, if you try to look at it impartially, so we cannot just blanket accept all of it as being "as it happened" without that key aspect of faith. Besides, none of those things are reproducable, which is very important - actually essential - for the validation of any theory.
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Well the Theory of Relativity - meaning it's most pertainent examples - can't be demonstrated reliably under any conditions.
And I'm pretty sure neither of you have ever observed it in action, nor know of anyone who has.
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yes it can, and it has been
ignorance is not an excuse
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No, it's hasn't.
They've demonstrated ASPECTS of it, but they've yet to reliably demonstrate the whole 'time bendy' part of it. And even if they managed to, there's still the small matter of its effects being entirely subjective and therefore ridiculously unreliable.
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I believe there was a satelite launched quite recently designed to test just that, actually. They can be tested, it just takes rediculous amounts of hardware to look at it as it occurs over such a grand scope. You cannot test for God, therefore science can not describe his existance one way or another.
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That measured the curvature of space caused by the presence of Earth's gravitational field - not the time-bendy stuff.
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Originally posted by Scottish
No, it's hasn't.
They've demonstrated ASPECTS of it, but they've yet to reliably demonstrate the whole 'time bendy' part of it. And even if they managed to, there's still the small matter of its effects being entirely subjective and therefore ridiculously unreliable.
Incorrect. The predicted time dilation effects were recorded on board a Concorde jet using a pair of highly sensitive clocks.
This has been a public service announcement.
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Originally posted by Scottish
Well the Theory of Relativity - meaning it's most pertainent examples - can't be demonstrated reliably under any conditions.
And I'm pretty sure neither of you have ever observed it in action, nor know of anyone who has.
It has been observed. Its fairly easy to observe and line up all the numbers. For me, I don't do the math so well so I just understand the before and after.
God is frankly outside of the scientific realm. Since God has not been observed or not observed its quite hard to do any sort of scientific testing. And I think its honestly better that way. Our beliefs and scientific observation do not have to conflict.
Religion is (or can be) a guide to helping friends, neighbors, family and trying to do the right thing. Science is a guide to why a hammer drops drop on your toe and then explains is a very easy to demonstrate way why it hurts.
Different things for different people so I guess these meanings can only be imparted on myself :)
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Incorrect. The predicted time dilation effects were recorded on board a Concorde jet using a pair of highly sensitive clocks.
This has been a public service announcement.
All of which can be explained by simple probability. If you accelerate ****, it undergoes stresses. These stresses could very easily 'quirk' the [presumably] caesium clocks used.
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Originally posted by Scottish
That measured the curvature of space caused by the presence of Earth's gravitational field - not the time-bendy stuff.
According to relativity, it's all essentially the same stuff. Unless you're refering to time dialation effects, which are another matter entirely. And which have been demonstrated under a variety of conditions.
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I cite Pastafarianism.
Just because things look to be following a predicted pattern doesn't mean they are.
Only the very insane/devoted believe the decline of pirates has actually lead to an increase in global temperatures - but the funny little graph still holds true.
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Science looks at the pattern and determines the most likely cause given all of the available data. Trying to "prove God" always starts with asserting the root cause and then trying to match up data. That's the exact inverse of any form of science, and is also wholly invalid from a neutral standpoint because you're not open to other alternatives. And no matter how many quirks of existing theories anyone cites, this fact doesn't change.
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The title of this thread is wrong.
It should be something like "Pointless Religion vs. Science Question", "Debate Practice", or "Potential Flame War"
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"Caution: Flame War in Progress. Do Not Enter."
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Originally posted by StratComm
Trying to "prove God" always starts with asserting the root cause and then trying to match up data. That's the exact inverse of any form of science, and is also wholly invalid from a neutral standpoint because you're not open to other alternatives. And no matter how many quirks of existing theories anyone cites, this fact doesn't change.
But 'we' are right, so why would 'we' even want to change?
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Originally posted by Swantz
The title of this thread is wrong.
It should be something like "Pointless Religion vs. Science Question", "Debate Practice", or "Potential Flame War"
Who says the big, fun questions have to have a point to them? Why are people so utilitarian all the time?
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Originally posted by Scottish
But 'we' are right, so why would 'we' even want to change?
Which is why God does not lie within the scientific realm. Period. Science is BY DEFINITION always open to change.
Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Who says the big, fun questions have to have a point to them? Why are people so utilitarian all the time?
I think the error really lies in "A quick [...] question"
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Originally posted by Scottish
All of which can be explained by simple probability. If you accelerate ****, it undergoes stresses. These stresses could very easily 'quirk' the [presumably] caesium clocks used.
you could make up a pretty nice "How **** Accelerates" theory because all that constinency must lie within the **** itself right?
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Don't get snippy, boy.
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Originally posted by IceFire
Science is a guide to why a hammer drops drop on your toe and then explains is a very easy to demonstrate way why it hurts.
That's the best definition of science I've ever heard :p
As a side note, this thread title is the biggest oxymoron in all of recorded human history :p
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Originally posted by Scottish
Don't get snippy, boy.
Hey now it's not my fault your attempted rebuttal was kinda stupid..
OLD MAN hahahaha take THAT ICE BURRRRRRN
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Originally posted by IceFire
Science is a guide to why a hammer drops drop on your toe and then explains is a very easy to demonstrate way why it hurts.
Engineering is determining how to prevent this.
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf
Engineering is determining how to prevent this.
I thought that was common sense.:lol:
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Quiet. Engineering is far superior to your "common sense".
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Who says the big, fun questions have to have a point to them? Why are people so utilitarian all the time?
You, sir, get a cookie.
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Originally posted by Scottish
Burning bush? Wall of fire? Two huge stone tablets with stuff written on them?
I can find you more people who will swear blind that they've been anally probed. Does that mean that aliens definately exist?
And they are actual people alive today.
Furthermore there are more people of other religions who can point to similar evidence for their faiths. Which means that your God is a lying bastard about that whole "no Gods apart from me" by your logic.
Originally posted by Scottish
All of which can be explained by simple probability. If you accelerate ****, it undergoes stresses. These stresses could very easily 'quirk' the [presumably] caesium clocks used.
By exactly the amount relativity predicted? That's one hell of a coincidence.
And how come experiments like that always result in time dilation as expected rather than time compression? Have you got a "simple" answer for that that isn't going to be a easily disprovable assertion like your earlier claim that it hadn't been tested at all?
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In order for god to be a theory, it has to be testable. A theory is not merely disproven, it makes predictions which are repeatable and accurate. Has this god 'theory' made any predictions? Are they repeatable? If no to the former, it's not a theory at all. If no to the latter, it's a disproved hypothesis.
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Originally posted by Scottish
Burning bush? Wall of fire? Two huge stone tablets with stuff written on them?
You might not be able to observe them, but someone did. So it fits.
The question there is - did they?
The other question is - what makes these things evidence of God, specifically? Is this an observation - assuming they are - that is actual evidence of a/the 'divine'? If someone hears the voice of God, is it actually the voice of God? How do we know?
Because eventually you get this chain of 'evidence' that leads to the definitively unknown, and moreso which is by nature intended to be known.
It's like... with science, we reach some sort of solidity point, some base level where we can be confident we have actual evidence, and then work forwards from that. With religious 'evidence', we end up supposing meanings and origins that ultimately lead to the intangible.
So the more we move that way, the less certainty we can have that we're moving 'correctly'. When you go from 'bush', to 'bush speaking' to 'god speaking through bush'*, to 'god', you're moving quite far into the abstract, and doing so very quickly.
*no, not that Bush.......
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It isn't even a theory. If you remember a while back I specifically asked for someone to post the Intelligent Design theory and I got nothing more than a couple of sentences that amounted to nothing more than
"There are some things I don't understand. Science can explain them but I don't believe it so God must have done it"
That's not scientifically testable and that's the closest the ID proponents have ever come to a theory of God.
That's piss poor as a scientific theory. Science doesn't care what you can't wrap your puny little mind around.
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Originally posted by karajorma
It isn't even a theory. If you remember a while back I specifically asked for someone to post the Intelligent Design theory and I got nothing more than a couple of sentences that amounted to nothing more than
"There are some things I don't understand. Science can explain them but I don't believe it so God must have done it"
That's not scientifically testable and that's the closest the ID proponents have ever come to a theory of God.
That's piss poor as a scientific theory. Science doesn't care what you can't wrap your puny little mind around.
As an aside.....
During the ID trial in the States, one of the ID proponents was given the US National Academies of Sciences' definition of a scientific theory. He conceded that ID not only didn't fit that, but proposed an alternate definition of a theory so broad as to admit astrology. He also conceded that definition was essentially identical to the NAS' statement of a hypothesis.
Essentially, he admitted ID was not a scientific theory unless you redefined the meaning of a scientific theory.
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they have demostrated the time bendy part by putting an atonic clock in a low earth orbit and detecting EXACTLY the expected ammount of time descrepency between it and an identical atomic clock on the ground
pwnd
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Incorrect. The predicted time dilation effects were recorded on board a Concorde jet using a pair of highly sensitive clocks.
This has been a public service announcement.
Modern communication satellites require corrections for relativistic effects. Time dialation is a very real and observable effect. If it did not occur the speed of light wouldn't be a constant and so electromagnetism wouldn't function. If that didn't work, you wouldn't be here talking about how time dialtion doesn't exist.
Originally posted by Scottish
But 'we' are right, so why would 'we' even want to change?
Which is why you are wrong. Going in with a preconceived notion means you have already failed. The scientific method is adaptive, dogma is merely reactive.
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Originally posted by Scottish
But 'we' are right, so why would 'we' even want to change?
Hubris (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hubris)
how can you argue with someone who uses the logic "I say X, therefore X"
you don't - they're clinically delusional, you send the (wo)men with white jackets!
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That would require sending the entire human race away with the people in white jackets, which presents two main problems:
1. We don't have any institution large enough to hold the entire human race.
2. The last person would have to incarcerate himself.
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not the _entire_ just a large chunk
1) Yes we do - it's called earth.. the intelligent ones of us develop efficient interstellar space travel, and blockaid all the crazies inside Sol System
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
1. We don't have any institution large enough to hold the entire human race.
Earth.
Would explain a lot if it was, too.........
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The intelligent ones, however, will have children, a certain percentage of whom will be delusional.
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99.9%.
With an error of +/- 0.1%
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Actually about 17% of americans are Atheist/agnostic
i bet those numbers are a bit higher in europe
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The most intelligent among us are guilty of the same fallacies as those at the middle and back of the curve. We all have things we want to believe badly enough to distort the external truth.
Kazan, you're assuming that atheism corresponds 1/1 with intelligence. That is playing with some very hot fire.
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Ford Prefect: the most intelligent ones can be shown their wrong, and will accept it instead of definantly saying "we're right, you're wrong - no matter what you show me!"
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Originally posted by Kazan
Ford Prefect: the most intelligent ones can be shown their wrong, and will accept it instead of definantly saying "we're right, you're wrong - no matter what you show me!"
That's not exactly synonymously with aetheism or agnosticism though, is it? I mean, you can't prove or disprove a concept like God, so you can't show an aetheist or - for example - a Christian they are wrong in that.
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an atheist is taking the wise position of not supporting something they don't have evidence for
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Originally posted by Ace
Going in with a preconceived notion means you have already failed.
Only if my preconceived notion is wrong.
If I magically decided F=MA simply because I decided it does, I wouldn't be wrong, would I?
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an atheist is taking the wise position of not supporting something they don't have evidence for
So what? You're going to measure intelligence according to the logic of a single conclusion? Human intellect is not binary code. You have to look at the aggregate of all a person has said and done in order to even begin thinking about intelligence. We don't even really know what intelligence is.
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
So what? You're going to measure intelligence according to the logic of a single conclusion? Human intellect is not binary code. You have to look at the aggregate of all a person has said and done in order to even begin thinking about intelligence. We don't even really know what intelligence is.
Yes we do. It's a complex series of autonomic responses based upon stimuli progressing through your 'mind'.
Basically, it's the quasi-random progression of electrical impulses through an ordered matrix of neurons which are linked to senses to provide stimulii and muscle tissue to provide interaction.
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Originally posted by Scottish
Only if my preconceived notion is wrong.
If I magically decided F=MA simply because I decided it does, I wouldn't be wrong, would I?
...and unless you do observations to see that your idea (F=MA) matches with reality you don't know that it does.
The problem occurs when you make your observations, they contradict your idea and you're not willing to make new ones (say it's actually F=MA^2 in the universe in question, not F=MA) and also when you come up with ideas that are inherintly untestable. (such as invisible pink unicorns)
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So basically we're stuck with:
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one's around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
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yes
before you ask: we can put a microphone there and be 1000 miles away and detect the sound, we can put a seismograph and detect the impact tremor (sound=vibration)
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But it does still make a sound.
EDIT: Nuts to you and your post-editting antics!
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and that has no relevance upon this discussion
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Yes we do. It's a complex series of autonomic responses based upon stimuli progressing through your 'mind'.
Basically, it's the quasi-random progression of electrical impulses through an ordered matrix of neurons which are linked to senses to provide stimulii and muscle tissue to provide interaction.
That is a neurological explanation of intelligence. It doesn't answer the numerous psychological questions about what defines it.
Kazan, the point of that question is this: We know that it's going to produce a vibration whether we're present or not, but is a vibration still a sound if no one is perceiving it? It's an unanswerable question.
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ford prefect: yes it is still a sound - the most generic definition of sound is vibration moving through a fluid (gas, plasma, liquid) medium
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The real question in the paradox of the tree is not, in fact, whether there is a sound, but whether it matters without an observer. It's a philosophical question, not a scientific question.
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Originally posted by Scottish
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one's around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
:lol:
Although supposedly one of the great questions of metaphysics the "If a tree fell down..." question only exists to seperate those who understand the subject at hand from those who are merely parrotting the ideas that they
a) Have never thought about or
b) Are in capable of understanding.
Anyone who believes whether the tree made a noise or not is a valid question obviously does not.
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But implicit in the definition is our perception of it. The question is not, "Does a tree produce a vibration in the air when it falls?" Of course it does. The question is, how can we know something's true nature if it is beyond our perception? It's an empistemological question, not a scientific one, and if you think you have the answer, you haven't thought about the question in the context in which it was intended.
[EDIT]: Wow, same rebuttal three times. That's impressive.
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our perception is only implicit in older definitions.
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So you're saying... what? Philosophy is antiquated?
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
That is a neurological explanation of intelligence. It doesn't answer the numerous psychological questions about what defines it.
Yes it does.
As you learn, things are integrated into your memory next-to other things you associate with it. This forms a huge, complicated web.
Stimuli start an electrical impulse. It then progresses through your brain, starting at the memory-point of whatever you saw/hear/tasted/whatever, following the 'train of thought' through several associated memory pieces till it eventually ends up in one of the action-memory portions of your mind. At which time a response is triggered.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Although supposedly one of the great questions of metaphysics the "If a tree fell down..." question only exists to seperate those who understand the subject at hand from those who are merely parrotting the ideas that they
a) Have never thought about or
b) Are in capable of understanding.
Anyone who believes whether the tree made a noise or not is a valid question obviously does not.
Or maybe that'd just what they told you because they felt bad telling you you were just plain wrong.
"If you think A, go left. If you think B, go right..."
A think they're great. B think they're great. Both sides think the other side were misled.
And all the while, I'm standing in a little circle labelled 'C', coordinating the destruction of the rainforest.
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Scottish that reminds me of what a Vorlon once said - "The truth is a three edge sword: your side, their side, and the truth"
Your Side = 1 googleplex lightyears from 'the truth'
Our side = 1 lightyear from the truth
i choose ourside
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Originally posted by Scottish
Or maybe that'd just what they told you because they felt bad telling you you were just plain wrong.
Or maybe you're just talking bollocks because you don't have the faintest clue what I meant.
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Originally posted by Kazan
Scottish that reminds me of what a Vorlon once said - "The truth is a three edge sword: your side, their side, and the truth"
Your Side = 1 googleplex lightyears from 'the truth'
Our side = 1 lightyear from the truth
i choose ourside
It's impossible to determine what the truth is if we do not have an unbiased view. We can only see a very small fraction of the universe. Claiming we even know which way truth tends is a feat of ego without equal.
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Originally posted by Scottish
Yes it does.
As you learn, things are integrated into your memory next-to other things you associate with it. This forms a huge, complicated web.
Stimuli start an electrical impulse. It then progresses through your brain, starting at the memory-point of whatever you saw/hear/tasted/whatever, following the 'train of thought' through several associated memory pieces till it eventually ends up in one of the action-memory portions of your mind. At which time a response is triggered.
Okay, we haven't gotten anywhere with that. You're just rattling off neurological principles concerning cognition. Who is intelligent? What faculties set the standard? Analytical? Social? Mathematic? Linguistic? The point I was originally making, (ages ago seemingly), was that when we're discussing world issues, we just throw around this vague, generic word that splits people into those who will understand and those who won't. But the different ways in which "intelligence" manifests itself would indicate that this is a simplistic view.
Kazan, normally I would just forget it, but I really must know what makes a question of perception antiquated.
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Originally posted by Kazan
Scottish that reminds me of what a Vorlon once said - "The truth is a three edge sword: your side, their side, and the truth"
Your Side = 1 googleplex lightyears from 'the truth'
Our side = 1 lightyear from the truth
i choose ourside
I choose truth.
Kara:
Or maybe you're just talking bollocks because you don't have the faintest clue what I meant.
Maybe I know exactly what you mean, but I'm subtely ridiculing you.
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Originally posted by Scottish
I choose truth.
Didn't you pay attention?
Originally posted by Grey Wolf
Claiming we even know which way truth tends is a feat of ego without equal.
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And?
Just because I have a huge ego doesn't make me any less right.
It's like going:
< Scott> The sky is blue!
< Retard> YOU HAVE BIG HANDS, SO THE SKY IS PINK!
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Originally posted by Scottish
Maybe I know exactly what you mean, but I'm subtely ridiculing you.
I doubt it. Even if you were you'd be failing at it spectacularly cause you're only making yourself look like a fool in front of the other board members by doing it.
Or do you dislike them all too? :lol:
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Urgh. I'd've thought my opinions of this place and it's members would've been made abundantly clear by now.
Christ, you people are slow on the uptake.
Actually, I might go draw some diagrams. Maybe that'd help?
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If it gets you banned faster I'm all for it. Knock yourself out.
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Okay, gimme like....10 minutes.
I need to put the diagrams in the proper context.
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Scottish you're more arrogant than Mongoose and liberator - and that's saying a lot
You have no evidence to back up your position - therefore you are delusional to consider yourself right
"return freerepublic.com everyone doubleplus good duckspeak"
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All will make sense in about....2 minutes maybe.
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Ok, as amusing as this was over the first couple pages, this has reached pointlessness. Thread closed. If you have any issues my PM box is always open.