Okay, I thought you were quite a reasonable guy until that last post, and even people that do not have the same viewpoint as I do will agree that the post was completely illogical and therefore unsuited for any sort of argument.
Uh-huh. Sure.
Dude, stop watching Star Trek, and look at the world as a person for once. We aren't Vulcans, come on. What will it accomplish, looking at the world with logic? Its not even possible. There's nothing logical about the world. Logic can even be considered a mental phenomenon in which the brain tries put non coherent events into some sort of perspective, trying to make sense out of it. But in the end its just the brains way of fooling itself, so that it doesen't have to worry so much.
I haven't seen a single episode of Star Trek in my life.
And looking at the world as individual people is
exactly what has kept us down for so long. Almost every stupid action of human experience can be explained by this lack of a universal perspective and going by the foolish common sense instead. And there is nothing logical about the world? Where did that statement come from? If that is true, why do the laws of science work with such accuracy today?
In fact,
intuition is the brain's way of fooling itself and limiting itself to an extremely narrow perspective, because while logic is something that all humans can agree on, intuition is completely dependent on life conditions and therefore varies from person to person.
Also, we not only think by logic, but also argue by logic, so in other words, you are essentially trying to mask the fact that your stance cannot stand up to an argument.
And people ARE NOT equal to numbers. It is Fact. It is Truth. Trying to believe that people are numbers is just a way to dissasociate oneself from the truth. Basically thinking so is like saying, "Oh, well, if 17 million people will be killed, if they're equal to numbers, thats not to bad. See I don't really care about numbers, and if people are like numbers, I don't really care out them either." Now how does that sound? Some one thinking with logic, or someone trying to just close their eyes to the horrors of the world?
The first part of that is just silly; it is just like something from the religion thread.
People ARE equal to numbers. It is Fact. It is Truth. Trying to believe that people are anything but numbers is just a way to disassociate oneself from the truth.
And the entire concept of "horror" has no meaning outside the individual.
Bin Laden did not find his recent act horrifying at all - in fact, he said that it was the work of god - while most of the world despised it. Therefore, this is concept is to subjective at least to some extent. The universe can be said to operate on indifference.
!7 million deaths is a horrible thing. 1 death is a horrible thing. And trying to trivialize it by turning it into math equasions, isn't a good way of handling it. Try going outside and look at people. Look at how they live. They are living people, with lives and families. Can you really look at them as just a number? A part of a social machine? Not as an individual? Can you really just shrug off 17 million deaths as just a statistic? I know I can't.
I can look at them as sentient individuals for the purposes of daily life, but when dealing with higher issues that require logical thought, they certainly are just parts of a much larger machine, and since there are so many of them, they can be numbered for easier computations. You need to carefully observe them and look much more deeply at how they live, and then you too will be able to form a set of logical rules for explaining their affairs. And why is one death so horrible anyway, considering that people are dying every second? (and others are being born to take their place)
Think of the cells in your body, for example. Each cell obviously has some level of sentience, but it cannot quite match the capabilities of the body as a whole. Similarly, the entire human civilization can be thought of as a great organism in itself of which humans form the constituent parts, and one that is much more powerful than the individuals.
I'm my humble oppinion, we should look at the world with that "human instinct", becasue its there for a reason.
That is really nonsense; just ask anyone who is in the field of science or math right now.
Instinct is exactly what people should avoid
at all costs, as it frequently turns out to be wrong, and people can base just about any crazy actions on this "instinct." The reason that this intuition exists is that every human grows up under different conditions and has a different perspective of his or her surroundings, and the system of knowledge assimilation has its subtle effect on the thinking processes. Where do you think Hitler came up with some of his ideas?
One counterintuitive thing I can think of is that it can be proved that all geometric lines, regardless of their length, have the same number of points on them. Not only that, but all 2D planes, 3D cubes and nD objects in general of any size all have equally as many points as a short line. This sounds kind of strange going by our common sense, but it is mathematically and logically sound. Also, if we go by our intuition alone (which by the way is formed by our life experiences, and not anything that we are born with), both the quantum physics and the general relativity theory would be really nonsensical. Are you telling me that you contest both of these theories simply because they do not fit with your "intuition?"
