Imagine time as a solid object.
Imagine this solid object was created by an explosion of matter that turned into a web-like block of strands. If you repeated this explosion, the results would be strands that were in different locations than the last time. Each explosion is completely unpredictable.
Imagine the multiverse as every possible explosion of matter in this form. Each strand is a life.
Our four-dimensional unit is one particular result; time is simply us moving through those strands from the center of the explosion to the outer perimeter. We might not know what direction is coming next, but the way the strand moves is already set in stone.
But consider for a moment, that we live in a kind of Twilight Zone, where each one of us moving through those strands is a free-willed person. Everything is fine and dandy as long as our decisions go along with the route. But the moment we start trying to think outside the box, so to speak, we're going to be met with failure and massive amounts of almost inexplicable resistance from the world around us, because no matter how hard we try, we can't deviate from the path of the strand.
That's the Black Iron Prison.
in this metaphor, what does it mean to 'go along with the route'? What is 'the path of the strand'?
Correct me if I've got it twisted -- are you saying
that the universe is deterministic
except for human decisions
which alter the predestined sequence of events,
and that triggers some force ("the black iron prison") to steer things back towards the "original" outcome?
If everything is preordained, then your apparent resistance to the preordained is also preordained.
What you perceive as free will is an artifact of your brain being able to monitor itself, but not being able to predict its own actions. I'm not convinced it is a useful concept. How would you measure whether any given entity had free will or not? If you can't tell the difference, why bother with the distinction?
I just told you that the pathway is preordained and your thinking isn't. It's like playing a video game where if you're walking down a hallway and the hallway turns right, you suddenly feel like going left. What happens? You walk into a wall.
A really good analogy is a great game called The Stanley Parable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Leb6ODf97ug
In this metaphor, the black iron prison is an external force--like a higher power--which resists human decisions?
Do all decisions meet resistance? If not, what is the difference between them?
What does this mean for us decision makers?
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 01:41:30 PM
But consider for a moment, that we live in a kind of Twilight Zone, where each one of us moving through those strands is a free-willed person. Everything is fine and dandy as long as our decisions go along with the route. But the moment we start trying to think outside the box, so to speak, we're going to be met with failure and massive amounts of almost inexplicable resistance from the world around us, because no matter how hard we try, we can't deviate from the path of the strand.
That's one explanation.
The other is that the gods are a pack of pricks who get upset when their model train jumps the tracks.
The Black Iron Prison, in this idea, is a construct, perhaps with some semblance of a force that emanates from it.
Decisions that "go along with" the program don't meet resistance. You "feel" like you made the right choice.
If you suddenly try to actually stop and change things - which is rare, probably - then you're going to get literally any resistance possible. Try to tell another human being about this sort of thing in one of these moments, and they'll come up with some dumb line that makes almost no sense. They'll just say shit like "this makes me uncomfortable, goodbye" and they'll disengage. Completely. Because they're not real. They're just part of the program. And the program needs you to play along.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 07, 2020, 02:58:00 PM
The other is that the gods are a pack of pricks who get upset when their model train jumps the tracks.
I actually don't disagree with this and I think it's basically the same idea, just a different way of putting it.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 03:00:31 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 07, 2020, 02:58:00 PM
The other is that the gods are a pack of pricks who get upset when their model train jumps the tracks.
I actually don't disagree with this and I think it's basically the same idea, just a different way of putting it.
I only prefer my model because I can't get revenge on an uncaring void. Getting revenge on a few supernatural arse biscuits might be possible.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 02:40:24 PM
I just told you that the pathway is preordained and your thinking isn't.
Why should the processes underlying my brain function be distinct from every other physical process in the universe? There's nothing magical about the human brain.
You're not
outside this game, you're stuck in it with the rest of us.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 07, 2020, 03:24:11 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 02:40:24 PM
I just told you that the pathway is preordained and your thinking isn't.
Why should the processes underlying my brain function be distinct from every other physical process in the universe? There's nothing magical about the human brain.
You're not outside this game, you're stuck in it with the rest of us.
Pretty sure that free will wouldn't be a concern if events are preordained. It would be like watching a movie for the 5th time, except it's so boring you don't actually ever remember any details.
The universe as
Gigli.
We were taught about virtual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle) particle annihilation (and separation) where charges pop in and out.
From a classical matter perspective the universe could be deterministic (everything can be extrapolated out from the initial bang as a sequence of interactions from the start to the heat death).
If random white noise even of minuscule energy levels are introduced you have a random/pseudorandom effect and the physical sequence is no longer entirely deterministic
My impression is that human decision making is not "free", it's usually predetermined by internal and environmental factors. What we think of as a decision is a predictable mechanical process, a simple quantitative comparison between rewards.
Impulses are in competition within the individual. One impulse wins and momentarily grabs the steering wheel--but the individual doesn't have any direct control over which one drives. Just like how you don't choose which food you most enjoy.
((The Melioration Principle: an organism will engage in a behavior until a competing behavior offers better rewards))
I also think it's possible for the mind to operate differently, to make decisions independently of genetics/conditioning/environmental factors -- but these occurrences are rare. And the mind is packed with distractions and associations and habits which discourage this from occurring. So in that sense, I agree that the physical universe is aligned against free will.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 04:05:10 PM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 07, 2020, 03:24:11 PM
There's nothing magical about the human brain.
Prove it.
There are reams of evidence regarding the physical nature of the brain. Physical damage to the head can cause personality changes; chemicals can alter mood; oxygen deprivation can cause brain death.
You, on the other hand, have no credible evidence for any magic or supernatural influences being involved. People have been trying for decades, and found nothing.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 07, 2020, 04:42:27 PM
My impression is that human decision making is not "free", it's usually predetermined by internal and environmental factors. What we think of as a decision is a predictable mechanical process, a simple quantitative comparison between rewards.
But I am a DUMBASS and I never think about consequences.
Dok,
Freedom through stupidity.
it seems sort of useless to ascribe any attributes at all to any kind of reality or force that may or may not exist "outside" our ability to either perceive or imagine it. and while i am not strictly a reductionist, i don't see much point in imagining that anything at all exists that can't be measured or experienced in some kind of objectively meaningful way -- not because it's definitely not real, but because if it is real, it must be an absolutely subjective experience, and that precludes discussing it with anyone else in a way that conveys useful information about it. I mean, we could all go out into the woods and drink ayahuasca and it could seem like something mystical was happening, but whether such a thing did or didn't happen would ultimately be functionally meaningless.
As for free will, if it exists from our perspective, then it exists. Whether it "rEaLLy" exists from the perspective of some higher dimension or something isn't a constructive question. Unless you can tell the future, it doesn't matter. And if you can tell the future, then the only logical thing to do would be to give me the winning Powerball numbers for the next $100M+ drawing.
I'm concerned that I've read this whole thing before, but I can't remember where or find any evidence.
It strikes me as something one of those European philosopher duders went over.
Not the dualism part, the rest of it.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 07, 2020, 04:47:19 PM
You, on the other hand, have no credible evidence for any magic or supernatural influences being involved.
The only evidence I need is the miracle that I exist at all. What I don't have is evidence that anyone else exists. I only assume they do, since the alternative is a life of narcissistic nihilism. Even if I'm the only consciousness in this universe, I think I'd prefer to behave as if I'm not.
That, and I once had a friend prove to me that she could astrally project, so I'm pretty sure there's something funny going on underneath the surface of all this, whatever it is.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 07, 2020, 04:26:35 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 04:05:10 PM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 07, 2020, 03:24:11 PM
There's nothing magical about the human brain.
Prove it.
Dude, I didn't expect you, of all people, to jump on the anti-rationalism train.
Seems to me that the original claim was not rational. There may or may not be something magical about the human brain; there's no good reason to declare one or the other as true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 08, 2020, 03:20:42 AM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 07, 2020, 04:47:19 PM
You, on the other hand, have no credible evidence for any magic or supernatural influences being involved.
The only evidence I need is the miracle that I exist at all.
Your existence is not a miracle, and your wishful thinking does not count as evidence.
Quote
That, and I once had a friend prove to me that she could astrally project, so I'm pretty sure there's something funny going on underneath the surface of all this, whatever it is.
I expect that she set the conditions of the demonstration.
Further, I expect that she would be completely unable to use her "ability" to do something concrete and reproducible, like, for example, astral projecting into the next room and reading a random number that an impartial third party had written on a piece of paper.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 08, 2020, 03:24:05 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 07, 2020, 04:26:35 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 04:05:10 PM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 07, 2020, 03:24:11 PM
There's nothing magical about the human brain.
Prove it.
Dude, I didn't expect you, of all people, to jump on the anti-rationalism train.
Seems to me that the original claim was not rational. There may or may not be something magical about the human brain; there's no good reason to declare one or the other as true.
I posted a good reason. Anybody can confirm for themselves that the brain is affected by the physical world. If the brain was magic, why would head trauma carry a risk of changing someone's personality?
If we define magic as "shit that isn't understood well enough to be modeled", brain is clearly affected by both magical and physical world. That doesn't mean there isn't any underlying principles we can eventually figure out, I'm just saying we are not there yet and it would be foolish to think we are.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 07, 2020, 06:51:05 PM
it seems sort of useless to ascribe any attributes at all to any kind of reality or force that may or may not exist "outside" our ability to either perceive or imagine it. and while i am not strictly a reductionist, i don't see much point in imagining that anything at all exists that can't be measured or experienced in some kind of objectively meaningful way -- not because it's definitely not real, but because if it is real, it must be an absolutely subjective experience, and that precludes discussing it with anyone else in a way that conveys useful information about it. I mean, we could all go out into the woods and drink ayahuasca and it could seem like something mystical was happening, but whether such a thing did or didn't happen would ultimately be functionally meaningless.
As for free will, if it exists from our perspective, then it exists. Whether it "rEaLLy" exists from the perspective of some higher dimension or something isn't a constructive question. Unless you can tell the future, it doesn't matter. And if you can tell the future, then the only logical thing to do would be to give me the winning Powerball numbers for the next $100M+ drawing.
Have you tried ayahuasca? Because the something mystical really isn't meaningless, at least it wasn't for me or any of the folks I've talked to who did it, it gave us insights into our lives and we put those insights into practice and changed things.
Your point is good, I just don't like your example.
Quote from: Frontside Back on January 08, 2020, 07:02:45 AM
If we define magic as "shit that isn't understood well enough to be modeled", brain is clearly affected by both magical and physical world. That doesn't mean there isn't any underlying principles we can eventually figure out, I'm just saying we are not there yet and it would be foolish to think we are.
Let's not play around with the definition of magic (at least, not in this thread). Science already allows for things to be not well understood
yet, without invoking the mystical.
There is a significant distinction to be drawn between "we have a good idea of the basic science, but modelling the entire system is intractable at present" and "there's something ineffably mysterious going on that transcends mere physical reality, which we cannot, and never will, understand".
The OP brought up astral projection as an example of magic; that classification works for me.
Quote from: Pergamos on January 08, 2020, 07:32:56 AM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 07, 2020, 06:51:05 PM
it seems sort of useless to ascribe any attributes at all to any kind of reality or force that may or may not exist "outside" our ability to either perceive or imagine it. and while i am not strictly a reductionist, i don't see much point in imagining that anything at all exists that can't be measured or experienced in some kind of objectively meaningful way -- not because it's definitely not real, but because if it is real, it must be an absolutely subjective experience, and that precludes discussing it with anyone else in a way that conveys useful information about it. I mean, we could all go out into the woods and drink ayahuasca and it could seem like something mystical was happening, but whether such a thing did or didn't happen would ultimately be functionally meaningless.
As for free will, if it exists from our perspective, then it exists. Whether it "rEaLLy" exists from the perspective of some higher dimension or something isn't a constructive question. Unless you can tell the future, it doesn't matter. And if you can tell the future, then the only logical thing to do would be to give me the winning Powerball numbers for the next $100M+ drawing.
Have you tried ayahuasca? Because the something mystical really isn't meaningless, at least it wasn't for me or any of the folks I've talked to who did it, it gave us insights into our lives and we put those insights into practice and changed things.
Your point is good, I just don't like your example.
I agree - even a purely subjective inner experience can be meaningful for me or others
and maybe we can't discuss that thing in perfectly objective terms, so our language gets muddy and metaphored
but to then say "therefore you can't convey useful information", and "therefore it's meaningless and pointless to talk about" --- is a big leap
The position that only objective, measurable things are worth discussing is scientism.
QuoteI expect that she set the conditions of the demonstration.
Your expectations are incorrect.
QuoteYour existence is not a miracle
Nothing can explain the fact of my subjective experience. I think miracle is a fairly accurate word.
QuoteLet's not play around with the definition of magic
How we agree on the definition of this word is extremely important to any debate in which we engage. If you assume that everyone else is using it with your own definition in mind, miscommunication is inevitable.
In this case, I would say magic is anything that would defy our current understandings of the physical universe.
You seem to have a stubborn resolve that free will of any measure either doesn't or can't exist, which is more or less irrelevant to my initial post. It might as well be a thread about Star Wars where you come in and proclaim that you don't watch Star Wars movies. I'm not terribly interested in debating free will; my understanding of the Black Iron Prison presumes it.
Quote from: Pergamos on January 08, 2020, 07:32:56 AM
Have you tried ayahuasca? Because the something mystical really isn't meaningless, at least it wasn't for me or any of the folks I've talked to who did it, it gave us insights into our lives and we put those insights into practice and changed things.
Your point is good, I just don't like your example.
Not meaningless,
functionally meaningless. I meant that however profound and life-changing your experience may be, it's rooted in a subjective experience that would lose its value if it
wasn't subjective. It can be as meaningful as you like, but it can't be conveyed to anyone who doesn't also have the experience. Like satori.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 08, 2020, 01:12:38 PM
I agree - even a purely subjective inner experience can be meaningful for me or others
and maybe we can't discuss that thing in perfectly objective terms, so our language gets muddy and metaphored
but to then say "therefore you can't convey useful information", and "therefore it's meaningless and pointless to talk about" --- is a big leap
The position that only objective, measurable things are worth discussing is scientism.
I don't think only objective measurable things are worth discussing, only that objective measurable things are the only medium we have for relating our experiences to someone who hasn't shared them. Metaphors are useful but by definition the map isn't the territory, etc.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 08, 2020, 05:09:12 AM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 08, 2020, 03:20:42 AM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 07, 2020, 04:47:19 PM
You, on the other hand, have no credible evidence for any magic or supernatural influences being involved.
The only evidence I need is the miracle that I exist at all.
Your existence is not a miracle, and your wishful thinking does not count as evidence.
I have to object to this pessimistic declaration. Existence as such is terribly unlikely, given that it sprang from nothing at all (according to our best science) and behaves weirdly. Existence
with awareness of itself has to be at least several orders of magnitude less likely still. I'm more astonished by the fact that I exist than I would be if some street magician turned water into wine before my eyes.
Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.
Quote from: LMNO on January 08, 2020, 01:33:11 PM
Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.
I think my problem is
too much time with that infernal contraption.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 08, 2020, 01:29:48 PM
I don't think only objective measurable things are worth discussing, only that objective measurable things are the only medium we have for relating our experiences to someone who hasn't shared them. Metaphors are useful but by definition the map isn't the territory, etc.
yeah but if you've heard someone describe how they meditate, and then you try it out
you've received something from someone else's subjective experience
"the map isn't the territory" doesn't mean that communicating via metaphor is pointless
like, I've got a friend with a few loose wires - I have no experience of what it's like inside of her head, it sounds very confusing - but she can talk about it with me and I can feel where she's coming from
Quote from: LMNO on January 08, 2020, 01:33:11 PM
Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.
FWIW I enjoy these threads where we circle around reality and take swings at it and maybe some coins fall out -- this is peak PD for me
For me, at least, the questions surrounding free will weren't something I thought about in college and then closed the book on, the uncertainty and exploration of it is still a big part of my mental landscape
:FFF:
Quote from: Cramulus on January 08, 2020, 01:12:38 PM
Quote from: Pergamos on January 08, 2020, 07:32:56 AM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 07, 2020, 06:51:05 PM
it seems sort of useless to ascribe any attributes at all to any kind of reality or force that may or may not exist "outside" our ability to either perceive or imagine it. and while i am not strictly a reductionist, i don't see much point in imagining that anything at all exists that can't be measured or experienced in some kind of objectively meaningful way -- not because it's definitely not real, but because if it is real, it must be an absolutely subjective experience, and that precludes discussing it with anyone else in a way that conveys useful information about it. I mean, we could all go out into the woods and drink ayahuasca and it could seem like something mystical was happening, but whether such a thing did or didn't happen would ultimately be functionally meaningless.
As for free will, if it exists from our perspective, then it exists. Whether it "rEaLLy" exists from the perspective of some higher dimension or something isn't a constructive question. Unless you can tell the future, it doesn't matter. And if you can tell the future, then the only logical thing to do would be to give me the winning Powerball numbers for the next $100M+ drawing.
Have you tried ayahuasca? Because the something mystical really isn't meaningless, at least it wasn't for me or any of the folks I've talked to who did it, it gave us insights into our lives and we put those insights into practice and changed things.
Your point is good, I just don't like your example.
I agree - even a purely subjective inner experience can be meaningful for me or others
and maybe we can't discuss that thing in perfectly objective terms, so our language gets muddy and metaphored
but to then say "therefore you can't convey useful information", and "therefore it's meaningless and pointless to talk about" --- is a big leap
The position that only objective, measurable things are worth discussing is scientism.
Getting fucked up on drugs may cause you to feel as if you are having a mystical experience.
You're not. You're just all fucked up on weird drugs. The mystical part is just you running your brain outside of warranty conditions. The part of you that thinks it is having the mystical experience is the part that's fucked up.
The subjective feeling of having a mystical experience is just part of that.
It's either that, or the paranoia binges I have had since 2009 (thankfully very rarely now) are meningitis-induced telepathy and you fuckers really ARE out to get me. But the joke is on you, the Jeep was destroyed more than a year ago, so you can't get it.
Quote from: LMNO on January 08, 2020, 01:33:11 PM
Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.
Only I can be trusted with that much power.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 08, 2020, 01:01:42 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on January 08, 2020, 07:02:45 AM
If we define magic as "shit that isn't understood well enough to be modeled", brain is clearly affected by both magical and physical world. That doesn't mean there isn't any underlying principles we can eventually figure out, I'm just saying we are not there yet and it would be foolish to think we are.
Let's not play around with the definition of magic (at least, not in this thread). Science already allows for things to be not well understood yet, without invoking the mystical.
There is a significant distinction to be drawn between "we have a good idea of the basic science, but modelling the entire system is intractable at present" and "there's something ineffably mysterious going on that transcends mere physical reality, which we cannot, and never will, understand".
The OP brought up astral projection as an example of magic; that classification works for me.
Yeah, spooky action at a distance is just that: spooky action
at a distance.
A couple of years ago, my dad had a TIA and forgot how to talk for 5 minutes or so.
He insisted he was fine. I pointed out that the part of him that was deciding that was the part that was in question.
When something physical interferes with or affects your brain, your perceptions change. You can't trust the data, because by definition, your ability to take in the data has been altered. The world has not changed, your ability to image the world has simply been compromised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
The BIP can't really be called a "prison" unless the inhabitants are able to at least attempt to escape it.
Video games in general are a good example of compatibilism; the events in a game are scripted, but the actions of the player aren't. The players actions are restricted by the program, but the player always has some degree of freedom within those restrictions.
Normally, the player can't change the program from within it, but there are exceptions to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary_code_execution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrIcz8iGJ14&feature=emb_logo
If the universe we find ourselves in is itself some kind of program, I think the potential implications of arbitrary code execution are extremely interesting. "Magic" in that sense would just be forcing memory allocation through a specific set of actions. Of course, this is all bordering on science fantasy, but it's fun to think about.
As for the prison, it would be a deterministic construct, but with some leeway - the player's degrees of freedom within it. Another game analogy would be old-school text adventures; you're free to type anything you like into the game, but the game will only progress if you type things it recognizes - otherwise, it will spit back something like, "I didn't understand that."
NPCs in role-playing games work similarly. You have options to choose from when you speak to them; if you suddenly found a way to say something to them that wasn't included in the options, they would have no way of responding to it.
AI NPCs would have somewhat elegant ways of dealing with the problem of being spoken to in ways that defy the program, in order to preserve the immersion of the game. They'd respond with intelligent-seeming but ultimately predictable things, like "I don't want to talk about that."
The more I experiment, in real life, with this kind of thing, the more I find that the world around me seems to actively attempt a similar kind of resistance the moment I go "off-script", so to speak. This could be explained as a natural consequence of something similar to culture-jamming, but in my experience, the resistance I get feels a little too aggressive to simply be a confused, passive reaction.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 08, 2020, 01:55:47 PMGetting fucked up on drugs may cause you to feel as if you are having a mystical experience.
You're not. You're just all fucked up on weird drugs. The mystical part is just you running your brain outside of warranty conditions. The part of you that thinks it is having the mystical experience is the part that's fucked up.
The subjective feeling of having a mystical experience is just part of that.
It's either that, or the paranoia binges I have had since 2009 (thankfully very rarely now) are meningitis-induced telepathy and you fuckers really ARE out to get me. But the joke is on you, the Jeep was destroyed more than a year ago, so you can't get it.
what do you mean by 'mystical experience' here?
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 08, 2020, 02:02:20 PM
When something physical interferes with or affects your brain, your perceptions change. You can't trust the data, because by definition, your ability to take in the data has been altered. The world has not changed, your ability to image the world has simply been compromised.
while 'sober', the brain is still this weird mix of chemicals and flawed / subjective perceptions
the everyday 'sober' mental state has its own contours and blind spots - it's not necessarily 'peak performance'
for example - if someone takes medication, they aren't necessarily 'compromised' and untrustworthy
hell, a strong cup of coffee affects your brain
and sometimes even alchohol brings
real things to the surface
Quote from: Cramulus on January 08, 2020, 02:13:09 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 08, 2020, 01:55:47 PMGetting fucked up on drugs may cause you to feel as if you are having a mystical experience.
You're not. You're just all fucked up on weird drugs. The mystical part is just you running your brain outside of warranty conditions. The part of you that thinks it is having the mystical experience is the part that's fucked up.
The subjective feeling of having a mystical experience is just part of that.
It's either that, or the paranoia binges I have had since 2009 (thankfully very rarely now) are meningitis-induced telepathy and you fuckers really ARE out to get me. But the joke is on you, the Jeep was destroyed more than a year ago, so you can't get it.
what do you mean by 'mystical experience' here?
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 08, 2020, 02:02:20 PM
When something physical interferes with or affects your brain, your perceptions change. You can't trust the data, because by definition, your ability to take in the data has been altered. The world has not changed, your ability to image the world has simply been compromised.
while 'sober', the brain is still this weird mix of chemicals and flawed / subjective perceptions
the everyday 'sober' mental state has its own contours and blind spots - it's not necessarily 'peak performance'
for example - if someone takes medication, they aren't necessarily 'compromised' and untrustworthy
hell, a strong cup of coffee affects your brain
and sometimes even alchohol brings real things to the surface
Nonsense. My brain is like a brick. Nothing affects it, for the same reason not much affects a brick.
I am the neurological equivalent of a low-tech solution.
Also, there is a proportionate affect. Drinking coffee is like putting a higher octane of gasoline in your gas tank. Performance changes to a small degree.
Ayuasca is like shoving the neighbor kid in your gas tank. Things will probably happen as a result, but your car isn't going to go any faster. OTHER things will speed up, though. People will talk to you very rapidly. You will move at a great deal of speed, only in someone ELSE'S car, despite your accurate statement that the kid was a complete shit and nobody liked him anyways.
I feel as I may have stretched the metaphor just a tad here, but my blood sugar is currently at 68 and so I am sitting here proving my own assertion...for SCIENCE!
I think the important bit isn't what we think we know or how we arrived at a conclusion. Whether that's reductionist materialism or some kind of overly complicated multidimensional cosmic Rube Goldberg machine is irrelevant and can actually be a distraction. What matters is the fact that there is a sense of awareness at all, not what arises from it. I don't think drugs reveal anything particularly "true" about the nature of reality in any sense of bestowing more information, but they can expose the fact that regardless of input and extrapolation, the sentience algorithm processes its own existence.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 08, 2020, 01:25:22 PM
QuoteI expect that she set the conditions of the demonstration.
Your expectations are incorrect.
Prove it.
Quote
You seem to have a stubborn resolve that free will of any measure either doesn't or can't exist, which is more or less irrelevant to my initial post. It might as well be a thread about Star Wars where you come in and proclaim that you don't watch Star Wars movies. I'm not terribly interested in debating free will; my understanding of the Black Iron Prison presumes it.
Since your initial post, and your understanding of the BIP both presume free will, a discussion of such is hardly irrelevant.
If there is no free will, then does your original post still make sense?
Your initial assumptions are not beyond question.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 08, 2020, 01:56:33 PM
Quote from: LMNO on January 08, 2020, 01:33:11 PM
Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.
Only I can be trusted with that much power.
Given your experience with that printer, I WOULD INSIST that you spend as much time with it as possible. I could see limitless possibilities for discovery!
Elvis, would you say that free will is unique to humans? or do animals have it too?
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 08, 2020, 02:41:41 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 08, 2020, 01:25:22 PM
QuoteI expect that she set the conditions of the demonstration.
Your expectations are incorrect.
Prove it.
They're incorrect because I'm the one who set the rules of the experiment. I'm not posting this to convince anyone else of whether or not astral projection is real, I'm saying that my personal experience with it justifies my own opinions that the world around me might not entirely conform to current academic descriptions. Even without this experience, it would be a little silly to assume that it does due to the massive amount of information we lack about it.
People who suggest that if it hasn't been proven by professional scientists then it isn't or can't be true are making an argument from ignorance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
Quote
If there is no free will, then does your original post still make sense?
Probably not.
Quote
Your initial assumptions are not beyond question.
And I'm not interested in deconstructing the entire premise based on a debate that still hasn't been settled. In my opinion, derailing the thread to become mired into an argument about whether or not free will can exist is a pointless and unending waste of time. It's a tired conversation that can't possibly be resolved, and it's a complete distraction from what I actually dusted myself of to come back here and talk about.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 08, 2020, 08:31:10 PM
Elvis, would you say that free will is unique to humans? or do animals have it too?
Humans
are animals.
My understanding of free will is any amount of self-deterministic influence over one's own actions or behavior. If we have it (and I think it's a paradox to think we don't), then it almost certainly exists on a spectrum and has obstacles. Genetics, environment, brain structure, and all other behavioral influences act as impediments.
If you view other people as robots to perform behavioral experiments on in order to attempt to predict their actions, then you're essentially confirming a bias that free will is nowhere to be found, because the experiments you're performing aren't looking for it or considering it as a factor. But "free will" is not something you'll ever find in another person; it's not something you'll find outside yourself.
Free will is entirely mine to experience, and whether or not anyone else believes that I have it is of no consequence to me.
There is a point to that.
The human decision making is a methodology, taking the inputs of background, electrochemistry, genetics history of events up until now, physiological sensory information etc, fully mapped out should make a person predictable. But it's hard to experimentally say that that predictability is 100 percent, even if you know all of the inputs and how they fit together.
As long as there is the smallest possibility that the decision would go the other way for no reason at all, free will is possible just remote and unlikely
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 12:40:06 AM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 08, 2020, 02:41:41 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 08, 2020, 01:25:22 PM
QuoteI expect that she set the conditions of the demonstration.
Your expectations are incorrect.
Prove it.
They're incorrect because I'm the one who set the rules of the experiment.
...and these rules were...what, exactly?
You're the one who brought up this astral projection thing as evidence of the supernatural, but you seem to be studiously avoiding providing any details. I'm not asking you to prove that you've convinced
yourself of something, I'm asking for evidence that anyone can examine and test.
Quote
I'm not posting this to convince anyone else of whether or not astral projection is real, I'm saying that my personal experience with it justifies my own opinions that the world around me might not entirely conform to current academic descriptions.
Well
of course the world doesn't entirely conform to current academic descriptions. Science isn't
complete. It doesn't claim to be. It probably never will be. Why do you think theories are progressively refined (or abandoned!) as our understanding of the world develops?
But you don't get to use "well, we don't know everything" as a basis for lending credulity to claims which don't reflect reality.
Skipping back a bit:
Quote
In this case, I would say magic is anything that would defy our current understandings of the physical universe.
When science encounters a phenomenon that defies our current understandings of the universe,
we update our understanding of the universe to accommodate the phenomenon. Lightning used to be "magic", and now it's described by physics. Psychic phenomena used to be "magic", and now it's dismissed as fakery and self-delusion.
Quote
People who suggest that if it hasn't been proven by professional scientists then it isn't or can't be true are making an argument from ignorance.
I haven't made that suggestion, nor would I. Science is a process for understanding the world; it does not define the world. However, if people have tested for something
repeatedly, and found no evidence for it, that is its own kind of evidence. For example, astral projection isn't real, and there's currently no basis for believing the brain is anything more than a physical instrument.
Quote
And I'm not interested in deconstructing the entire premise based on a debate that still hasn't been settled. In my opinion, derailing the thread to become mired into an argument about whether or not free will can exist is a pointless and unending waste of time. It's a tired conversation that can't possibly be resolved, and it's a complete distraction from what I actually dusted myself of to come back here and talk about.
As far as I can tell, the crux of your original post was the conflict between determinism and free will. If you didn't come here to talk about that, what kind of discussion did you intend to provoke?
I just wanna know why this is in the food section. :lulz:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 09, 2020, 02:32:15 AM
I just wanna know why this is in the food section. :lulz:
Either because it's a recipe for disaster, or I was subconsciously coerced by alcohol intoxication to feign an act against a deterministic construct.
I think my original analogy for the shape of the solid, four-dimensional universe was going to be a baked cake.
Hypercake?
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 09, 2020, 02:20:18 AM
...and these rules were...what, exactly?
You're the one who brought up this astral projection thing as evidence of the supernatural.
As a throwaway example of personal experience being all that it takes to be sufficiently convincing - or, in my case, to provide enough doubt about the assumption that anything not documented in a public-school science textbook can't possibly be real and should be dismissed if it doesn't meet certain (and possibly arbitrary) standards.
After all, as far as I know, my own experience is the only one that matters. From my point of view, I'm the player in the game.
Quote
But you don't get to use "well, we don't know everything" as a basis for lending credulity to claims which don't reflect reality.
Which reality? Mine, or yours? Do you have a reality? Scientific consensus? What happens when Plato's Cave is a library where all the books are written by one author? What happens when my own experiences defy the conclusions the average person would reach when reading Wikipedia?
Perhaps the real reason there aren't any "documented cases" of astral projection being proven real are because the tests are run by a grand conspiracy of military-class Illuminati warlocks whose nefarious purpose is to eliminate from the world those participants which can prove their powers.
Or maybe my friend was a con-artist who went through a lot of trouble to capitalize on my curiosity and had a Sherlock Holmes-level of Asperger's and could predict in ridiculous detail the events that would unfold as I set the experiment up.
Who knows? Is going into detail about this mostly-inconsequential example pertinent to the discussion, or is it just another distraction from it? Does this series of distractions match up with my description of an existential jail actively attempting to prevent deviations of exactly this kind of thinking?
Quote
When science encounters a phenomenon that defies our current understandings of the universe, we update our understanding of the universe to accommodate the phenomenon.
As I have tried to do. I don't speak for "science"... (Whatever that is, really - does anyone know? Can I send an e-mail to science?) Only myself. Science didn't experience my phenomenon; I did. (And I did it through science, albeit not science so rigorous it would have threatened the friendship. It was a friendly experiment, but scientific enough that I was personally satisfied.)
The test was simple: project into a room never before seen or visited, and read the contents of a sheet of paper in a specific location in that room. The test was only performed once, but passed.
Quote
As far as I can tell, the crux of your original post was the conflict between determinism and free will. If you didn't come here to talk about that, what kind of discussion did you intend to provoke?
Who here is an agent of determinism, and who an asset of free will? How can I know? Does it matter?
Does anyone really believe in the Black Iron Prison? What's the point of getting out of jail if escaping it was never your own choice to begin with?
Determinism and free will are both stupid concepts. Much more relevant question is what you'll have for lunch tomorrow.
We are (mostly) human beings with very limited scope of physical and temporal existence. In our narrow slice of everything, we have processes that can said to be predetermined, but also some we are able to affect. In the end you just wanna know about a deterministic course of events early enough to use your free will to get the upper hand.
In hindsight, every mistake I made was deterministic and couldn't have been avoided, while every success was made possible by my choice of doing the right thing at the right time. This keeps my ego afloat.
I find that the question of free will or determinism is in the end a difference that makes no difference. I experience what would seem in every way to be the ability to freely exercise my will and make decisions of my own. If this is truly not actually the case I have no means no percieve or even meaningfully conceptualize that reality, and so am obliged to act as though my decisions are freely made.
I no longer fidget with the question much, but do enjoy listening to others kick it around from time to time. I do have one bit of theological ponderance though. If God is all powerful, then would it not be a test or even sort of backhanded demonstration of that unlimited power to choose not to act and so allow freedom for wills other than Your Own? Would such self imposed restraint be necessary for there to be a genuine "Other" person for God to have a meaningful relationship with that went beyond essentially telling smart robots what to do?
For God so loved the world that He bloody well kept His hands out of it?
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 04:07:18 AM
Does anyone really believe in the Black Iron Prison? What's the point of getting out of jail if escaping it was never your own choice to begin with?
I think the recognition of the prison & the decision to escape is a solid example of free will
I think you and I understand free will in different terms, but I more or less agree with your OP - that the universe discourages free will
If organic life is a collective organism, it's an organism that is confused, trapped in habit, and struggling (& often unwilling) to wake up.
This can be felt in our own lives.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 09, 2020, 11:13:44 AM
I find that the question of free will or determinism is in the end a difference that makes no difference. I experience what would seem in every way to be the ability to freely exercise my will and make decisions of my own. If this is truly not actually the case I have no means no percieve or even meaningfully conceptualize that reality, and so am obliged to act as though my decisions are freely made.
As an experiment, I might offer this - maybe it's not binary, 0 or 1, determinism or free will - maybe it's a scale, and some of your decisions are automatic and some are not.
Observing your mind as you make decisions under different circumstances, maybe you can sense this gradient.
Might be worth a try.
QuoteIf God is all powerful, then would it not be a test or even sort of backhanded demonstration of that unlimited power to choose not to act and so allow freedom for wills other than Your Own? Would such self imposed restraint be necessary for there to be a genuine "Other" person for God to have a meaningful relationship with that went beyond essentially telling smart robots what to do?
For God so loved the world that He bloody well kept His hands out of it?
I don't want to get too esoteric here, but if god is the Alpha and Omega, the A-Z of existence, the entire chalupa and the taco bell tissue paper too, then God is something that's both internal and external. And I think this means that we can understand ourselves as facets of God, components of God, as thoughts and impulses in God's head. And if this is true then God is very confused, wracked with inner conflict, and trying to wake up. And if we can wake up, then God can too. Our own efforts to overcome automatism and sleep are a service to each other, and to the cosmos.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 04:07:18 AM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 09, 2020, 02:20:18 AM
...and these rules were...what, exactly?
You're the one who brought up this astral projection thing as evidence of the supernatural.
As a throwaway example of personal experience being all that it takes to be sufficiently convincing - or, in my case, to provide enough doubt about the assumption that anything not documented in a public-school science textbook can't possibly be real and should be dismissed if it doesn't meet certain (and possibly arbitrary) standards.
I don't need evidence of astral projection to question what I read in textbooks. Who the hell treats a public-school textbook as gospel truth? The damn things are probably years out of date, and riddled with errors. I think you might be jousting with a straw-man, here. Science is not a static thing that you capture in textbooks, it's a process.
Quote
After all, as far as I know, my own experience is the only one that matters. From my point of view, I'm the player in the game.
Everyone's. Experience. Matters.
Quote
Quote
But you don't get to use "well, we don't know everything" as a basis for lending credulity to claims which don't reflect reality.
Which reality? Mine, or yours?
There is only one reality, which we perceive imperfectly. It's the reality where gravity pulls things down, smartphones work most of the time, and I have failed, yet again, to find evidence of the gnomes living above the ceiling tiles.
Quote
Perhaps the real reason there aren't any "documented cases" of astral projection being proven real are because the tests are run by a grand conspiracy of military-class Illuminati warlocks whose nefarious purpose is to eliminate from the world those participants which can prove their powers.
You ran one of those tests. Are you a military-class Illuminati warlock?
Quote
Does this series of distractions match up with my description of an existential jail actively attempting to prevent deviations of exactly this kind of thinking?
Yes, it does match up. Quite nicely, really.
Quote
The test was simple: project into a room never before seen or visited, and read the contents of a sheet of paper in a specific location in that room. The test was only performed once, but passed.
If she wrote the contents of the paper down in silence, I would consider that extremely interesting. If, however, she reported the contents of the paper verbally to someone who already knew what was written, I would dismiss it as cold reading.
But bluntly, your apparent lack of curiosity here baffles me. You only ran the test once? If someone showed me evidence of astral projection, I would be as curious as fuck. I'd want to test that repeatedly, under many different conditions. The consequences would be world-shattering. It would transform our understanding of reality.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 09, 2020, 11:13:44 AM
I find that the question of free will or determinism is in the end a difference that makes no difference. I experience what would seem in every way to be the ability to freely exercise my will and make decisions of my own. If this is truly not actually the case I have no means no percieve or even meaningfully conceptualize that reality, and so am obliged to act as though my decisions are freely made.
I consider this viewpoint to be the correct one.
How many more times must we have the "god is in the gaps" argument?
Quote from: Cramulus on January 09, 2020, 12:56:11 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 04:07:18 AM
Does anyone really believe in the Black Iron Prison? What's the point of getting out of jail if escaping it was never your own choice to begin with?
I think the recognition of the prison & the decision to escape is a solid example of free will
I think you and I understand free will in different terms, but I more or less agree with your OP - that the universe discourages free will
If organic life is a collective organism, it's an organism that is confused, trapped in habit, and struggling (& often unwilling) to wake up.
This can be felt in our own lives.
This is more of what I'm interested in - but less of the BIP as a metaphor, and more as a potentially genuinely real thing that actually exists around either myself or all of us. I sometimes wonder if perhaps PKD was
right and
really onto something, and not just barreling down a methamphetamine-fueled journey into madness. Then again, perhaps madness is what it takes to recognize the real BIP, and a willingness to break away from the collective hypersanity; the wool we pull over our own eyes and believe is what sane people think and how sane people behave, only because it's what we've been told.
I'm trying to figure out where the boundary is supposed to be between the person and their zone of activity. What does it mean to say "if I behave in a way that the construct isn't designed for" ? Where does "I" end and the "Construct" begin? Given that my physical being is governed inside by all the same phenomena that exist outside it, why should the construct even allow me to imagine an action that goes against it? Or, if I am an independent instance of awareness and action that is somehow fundamentally divided from the construct in a way that allows that, where is that division?
Quote from: LMNO on January 09, 2020, 01:33:30 PM
How many more times must we have the "god is in the gaps" argument?
we must imagine sisyphus happy
Quote from: Cramulus on January 09, 2020, 02:10:55 PM
Quote from: LMNO on January 09, 2020, 01:33:30 PM
How many more times must we have the "god is in the gaps" argument?
we must imagine sisyphus happy
:potd:
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 09, 2020, 01:18:44 PM
But bluntly, your apparent lack of curiosity here baffles me. You only ran the test once? If someone showed me evidence of astral projection, I would be as curious as fuck. I'd want to test that repeatedly, under many different conditions. The consequences would be world-shattering. It would transform our understanding of reality.
I think I was a little too awestruck at the time to pursue it any further. I think also I didn't want to wind up hitting it too hard and breaking it in the process. In the same way that a watched pot never boils, I figured that if I had stumbled upon something truly unique and world-shattering, it was something that would prove to be elusive if I actually attempted to catch it. It was almost like the universe was allowing me a glimpse of something, and if I ran after it, it would vanish forever, and I'd be left with nothing but the question of whether or not I ever saw it in the first place.
A bit like my description of the BIP acting as a deterrent. Which would also explain why hard proof of supernatural things continues to be accepted as nonexistent.
But this could all be described as mental gynmastics, and my personal experience is completely anecdotal.
I like to consider myself a logical person who sticks to the rules of critical thinking, and I believe that I performed a test that would serve my satisfaction if passed, enough to expand my horizons to the point where I could at least consider that the world is not entirely mundane. I also, again, did not wish to become so rigorous in my pursuit of an answer that I would put any strain on the relationship I had with the subject. She was coming out of a relationship with a very controlling boyfriend at the time, and I didn't want to put her under any real pressure.
She never struck me as someone who would gain anything from fooling anyone. Conversations we'd had about supernatural subjects always happened naturally, and she spoke about her experiences of things like being able to "tell if a house was haunted" with the casualness of someone who has a subdued but genuine faith in their religion, without the desperation of needing to convert or convince anyone else. I've known a lot of bullshitters, and nothing about her character ever smelled of it. She was just a chill goth girl from the scene who liked riding horses and had no professional interest in the occult.
Most people who make extraordinary claims will come up with some reason they can't undergo a test, and if they don't, they'll try to do as you originally expected, which is design the test themselves. One day, during one of our conversations, I asked her if she'd mind me putting her to the test, and her response wasn't one of hesitation. She basically just said sure, let's hang out, and I'll try to do whatever you want.
She'd never been to my house before, and I was with her the entire time. I already knew that I was going to have her try to go into a room into which she'd never been, so I made sure that there was no way for her to visit that space ahead of the test. The room was the kitchen, not visible from the entrance of the house. We hung out in my room for a bit (the kitchen not being on the way), and I told her what I was going to do: go into it, write something down, and stick it onto the fridge. And that's what I did, leaving her in the room.
The position of my room meant that there was absolutely no possible way for her to follow me without my knowing it. She could not have left the house without my being aware, and, say, made her way around to peer in through a window or something. I took a piece of paper, held it against the fridge, and wrote my name in large, capital letters. I figured my name was simple and obvious enough that it could be seen and recognized in what I imagined astral space to be like, since she had described it as being somewhat fuzzy, not exactly easy to make out details in. I thought making it personal would have a more human and emotional connection, rather than some arbitrary word like "bat", and I assumed that would have more draw in a spiritual realm.
Of course, she could have pegged me as self-absorbed or something, and guessed that I'd choose to write down my own name, of all things, but that seems like a bit of a stretch, and, anyway, it's not the answer she gave.
I went back into my room, sat on my bed, and she went into her trance for a while. She warned me that she couldn't make any promises, especially with a room she'd never visited before, but I wanted her to try. She came out of it after a little bit, and asked me if I had drawn something. I said, no. So she does it again, and comes back and says she keeps seeing little drawings, did I really not draw anything? I said, no, I wrote something down. So she tries again, and eventually gives up. She says she keeps seeing drawings. I asked her if she saw anything else at all. She stops for a moment and says she did see something like the letter "E", but it looked scribbled, like it had been written twice.
This is the point where I was so taken aback by the amount of detail that I had no explanation for what had happened. I already knew what she was referring to by the "drawings", but that wasn't good enough. Could she have guessed the exact circumstances of just how I'd written down my name, and with what? The chances are 50/50 each, or 25% combined:
1. pen/pencil
2. vertical/flat surface
Not to mention also correctly guessing the first letter; a 1/26 chance. And being savvy enough to skirt around it long enough to "seem" like she was having a hard time getting it? And then making it subtle by not revealing the whole word but only the first letter? These kinds of elaborate ways of thinking didn't match up with her personality-type, and, honestly, I'd say would put her on the same level of deduction as a fictional detective.
I took her into the kitchen and showed her the fridge. She started to freak out and got super excited; the door was covered with stick-figure drawings my roommates had done over the months. She pointed to them and shouted "That's what I kept seeing! These!" She didn't even care about what I'd written until I pointed it out to her: I'd used a pen to write my name, beginning with the letter E; having held it vertically, the ink didn't start flowing properly until the second letter, so I had to write the E over again.
This ultimately gives me several nearly equally inexplicable options:
1. She was a fucking ghost ninja.
2. She was a female Sherlock Holmes and a con-artist with nothing to gain but the satisfaction of fooling a random person this one time.
3. She was an extremely lucky guesser, so good, in fact, that she should be playing roulette in Vegas.
4. She astrally projected.
In all the times I've been over this, the simplest answer has always been that she astrally projected. The other explanations actually make less sense, in my opinion.
There are a fifth and sixth options, I suppose, and that's:
5. This never happened, the universe is an illusion that began this morning, and my memories are fake.
6. I'm absolutely insane and at some point created this person and my experience out of thin air and manifested clear memories of it in the process.
Who knows? I don't. It's the only genuinely mystical experience I've ever had, and being someone who is decidedly not sensitive to spiritual things, I decided it was better to just let it be what it was and not try too hard to figure it out.
From what I remember, she had a dad who was CIA or something. I've never given much credence to the MKULTRA conspiracy theories (despite it being an actual program), but I've sometimes wondered if maybe she was some kind of result of it, if indeed it ever had any amount of success.
I kept in touch with her a little over the years, and even mentioned the experience again once to her. I think she said something to the effect of it having been a long time since she messed around with any of it. If I still had her contact info, I'd consider doing another run, maybe a few tests in a row.
She actually suggested that I try it myself that night we did it. I did, but I just don't have any knack for meditation. I keep wanting to fix that, take a yoga class or something. Doing it on my own, my brain just gets in the way.
I don't have any idea what the hell this thing is that we find ourselves in, or why it's here or what it's for, and I assume that anyone who says they do is lying. I don't tend to have beliefs in anything, but my mind remains open.
Providing, of course, that I don't smell bullshit. And I usually do.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 09, 2020, 01:50:07 PM
I'm trying to figure out where the boundary is supposed to be between the person and their zone of activity. What does it mean to say "if I behave in a way that the construct isn't designed for" ? Where does "I" end and the "Construct" begin? Given that my physical being is governed inside by all the same phenomena that exist outside it, why should the construct even allow me to imagine an action that goes against it? Or, if I am an independent instance of awareness and action that is somehow fundamentally divided from the construct in a way that allows that, where is that division?
Where does a game end and a player begin?
If you haven't played The Stanley Parable, I highly recommend it. Or just sit through a Let's Play of the whole thing. But playing it is better.
https://www.stanleyparable.com/
I'm planning on giving the author's subsequent work a go. I think it's called The Beginner's Guide.
...You got cold-read.
"Drawings" could be any kind of symbols or mascots on papers on the fridge. Actual drawings? Serendipitous but not necessary to be "right".
"E but doubled" is easy. An E isn't a 1/26 chance, it's THE MOST COMMON LETTER IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By a pretty far margin, actually. 12% of all letters in English are Es. 12% is a way higher amount than 1/26th.
"Doubled"/"scribbled" is an escape hatch. It makes it work whether there are Es or not: E, F, T, H can all be described as "kind of like an E". In lower case letters, you get a, c, o, s. You'll notice these are pretty goddamn common backups. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency)
The usual words used for this escape hatch are more like twisted/distorted/warped to cover all of those clearly. But this is good enough for some wiggle room.
You were conned. I have used these exact methods to con people in this exact way more than once.
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 05:59:15 PM
...You got cold-read.
"Drawings" could be any kind of symbols or mascots on papers on the fridge. Actual drawings? Serendipitous but not necessary to be "right".
"E but doubled" is easy. An E isn't a 1/26 chance, it's THE MOST COMMON LETTER IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By a pretty far margin, actually. 12% of all letters in English are Es. 12% is a way higher amount than 1/26th.
"Doubled"/"scribbled" is an escape hatch. It makes it work whether there are Es or not: E, F, T, H can all be described as "kind of like an E". In lower case letters, you get a, c, o, s. You'll notice these are pretty goddamn common backups. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency)
The usual words used for this escape hatch are more like twisted/distorted/warped to cover all of those clearly. But this is good enough for some wiggle room.
You were conned. I have used these exact methods to con people in this exact way more than once.
The best part about this is that your response reads more like a con than an actual con.
The perfect results came out of all possible potentials in one fell swoop? Try me another. Nobody is that good, certainly not without getting paid for it.
This is all entirely too complicated. It's what happens when you let primates move off of the savannah and allow them to play with fire. They get all confused. "Who am I? What am I? Do I have free will or agency, or do the angry thunder gods control my fate?"
Well, the Doktor is here to explain it to you:
You are a weaponized ape. You are nothing BUT free will and a bag of destructive tendencies. Denying your free will is a category mistake. The fact that you have fooled yourself into thinking there is a greater plan than "OOG SMASH" is EXACTLY why we're in the mess we're today. Everyone's overthinking things, and worried that they are pissing off the gods, and trying to think of magical ways to appease those gods, though they may not think of it that way.
1. You can't not piss off the gods.
2. You cannot appease the gods once they are pissed off.
3. Fuck the gods. Right in their ear holes. They are nothing but trouble. Who ASKED them in the first fucking place? Send the bastards home with a black eye and a fat lip. Come around here telling us how to act? The fuck you will.
It's a sad, sad day when I have to point at Anton LeVay as the only person with the right fucking idea. That shit makes me feel dirty.
And here's the thing about category mistakes: They blind you to reality one piece at a time, until you run into what we doktors call an "outside context event". Usually this only happens once to an individual, a business, a society, or a species. Because you almost never survive them. What it IS, is a problem that you could not see coming and therefore could do nothing about. And it doesn't matter if you couldn't see it because you just couldn't see it, or if you couldn't see it because you had your head up your ass worrying about free will or "being in the moment" or whatever the hell the kids are calling it these days.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 09, 2020, 06:12:25 PM
This is all entirely too complicated. It's what happens when you let primates move off of the savannah and allow them to play with fire. They get all confused. "Who am I? What am I? Do I have free will or agency, or do the angry thunder gods control my fate?"
Well, the Doktor is here to explain it to you:
You are a weaponized ape. You are nothing BUT free will and a bag of destructive tendencies. Denying your free will is a category mistake. The fact that you have fooled yourself into thinking there is a greater plan than "OOG SMASH" is EXACTLY why we're in the mess we're today. Everyone's overthinking things, and worried that they are pissing off the gods, and trying to think of magical ways to appease those gods, though they may not think of it that way.
1. You can't not piss off the gods.
2. You cannot appease the gods once they are pissed off.
3. Fuck the gods. Right in their ear holes. They are nothing but trouble. Who ASKED them in the first fucking place? Send the bastards home with a black eye and a fat lip. Come around here telling us how to act? The fuck you will.
It's a sad, sad day when I have to point at Anton LeVay as the only person with the right fucking idea. That shit makes me feel dirty.
And here's the thing about category mistakes: They blind you to reality one piece at a time, until you run into what we doktors call an "outside context event". Usually this only happens once to an individual, a business, a society, or a species. Because you almost never survive them. What it IS, is a problem that you could not see coming and therefore could do nothing about. And it doesn't matter if you couldn't see it because you just couldn't see it, or if you couldn't see it because you had your head up your ass worrying about free will or "being in the moment" or whatever the hell the kids are calling it these days.
You know, Roger, the more you say things, the less I dislike you.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 06:08:55 PM
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 05:59:15 PM
...You got cold-read.
"Drawings" could be any kind of symbols or mascots on papers on the fridge. Actual drawings? Serendipitous but not necessary to be "right".
"E but doubled" is easy. An E isn't a 1/26 chance, it's THE MOST COMMON LETTER IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By a pretty far margin, actually. 12% of all letters in English are Es. 12% is a way higher amount than 1/26th.
"Doubled"/"scribbled" is an escape hatch. It makes it work whether there are Es or not: E, F, T, H can all be described as "kind of like an E". In lower case letters, you get a, c, o, s. You'll notice these are pretty goddamn common backups. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency)
The usual words used for this escape hatch are more like twisted/distorted/warped to cover all of those clearly. But this is good enough for some wiggle room.
You were conned. I have used these exact methods to con people in this exact way more than once.
The best part about this is that your response reads more like a con than an actual con.
The perfect results came out of all possible potentials in one fell swoop? Try me another. Nobody is that good, certainly not without getting paid for it.
I would have been your guru when I was 15.
No one here knew me then, mind you, but they knew me when I was 19 and they're probably snort laughing at the idea.
It is EASY to do this stuff. It's so easy you don't even need to TRY. You absolutely can do it by accident.
Go on, give it a shot sometime. Meet someone and try to trick them into believing you have psychic abilities.
If you fail on the first attempt, you were failing on purpose. Try twice.
I could say "try it whenever you have the chance", of course. "Getting it perfect" even once should be enough of a shock that a hundred trials with one success should be surprising. That said, you really only need two: first one will see if you are prone to self-sabotage or not, second will work without fail.
I'm not joking, either. Any passingly intelligent person can convince people they're psychic.
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 07:05:18 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 06:08:55 PM
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 05:59:15 PM
...You got cold-read.
"Drawings" could be any kind of symbols or mascots on papers on the fridge. Actual drawings? Serendipitous but not necessary to be "right".
"E but doubled" is easy. An E isn't a 1/26 chance, it's THE MOST COMMON LETTER IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By a pretty far margin, actually. 12% of all letters in English are Es. 12% is a way higher amount than 1/26th.
"Doubled"/"scribbled" is an escape hatch. It makes it work whether there are Es or not: E, F, T, H can all be described as "kind of like an E". In lower case letters, you get a, c, o, s. You'll notice these are pretty goddamn common backups. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency)
The usual words used for this escape hatch are more like twisted/distorted/warped to cover all of those clearly. But this is good enough for some wiggle room.
You were conned. I have used these exact methods to con people in this exact way more than once.
The best part about this is that your response reads more like a con than an actual con.
The perfect results came out of all possible potentials in one fell swoop? Try me another. Nobody is that good, certainly not without getting paid for it.
I would have been your guru when I was 15.
No one here knew me then, mind you, but they knew me when I was 19 and they're probably snort laughing at the idea.
It is EASY to do this stuff. It's so easy you don't even need to TRY. You absolutely can do it by accident.
Go on, give it a shot sometime. Meet someone and try to trick them into believing you have psychic abilities.
If you fail on the first attempt, you were failing on purpose. Try twice.
I could say "try it whenever you have the chance", of course. "Getting it perfect" even once should be enough of a shock that a hundred trials with one success should be surprising. That said, you really only need two: first one will see if you are prone to self-sabotage or not, second will work without fail.
I'm not joking, either. Any passingly intelligent person can convince people they're psychic.
Everything her personality lacked, you're radiating. I find it completely unconvincing.
Let me put you to her test. Let's see if you pass it.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 06:17:18 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 09, 2020, 06:12:25 PM
This is all entirely too complicated. It's what happens when you let primates move off of the savannah and allow them to play with fire. They get all confused. "Who am I? What am I? Do I have free will or agency, or do the angry thunder gods control my fate?"
Well, the Doktor is here to explain it to you:
You are a weaponized ape. You are nothing BUT free will and a bag of destructive tendencies. Denying your free will is a category mistake. The fact that you have fooled yourself into thinking there is a greater plan than "OOG SMASH" is EXACTLY why we're in the mess we're today. Everyone's overthinking things, and worried that they are pissing off the gods, and trying to think of magical ways to appease those gods, though they may not think of it that way.
1. You can't not piss off the gods.
2. You cannot appease the gods once they are pissed off.
3. Fuck the gods. Right in their ear holes. They are nothing but trouble. Who ASKED them in the first fucking place? Send the bastards home with a black eye and a fat lip. Come around here telling us how to act? The fuck you will.
It's a sad, sad day when I have to point at Anton LeVay as the only person with the right fucking idea. That shit makes me feel dirty.
And here's the thing about category mistakes: They blind you to reality one piece at a time, until you run into what we doktors call an "outside context event". Usually this only happens once to an individual, a business, a society, or a species. Because you almost never survive them. What it IS, is a problem that you could not see coming and therefore could do nothing about. And it doesn't matter if you couldn't see it because you just couldn't see it, or if you couldn't see it because you had your head up your ass worrying about free will or "being in the moment" or whatever the hell the kids are calling it these days.
You know, Roger, the more you say things, the less I dislike you.
Wisest man I ever knew was Orton Nenslo. Also the biggest asshole. The two qualities are unrelated.
Not that I am sitting here claiming wisdom or anything.
Sure: think of a random number. One digit. You may change your mind from the very first number to come to mind — once.
I'll come back to this.
With one bit of information that your friend definitely had, I can do a pretty convincing job just playing the odds. This is one of those things that gives you an absurd amount of information because it ties into the social fabric you grew up in.
Rough age. Call it the five year span in which your birthday falls. That's all it takes for me to dig up your childhood memories (mostly fake — focus on stuff most kids have happen and lean on the fuzziness of childhood memories to do the dirty work) and tell you a nightmare you had as a kid you didn't know you remembered vividly. (You probably didn't have that nightmare, but one a lot like it, and the imagery is probably pretty strong for you.)
It also gives me enough information to figure out what you consider a random word, because it will be similar phonologically to unusual words you heard growing up.
If you also give me your favorite movie and favorite book, I can spin a frankly creepy account of who you are as a person out of nothing. This part is the same exact approach taken for horoscopes, but hits harder because it uses narrative touchstones that you identify with personally in some way.
With the city you grew up in and your career, I can speak in broad strokes about your life story and hit them dead on. All it takes is extrapolating from the culture you grew up in and the life path you followed and making them meet in the middle.
Seriously. This is easy stuff. You can decode anyone in this sort of way, not because they are predictable but because humans are bundles of heuristics and stupidity. They necessarily follow certain patterns. Social pressure narrows things even further. You will never pick out the meal they had three days after their 13th birthday, but you can figure out what their ideas of "random" are and get a good idea of what their life path was like.
Fun fact: this works really well in crowds because you can play statistics against them. Eyeball the average age group, describe a very common story for someone in that age group, and pick someone out of the crowd and say "You!" They'll say no, then you say a childhood friend of theirs perhaps, and OH GOODNESS YOU'RE RIGHT.
Right. So, that number. It was 7. But you probably changed your mind immediately after you picked that, and decided on 3 or 9 instead.
This is not hard to do. This will usually be the case for any human you talk to. I encourage you to try it.
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 08:25:57 PM
Sure: think of a random number. One digit. You may change your mind from the very first number to come to mind — once.
I'll come back to this.
With one bit of information that your friend definitely had, I can do a pretty convincing job just playing the odds. This is one of those things that gives you an absurd amount of information because it ties into the social fabric you grew up in.
Rough age. Call it the five year span in which your birthday falls. That's all it takes for me to dig up your childhood memories (mostly fake — focus on stuff most kids have happen and lean on the fuzziness of childhood memories to do the dirty work) and tell you a nightmare you had as a kid you didn't know you remembered vividly. (You probably didn't have that nightmare, but one a lot like it, and the imagery is probably pretty strong for you.)
It also gives me enough information to figure out what you consider a random word, because it will be similar phonologically to unusual words you heard growing up.
If you also give me your favorite movie and favorite book, I can spin a frankly creepy account of who you are as a person out of nothing. This part is the same exact approach taken for horoscopes, but hits harder because it uses narrative touchstones that you identify with personally in some way.
With the city you grew up in and your career, I can speak in broad strokes about your life story and hit them dead on. All it takes is extrapolating from the culture you grew up in and the life path you followed and making them meet in the middle.
Seriously. This is easy stuff. You can decode anyone in this sort of way, not because they are predictable but because humans are bundles of heuristics and stupidity. They necessarily follow certain patterns. Social pressure narrows things even further. You will never pick out the meal they had three days after their 13th birthday, but you can figure out what their ideas of "random" are and get a good idea of what their life path was like.
Fun fact: this works really well in crowds because you can play statistics against them. Eyeball the average age group, describe a very common story for someone in that age group, and pick someone out of the crowd and say "You!" They'll say no, then you say a childhood friend of theirs perhaps, and OH GOODNESS YOU'RE RIGHT.
Right. So, that number. It was 7. But you probably changed your mind immediately after you picked that, and decided on 3 or 9 instead.
This is not hard to do. This will usually be the case for any human you talk to. I encourage you to try it.
So basically cold reading. People remember the hits and not the misses, and will tailor or even manufacture memories despite themselves.
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 08:25:57 PM
Sure: think of a random number. One digit. You may change your mind from the very first number to come to mind — once.
I'll come back to this.
With one bit of information that your friend definitely had, I can do a pretty convincing job just playing the odds. This is one of those things that gives you an absurd amount of information because it ties into the social fabric you grew up in.
Rough age. Call it the five year span in which your birthday falls. That's all it takes for me to dig up your childhood memories (mostly fake — focus on stuff most kids have happen and lean on the fuzziness of childhood memories to do the dirty work) and tell you a nightmare you had as a kid you didn't know you remembered vividly. (You probably didn't have that nightmare, but one a lot like it, and the imagery is probably pretty strong for you.)
It also gives me enough information to figure out what you consider a random word, because it will be similar phonologically to unusual words you heard growing up.
If you also give me your favorite movie and favorite book, I can spin a frankly creepy account of who you are as a person out of nothing. This part is the same exact approach taken for horoscopes, but hits harder because it uses narrative touchstones that you identify with personally in some way.
With the city you grew up in and your career, I can speak in broad strokes about your life story and hit them dead on. All it takes is extrapolating from the culture you grew up in and the life path you followed and making them meet in the middle.
Seriously. This is easy stuff. You can decode anyone in this sort of way, not because they are predictable but because humans are bundles of heuristics and stupidity. They necessarily follow certain patterns. Social pressure narrows things even further. You will never pick out the meal they had three days after their 13th birthday, but you can figure out what their ideas of "random" are and get a good idea of what their life path was like.
Fun fact: this works really well in crowds because you can play statistics against them. Eyeball the average age group, describe a very common story for someone in that age group, and pick someone out of the crowd and say "You!" They'll say no, then you say a childhood friend of theirs perhaps, and OH GOODNESS YOU'RE RIGHT.
Right. So, that number. It was 7. But you probably changed your mind immediately after you picked that, and decided on 3 or 9 instead.
This is not hard to do. This will usually be the case for any human you talk to. I encourage you to try it.
There's a list of these isn't there...
think of a colour and a tool
Red hammer
Think of a shape
Triangle, sometimes star
I have a phone interview in ten but you can lead people to think of exactly what you want them to with leading build up. I'll post example soon
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 09:21:33 PM
I have a phone interview in ten but you can lead people to think of exactly what you want them to with leading build up. I'll post example soon
Alright, let's take your Tool example. By Tool alone you're already biasing people to a small list. Getting more explicit (smashing tool) would be too obvious. But you can give a list of examples, for instance, and the last one on that list will influence the choice made. (Similar but not identical: if you want them to say wrench, say drill, screwdriver, pliers.)
But that's a weak influence. In the above, hammer is also quite likely. More construction inclined people might consider nail gun. But you can do better with words that have associations. This is a kind of magic trick, and works best in that venue. But if you can have a valid reason to be doing an unrelated thing while you talk, you can perform the trick.
Say I'm shuffling cards. I talk about how I'm doing it, I cut the deck, I bring up that spades began as swords and flash a spade card to drive it home, reshuffle, cut again, running commentary, talk about the symbolism of swords, the stabbing, and — oh, think of an object in your home.
Knife? Knife.
This works on all sorts of levels. The trick is learning what works on YOU, then extrapolating it to others. Pay attention the next time a marketing campaign convinces you to buy something, and you'll have a new tool to con people.
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 07:05:18 PM
It is EASY to do this stuff. It's so easy you don't even need to TRY. You absolutely can do it by accident.
Once I watched a documentary about a teenage girl who supposedly had the ability to diagnose people's illnesses just by looking at them. She could identify problems that would normally only be detectable via x-ray, or such.
Her abilities worked when she was allowed to talk with the subject. However, when dealing with subjects who were instructed not to talk to her or answer her questions, her accuracy dropped precipitously. This would appear to be a clear case of cold reading (the subjects she was talking to knew what was wrong with them).
But here's the funny bit. After interacting with the "non-cooperative" subjects, she appeared to be genuinely confused and distressed. I got the impression that
she really believed she had these abilities. I think she hadn't just convinced everyone else, she had convinced
herself.
It’s my experience that very few con artists of the magical sort are intentionally conning people. They buy their own bullshit, wholesale.
The ones who do not are the exception, not the rule. After all: it’s more convincing if not even you know you’re talking nonsense. The unintentional bullshitters are more successful.
ETA:
By the way, Faust, your choices of Red and Triangle say more about you playing Control recently than humans in general. “Think of a random shape/color/abstract concept” is very volatile, and you can get different answers by PUTTING DIFFERENT OBJECTS ON YOUR DESK.
Objects are a bit more stable, words and letters are dependent on formative memories more than anything else, and numbers are nigh universally the same choices.
As far as the astral projection test...yeah, that was cold reading. She clearly failed the actual test (reading the name).
A better test would be:
"I'm going to walk into the kitchen, write a single-digit number on a piece of paper, and stick it to the refrigerator with a magnet. Then I'll come back here, and ask you to read the number. We will repeat this three times."
And to keep things interesting, I'd take a six-sided die with me, and roll to determine what number to write each time.
Note that this test seems much easier, because it constrains what the subject is looking for; there are no vague impressions to sort through.
A really-real astral projection / remote viewer type would almost certainly get 100%. The actual chances of getting all three numbers would be 1 in 216.
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 11:00:29 PM
By the way, Faust, your choices of Red and Triangle say more about you playing Control recently than humans in general. "Think of a random shape/color/abstract concept" is very volatile, and you can get different answers by PUTTING DIFFERENT OBJECTS ON YOUR DESK.
:aaa: that makes sense and is terrifying
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 08:25:57 PM
Sure: think of a random number. One digit. You may change your mind from the very first number to come to mind — once.
I'll come back to this.
With one bit of information that your friend definitely had, I can do a pretty convincing job just playing the odds. This is one of those things that gives you an absurd amount of information because it ties into the social fabric you grew up in.
Rough age. Call it the five year span in which your birthday falls. That's all it takes for me to dig up your childhood memories (mostly fake — focus on stuff most kids have happen and lean on the fuzziness of childhood memories to do the dirty work) and tell you a nightmare you had as a kid you didn't know you remembered vividly. (You probably didn't have that nightmare, but one a lot like it, and the imagery is probably pretty strong for you.)
It also gives me enough information to figure out what you consider a random word, because it will be similar phonologically to unusual words you heard growing up.
If you also give me your favorite movie and favorite book, I can spin a frankly creepy account of who you are as a person out of nothing. This part is the same exact approach taken for horoscopes, but hits harder because it uses narrative touchstones that you identify with personally in some way.
With the city you grew up in and your career, I can speak in broad strokes about your life story and hit them dead on. All it takes is extrapolating from the culture you grew up in and the life path you followed and making them meet in the middle.
Seriously. This is easy stuff. You can decode anyone in this sort of way, not because they are predictable but because humans are bundles of heuristics and stupidity. They necessarily follow certain patterns. Social pressure narrows things even further. You will never pick out the meal they had three days after their 13th birthday, but you can figure out what their ideas of "random" are and get a good idea of what their life path was like.
Fun fact: this works really well in crowds because you can play statistics against them. Eyeball the average age group, describe a very common story for someone in that age group, and pick someone out of the crowd and say "You!" They'll say no, then you say a childhood friend of theirs perhaps, and OH GOODNESS YOU'RE RIGHT.
Right. So, that number. It was 7. But you probably changed your mind immediately after you picked that, and decided on 3 or 9 instead.
This is not hard to do. This will usually be the case for any human you talk to. I encourage you to try it.
Actually, the first number that entered my head was actually three, but I was hardly reading because my response was going to be less complicated: not your test, my test. You pass my test. Haven't you been keeping up with how all of this works? I set the rules.
I'll set the exact same rules for you that I did for her. I'll go into my kitchen, I'll write something down, and I'll stick it on the fridge. And you tell me what that thing is.
Anyone else see the big gaping flaw in this?
Besides the obvious one that I'm not going to attempt to mystify it by pretending at visions and shit, which makes it less likely that any mistakes will be excused.
Quote from: altered on January 10, 2020, 04:06:49 AM
Anyone else see the big gaping flaw in this?
Besides the obvious one that I'm not going to attempt to mystify it by pretending at visions and shit, which makes it less likely that any mistakes will be excused.
This is where you fucked up.
Everyone loves a miracle worker. Nobody wants to see under the vinyl.
Quote from: altered on January 10, 2020, 04:06:49 AM
Anyone else see the big gaping flaw in this?
That you didn't take my challenge? That the desperation to dismiss my experience is dripping like beads of sweat from everything you've posted?
By all means, offer some worthy criticism. Nothing you've said so far has applied, as far as I can tell.
Of course! But there's an even bigger flaw that means that even if I'm right — in fact, ESPECIALLY if I'm right — I will "fail".
This is a game you can play only before you explain the rules. Even if I played the mystical witch lady here, I already explained the statistics of it. Which means the word would be chosen with them in mind. You don't get to play this game after everyone understands the rules.
That's not to say it's impossible. For instance, he chose a two syllable word. Six or seven letters long. Written in lower case, it would have at most one descender. And he had to squash the last letter in, because he ran out of space.
But because I won't play the witch lady, if any single piece of that is wrong the whole thing gets tossed, where she spoke in far vaguer terms and got a full success handed to her. (Also, if you ignore the statistical likelihood's part, that description of the chosen word being even half right would be "crazy". I'm betting it's almost entirely correct.)
Quote from: Faust on January 09, 2020, 11:16:28 PM
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 11:00:29 PM
By the way, Faust, your choices of Red and Triangle say more about you playing Control recently than humans in general. "Think of a random shape/color/abstract concept" is very volatile, and you can get different answers by PUTTING DIFFERENT OBJECTS ON YOUR DESK.
:aaa: that makes sense and is terrifying
I am totally not catching the gist of this.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 10, 2020, 04:23:22 AM
Quote from: Faust on January 09, 2020, 11:16:28 PM
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 11:00:29 PM
By the way, Faust, your choices of Red and Triangle say more about you playing Control recently than humans in general. "Think of a random shape/color/abstract concept" is very volatile, and you can get different answers by PUTTING DIFFERENT OBJECTS ON YOUR DESK.
:aaa: that makes sense and is terrifying
I am totally not catching the gist of this.
Basically, "pick a random color/shape/abstract concept" is more influenced by environment and current mental obsessions than anything else. To the point that if you put a green cube on your desk prominently, most people will say green and square.
Faust has been playing a game where a pyramid and the color red are extremely important visual themes. It's more likely that's why he said red and triangle than it is that most people would say those things.
Quote from: altered on January 10, 2020, 04:19:22 AM
Of course! But there's an even bigger flaw that means that even if I'm right — in fact, ESPECIALLY if I'm right — I will "fail".
This is a game you can play only before you explain the rules. Even if I played the mystical witch lady here, I already explained the statistics of it. Which means the word would be chosen with them in mind. You don't get to play this game after everyone understands the rules.
That's not to say it's impossible. For instance, he chose a two syllable word. Six or seven letters long. Written in lower case, it would have at most one descender. And he had to squash the last letter in, because he ran out of space.
But because I won't play the witch lady, if any single piece of that is wrong the whole thing gets tossed, where she spoke in far vaguer terms and got a full success handed to her. (Also, if you ignore the statistical likelihood's part, that description of the chosen word being even half right would be "crazy". I'm betting it's almost entirely correct.)
You still haven't guessed what I wrote. In fact, you're living up to the example I provided in my story: those who make extraordinary claims will usually come up with some reason why they can't be tested.
You're not really contributing to the conversation in any constructive way that matters to me, you're just storming in like James Randi and being snarky and acting like anyone I've ever met is a professional illusionist. I've already gone over this; she wasn't the type. She certainly wasn't your type.
I'll save you the trouble. I wrote, "Rent is due." I even gave you a good shot at guessing the right answer.
I'm bored. Does anyone else have anything mildly interesting to say?
:lulz:
I could well have guessed that Es were present, I just assumed you’d modify your behavior after I pointed out that statistically, that’s the easy mode version.
I had assumed you would write a single word, because most people would. Again, that’s the easy mode version, but I hadn’t brought it up so it seemed less likely to be changed.
But I could have always said “oh I can’t tell... the distance is clouding my mind.... I see something.... there are few curved lines but a prominent one is at the start... I can’t see clearly...”
If I hadn’t begun by telling you that you got played, you’d have eaten it up. And it still would have been correct for most things you could have written. Including this.
ETA:
Also, when it comes to parapsychological woo, I’m one of the more credulous people there are, which makes this all far funnier.
I was absolutely willing to buy that you saw something worthwhile right up until you described the experience.
But I’m Randi, of course. Never mind that I’m pretty sure telepathy is physically possible over short distances and that under the right conditions weak telekinesis could happen too.
I don’t even draw the line at remote viewing. I just have seen far better examples of it than this exposed as shams.
Quote from: altered on January 10, 2020, 04:42:59 AM
:lulz:
I could well have guessed that Es were present, I just assumed you'd modify your behavior after I pointed out that statistically, that's the easy mode version.
I had assumed you would write a single word, because most people would. Again, that's the easy mode version, but I hadn't brought it up so it seemed less likely to be changed.
But I could have always said "oh I can't tell... the distance is clouding my mind.... I see something.... there are few curved lines but a prominent one is at the start... I can't see clearly..."
If I hadn't begun by telling you that you got played, you'd have eaten it up. And it still would have been correct for most things you could have written. Including this.
(https://i.imgur.com/VnQ2CNW.gif)
Quote from: altered on January 10, 2020, 04:31:46 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 10, 2020, 04:23:22 AM
Quote from: Faust on January 09, 2020, 11:16:28 PM
Quote from: altered on January 09, 2020, 11:00:29 PM
By the way, Faust, your choices of Red and Triangle say more about you playing Control recently than humans in general. "Think of a random shape/color/abstract concept" is very volatile, and you can get different answers by PUTTING DIFFERENT OBJECTS ON YOUR DESK.
:aaa: that makes sense and is terrifying
I am totally not catching the gist of this.
Basically, "pick a random color/shape/abstract concept" is more influenced by environment and current mental obsessions than anything else. To the point that if you put a green cube on your desk prominently, most people will say green and square.
Faust has been playing a game where a pyramid and the color red are extremely important visual themes. It's more likely that's why he said red and triangle than it is that most people would say those things.
Thanks.
I'm making a second pass. This sort of thing is my version of mental hygiene.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 02:33:42 PM
I figured that if I had stumbled upon something truly unique and world-shattering, it was something that would prove to be elusive if I actually attempted to catch it. It was almost like the universe was allowing me a glimpse of something, and if I ran after it, it would vanish forever, and I'd be left with nothing but the question of whether or not I ever saw it in the first place.
In other words, you wanted to believe in something more than you wanted to find the truth.
Quote
But this could all be described as mental gynmastics,
It was.
Quote
I like to consider myself a logical person who sticks to the rules of critical thinking,
Almost everybody likes to think that. It's kind of a Dunning-Kruger effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).
Quote
I also, again, did not wish to become so rigorous in my pursuit of an answer that I would put any strain on the relationship I had with the subject. She was coming out of a relationship with a very controlling boyfriend at the time, and I didn't want to put her under any real pressure.
Now you're just rationalizing.
Consider that if she had actual
usable astral projection ability, she could be finding people trapped in collapsed buildings, or lost in avalanches. Or making a fortune in the oil/gas/mineral exploration industry. Or performing just enough corporate espionage to make a killing on the stock market.
Quote
She never struck me as someone who would gain anything from fooling anyone.
She doesn't need to have the intent to fool other people, if she was already fooling herself.
Quote
I've known a lot of bullshitters, and nothing about her character ever smelled of it.
She didn't need to be a bullshitter; she only needed to be a wishful-thinking type.
Quote
Most people who make extraordinary claims will come up with some reason they can't undergo a test, and if they don't, they'll try to do as you originally expected, which is design the test themselves.
She
did come up with reasons that the test might fail. She said (your words): "she had described it as being somewhat fuzzy, not exactly easy to make out details in"...."She warned me that she couldn't make any promises"
Quote
She came out of it after a little bit, and asked me if I had drawn something. I said, no. So she does it again, and comes back and says she keeps seeing little drawings, did I really not draw anything? I said, no,
Altered said something about how a person's childhood could be a significant source of false memories. As a child, she was probably used to the refrigerator having drawings on it. Since that is what she expected to see, that is what she believed she saw. She didn't actually describe any of the drawings, and saying there are drawings on a refrigerator isn't much of a leap.
Quote
She stops for a moment and says she did see something like the letter "E", but it looked scribbled, like it had been written twice.
Seriously? I mean, that could be anything.
Quote
Could she have guessed the exact circumstances of just how I'd written down my name, and with what?
She didn't guess that, though.
Quote
The chances are 50/50 each, or 25% combined:
1. pen/pencil
2. vertical/flat surface
You write on vertical surfaces 50% of the time? Weird.
Quote
Not to mention also correctly guessing the first letter; a 1/26 chance.
That's wrong, but altered already addressed that.
Quote
And being savvy enough to skirt around it long enough to "seem" like she was having a hard time getting it? And then making it subtle by not revealing the whole word but only the first letter?
What you're saying is that because she was
less accurate, that makes her
more believable. That's idiotic.
Quote
I took her into the kitchen and showed her the fridge. She started to freak out and got super excited; the door was covered with stick-figure drawings my roommates had done over the months. She pointed to them and shouted "That's what I kept seeing! These!"
Uh-huh. I don't doubt she
believed she'd seen that, but unless she actually described the stick-figures during the initial reading, then saying "yes, I got it right!" afterwards means exactly nothing.
Quote
This ultimately gives me several nearly equally inexplicable options:
1. She was a fucking ghost ninja.
A ninja would have actually passed the test.
Quote
2. She was a female Sherlock Holmes and a con-artist with nothing to gain but the satisfaction of fooling a random person this one time.
No, she was fooling herself just as much as you.
Quote
3. She was an extremely lucky guesser, so good, in fact, that she should be playing roulette in Vegas.
What did she guess right? There was an "E" (unsurprising) and there were drawings on the refrigerator (not exactly a stretch). The scribbed/doubled-E is slightly interesting, but she said a lot of other things as well, and that's just the one that stood out in your memory.
Quote
4. She astrally projected.
If she did, she wasn't very good at it.
Quote
In all the times I've been over this, the simplest answer has always been that she astrally projected. The other explanations actually make less sense, in my opinion.
The option you missed was that you went in wanting to believe, and you saw what you wanted to see.
Quote
I decided it was better to just let it be what it was and not try too hard to figure it out.
So, when you encounter something mysterious, you stand back and say "oooh" instead of investigating further? This is
exactly the reason you believe in magic. If you keep investigating long enough, the mystery goes away.
Or you run out of research budget.
Quote
I think she said something to the effect of it having been a long time since she messed around with any of it.
Not surprising. Her level of ability doesn't seem to have any practical applications.
Quote
I don't tend to have beliefs in anything, but my mind remains open.
And yet, you believe in astral projection, and your mind is closed to the idea that your the test was yet another case of cold reading.
Now: SOMEBODY GIVE ME A TL;DR !
Honestly though, thanks for the work you're doing in this thread.
I will take this opportunity to reiterate that nothing and nobody has ever managed, no matter their effort or skill, to defy my Universal Tedium Principle, which states that given two equally plausible explanations for any given phenomenon, the most boring explanation is the correct one.
The universe is intrinsically uninteresting, and it is incapable of working itself into a state where the miraculous is real. Remote viewing, astral projection, winning an Amazon giveaway, and such things would be amazing. They are therefore impossible.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 10, 2020, 03:27:46 PM
I will take this opportunity to reiterate that nothing and nobody has ever managed, no matter their effort or skill, to defy my Universal Tedium Principle, which states that given two equally plausible explanations for any given phenomenon, the most boring explanation is the correct one.
The universe is intrinsically uninteresting, and it is incapable of working itself into a state where the miraculous is real. Remote viewing, astral projection, winning an Amazon giveaway, and such things would be amazing. They are therefore impossible.
You're certainly not wrong. I mean, outside of the Dirty T.
If you combine the Universal Tedium Principle with the Malevolent God Theory, you've pretty much solved everything.
Quote from: LMNO on January 10, 2020, 03:46:22 PM
If you combine the Universal Tedium Principle with the Malevolent God Theory, you've pretty much solved everything.
Yeah, you'd expect them to cancel out, but they don't.
The great thing about humans - maybe the ONLY great thing - is that we can break anything. We can even break things that don't exist.
Magic, for example.
"I wish for no wishes."
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 10, 2020, 04:20:59 PM
The great thing about humans - maybe the ONLY great thing - is that we can break anything. We can even break things that don't exist.
Magic, for example.
"I wish for no wishes."
Science too to some degree. We analyzed the composition of common rocks by grinding them to super fine powder and putting them through solvents and heat in ways that just don't happen in nature, discovered that a teeny tiny fraction of a percent of it was made of super heavy and rather unstable atoms forged in supernovae from long before the sun had ignited and planets formed, refined them, and found that the stuff could basically smash itself and everything else on an atomic level releasing an incredible amount of heat, electromagnetic energy, and chunks of nuclei if you get enough of them close together in one place, and primarily use the shit to either unravel reality instantly to make explosions that rival meteor impacts and super volcanoes for sheer destruction or set it up to unravel a bit slower to boil water and power relatively primitive wheel turbines to spin magnets and get the electricity we use to make machines chew up resources and spit out products at a pace that you just don't see in the natural world unmolested by monkey sciencing. All of the shit is also profoundly toxic and durable.
Also we made the deadly microbes on our only planet that we all know and love into weapons and discovered means to engineer myriad other deadly substances.
There's a certain irony to us in that we used to smash rocks together to make tools for survival and got so good at it that smashing rocks together may also become horrible, firey doom for us and everything else living on the planet.
Humans are as far as I know the most destructive things in a universe just LOADED with destructive things. That's kind of an accomplishment when you think about it.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 10, 2020, 05:45:26 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 10, 2020, 04:20:59 PM
The great thing about humans - maybe the ONLY great thing - is that we can break anything. We can even break things that don't exist.
Magic, for example.
"I wish for no wishes."
Science too to some degree. We analyzed the composition of common rocks by grinding them to super fine powder and putting them through solvents and heat in ways that just don't happen in nature, discovered that a teeny tiny fraction of a percent of it was made of super heavy and rather unstable atoms forged in supernovae from long before the sun had ignited and planets formed, refined them, and found that the stuff could basically smash itself and everything else on an atomic level releasing an incredible amount of heat, electromagnetic energy, and chunks of nuclei if you get enough of them close together in one place, and primarily use the shit to either unravel reality instantly to make explosions that rival meteor impacts and super volcanoes for sheer destruction or set it up to unravel a bit slower to boil water and power relatively primitive wheel turbines to spin magnets and get the electricity we use to make machines chew up resources and spit out products at a pace that you just don't see in the natural world unmolested by monkey sciencing. All of the shit is also profoundly toxic and durable.
Also we made the deadly microbes on our only planet that we all know and love into weapons and discovered means to engineer myriad other deadly substances.
There's a certain irony to us in that we used to smash rocks together to make tools for survival and got so good at it that smashing rocks together may also become horrible, firey doom for us and everything else living on the planet.
Humans are as far as I know the most destructive things in a universe just LOADED with destructive things. That's kind of an accomplishment when you think about it.
Everything we do happens in nature because we are part of nature. That's the whole point.
Just because intelligence is confined to one part of nature doesn't make it less natural. In fact, the only actual phenomenon that isn't natural is the wasp. It is not part of the food chain, it exists only to cause pain.
They are proof of my earlier statement that you cannot appease the gods.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 10, 2020, 05:53:32 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 10, 2020, 05:45:26 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 10, 2020, 04:20:59 PM
The great thing about humans - maybe the ONLY great thing - is that we can break anything. We can even break things that don't exist.
Magic, for example.
"I wish for no wishes."
Science too to some degree. We analyzed the composition of common rocks by grinding them to super fine powder and putting them through solvents and heat in ways that just don't happen in nature, discovered that a teeny tiny fraction of a percent of it was made of super heavy and rather unstable atoms forged in supernovae from long before the sun had ignited and planets formed, refined them, and found that the stuff could basically smash itself and everything else on an atomic level releasing an incredible amount of heat, electromagnetic energy, and chunks of nuclei if you get enough of them close together in one place, and primarily use the shit to either unravel reality instantly to make explosions that rival meteor impacts and super volcanoes for sheer destruction or set it up to unravel a bit slower to boil water and power relatively primitive wheel turbines to spin magnets and get the electricity we use to make machines chew up resources and spit out products at a pace that you just don't see in the natural world unmolested by monkey sciencing. All of the shit is also profoundly toxic and durable.
Also we made the deadly microbes on our only planet that we all know and love into weapons and discovered means to engineer myriad other deadly substances.
There's a certain irony to us in that we used to smash rocks together to make tools for survival and got so good at it that smashing rocks together may also become horrible, firey doom for us and everything else living on the planet.
Humans are as far as I know the most destructive things in a universe just LOADED with destructive things. That's kind of an accomplishment when you think about it.
Everything we do happens in nature because we are part of nature. That's the whole point.
Just because intelligence is confined to one part of nature doesn't make it less natural. In fact, the only actual phenomenon that isn't natural is the wasp. It is not part of the food chain, it exists only to cause pain.
They are proof of my earlier statement that you cannot appease the gods.
Yeah wasps are an abomination. Fuck hornets too. I was swarmed as a child and never quite got over it. I'm clinically phobic, but instead of irrational terror I get a cold urge to purge the Xenos when I see them. I can control it, but it always rises in me involuntarily when I see them or anything that even kind of looks like them.
So humans being a part of nature makes all of our various works natural? Have I misunderstood you here?
Technically, it's all just waves of probability at the most fundamental level, so creating plutonium-infused chew toys is just as natural as planting lentils.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 10, 2020, 08:03:31 PM
So humans being a part of nature makes all of our various works natural? Have I misunderstood you here?
(https://66.media.tumblr.com/55c34e306e85389b302006333aa10492/tumblr_nonuuoJVz21roo64to1_1280.png)
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 10, 2020, 08:03:31 PM
So humans being a part of nature makes all of our various works natural? Have I misunderstood you here?
Yes. We have built what amounts to really, really baroque termite mounds.
fun fact time:
Wasps have a threat pose they make before they attack!
https://images.app.goo.gl/7XBVk1eFnCrAyki17 BACK THE FUCK UP PAL
https://images.app.goo.gl/WtdqbozuPKf1u7Cv9 Thanks dude
Wasps also remember humans by smell and facial features (no shit) and will learn that you aren’t going to bother them over time if you back away when they pose. The radius they will enter threat posture within gets smaller and smaller, because you ain’t there for bothering them. Ever wonder how people get those crazy closeups of wild nests? Yep! They teach the wasps that they’re harmless.
Most wasps don’t sting! Most wasps are parasitic/parasitoidal, in fact, and generally colonize plant-infesting bugs like scale insects, wood boring beetles and so forth. These guys are cool as hell:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Ichneumon_wasp_%28Megarhyssa_macrurus_lunato%29_%287686081848%29.jpg/1280px-Ichneumon_wasp_%28Megarhyssa_macrurus_lunato%29_%287686081848%29.jpg Saving a tree from beetle grubs!
Parasitic/parasitoidal wasps usually have no venom! Stingers are modified ovipositors, and venom and egg laying are mutually exclusive for the genus. (This extends to bees.)
Wasps are cool and I love them thanks.
ETA: by the way, this DOES actually mean you can keep wasps like people do with bees. But not for honey!
For HOME DEFENSE.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 08, 2020, 01:29:48 PM
Quote from: Pergamos on January 08, 2020, 07:32:56 AM
Have you tried ayahuasca? Because the something mystical really isn't meaningless, at least it wasn't for me or any of the folks I've talked to who did it, it gave us insights into our lives and we put those insights into practice and changed things.
Your point is good, I just don't like your example.
Not meaningless, functionally meaningless. I meant that however profound and life-changing your experience may be, it's rooted in a subjective experience that would lose its value if it wasn't subjective. It can be as meaningful as you like, but it can't be conveyed to anyone who doesn't also have the experience. Like satori.
Changing your life is about as functional as anything can be.
Quote from: Pergamos on January 11, 2020, 05:52:09 PM
Changing your life is about as functional as anything can be.
ooooh I love that!
I should have known this thread would devolve into an ignorant circle-jerk, completely devoid of any semblance of genuine conversation stemming from what at least a few of you recognized as a good-enough jumping-point for discussion.
And this has nothing to do with whether I was "right" or "wrong".
You're all just a bunch of stupid, self-absorbed ignorangt jackasses who don't deserve what you've been gifted with; the mantle of the closest thing to "official" Discordianism that exists (it doesn't).
I wish I had something more clever to say. As much as I disappoint myself, you lot (with a few exceptions) disappoint me ever more.
There are thinking men among you, but not many.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 18, 2020, 09:43:14 PM
I should have known this thread would devolve into an ignorant circle-jerk, completely devoid of any semblance of genuine conversation stemming from what at least a few of you recognized as a good-enough jumping-point for discussion.
And this has nothing to do with whether I was "right" or "wrong".
You're all just a bunch of stupid, self-absorbed ignorangt jackasses who don't deserve what you've been gifted with; the mantle of the closest thing to "official" Discordianism that exists (it doesn't).
I wish I had something more clever to say. As much as I disappoint myself, you lot (with a few exceptions) disappoint me ever more.
There are thinking men among you, but not many.
Ok you are in charge: What do you want to talk about Pelvis?
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 18, 2020, 09:43:14 PM
You're all just a bunch of stupid, self-absorbed ignorangt jackasses who don't deserve what you've been gifted with; the mantle of the closest thing to "official" Discordianism that exists (it doesn't).
Huh? We're just a half dozen or so people who go way back.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 18, 2020, 09:43:14 PM
I should have known this thread would devolve into an ignorant circle-jerk, completely devoid of any semblance of genuine conversation stemming from what at least a few of you recognized as a good-enough jumping-point for discussion.
And this has nothing to do with whether I was "right" or "wrong".
You're all just a bunch of stupid, self-absorbed ignorangt jackasses who don't deserve what you've been gifted with; the mantle of the closest thing to "official" Discordianism that exists (it doesn't).
I had some good thought & conversation. I'm sorry you think that, as the OP, the thread is all about you.
I called all of this way in advance. Elvis has a
very fine and specific point he wants to discuss using only his own terms, he's not going to get the
exact reaction he wants, and his provocative & judgmental discussion style is going to pull provocative & judgmental energy right back towards him -- so he's eventually going to get drunk, snap, and blast everybody indiscriminately with a bunch of personal attacks and call us all names.
And knowing this, I said to myself, Ah well, the admission is free... might as well get on the ride anyway.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 20, 2020, 02:22:20 PM
I had some good thought & conversation.
Same. Not sure why he's pissed.
It's the same, every time. The moment you get comfortable they tell you to "roll it up!"
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 20, 2020, 03:49:42 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 20, 2020, 02:22:20 PM
I had some good thought & conversation.
Same. Not sure why he's pissed.
An (apparently) major element of his world-view was questioned, which in turn cast doubt on his self-image as a "logical person who sticks to the rules of critical thinking". It's not surprising that he became upset.
Also,
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 09, 2020, 04:07:18 AM
After all, as far as I know, my own experience is the only one that matters. From my point of view, I'm the player in the game.
He seems to be stuck in his own head. I mean, we
all are, but I like to think that the tapping I hear through the cell wall is a real person, and not just my imagination or woodpeckers or whatever.
I think there's a bad physics analogy here. Like how relativity doesn't allow for a preferred reference frame, a valid model of human experience shouldn't allow for a preferred point-of-view. You can only (measure things) / (perceive reality) from your (current reference frame) / (brain-meat), but that doesn't imbue it with special characteristics.
...okay, now that I've written that, I think it clumsy, but I'm going to leave it in in case it inspires someone to come up with a
better bad physics analogy.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 21, 2020, 02:28:52 AM
An (apparently) major element of his world-view was questioned, which in turn cast doubt on his self-image as a "logical person who sticks to the rules of critical thinking". It's not surprising that he became upset.
Sort of like the "I am the only conscious being in a world of sheep" trap.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 21, 2020, 02:30:26 AM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on January 21, 2020, 02:28:52 AM
An (apparently) major element of his world-view was questioned, which in turn cast doubt on his self-image as a "logical person who sticks to the rules of critical thinking". It's not surprising that he became upset.
Sort of like the "I am the only conscious being in a world of sheep" trap.
This, yes. I'd only modify it to add that there seems to be a common mistake being made: the idea that being intelligent makes it impossible for you to be conned.
Presumably there's some "if you are sufficiently skeptical" or whatever qualifier there, but it's irrelevant. I've never met anyone who was immune to being misled. Especially not when they're TRYING to be immune to being misled.
All intelligence does is give you a couple tools to recognize badly played cons as they happen, and a billion tools for cognitive dissonance to engrave bad signal into your brain forever.
In retrospect, this thread was doomed from the very first line.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 01:41:30 PM
Imagine time as a solid object.
Those are certainly all words, but as a both a metaphor and a starting point, the amount of assumptions and presumptions needed are insurmountable.
Quote from: altered on January 21, 2020, 07:19:56 AM
This, yes. I'd only modify it to add that there seems to be a common mistake being made: the idea that being intelligent makes it impossible for you to be conned.
Also, "you may be smart, but you're not the only smart person in the room".
Quote from: LMNO on January 21, 2020, 01:34:30 PM
In retrospect, this thread was doomed from the very first line.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 01:41:30 PM
Imagine time as a solid object.
Those are certainly all words, but as a both a metaphor and a starting point, the amount of assumptions and presumptions needed are insurmountable.
Imagine a horse as an antelope. In this analogy, the "antelope's" antlers are evidence that horses are, in fact, antelope.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 21, 2020, 03:46:17 PM
Quote from: LMNO on January 21, 2020, 01:34:30 PM
In retrospect, this thread was doomed from the very first line.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 01:41:30 PM
Imagine time as a solid object.
Those are certainly all words, but as a both a metaphor and a starting point, the amount of assumptions and presumptions needed are insurmountable.
Imagine a horse as an antelope. In this analogy, the "antelope's" antlers are evidence that horses are, in fact, antelope.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Quote from: LMNO on January 21, 2020, 01:34:30 PM
In retrospect, this thread was doomed from the very first line.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 07, 2020, 01:41:30 PM
Imagine time as a solid object.
Those are certainly all words, but as a both a metaphor and a starting point, the amount of assumptions and presumptions needed are insurmountable.
this must be why they call it the block model.
so what I'm getting is that the function of the black iron prison is to convince you that only a miracle can set you free
Quote from: axod on January 21, 2020, 11:49:18 PM
so what I'm getting is that the function of the black iron prison is to convince you that only a miracle can set you free
And that is ALSO a lie.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 18, 2020, 09:43:14 PM
I should have known this thread would devolve into an ignorant circle-jerk, completely devoid of any semblance of genuine conversation stemming from what at least a few of you recognized as a good-enough jumping-point for discussion.
And this has nothing to do with whether I was "right" or "wrong".
You're all just a bunch of stupid, self-absorbed ignorangt jackasses who don't deserve what you've been gifted with; the mantle of the closest thing to "official" Discordianism that exists (it doesn't).
I wish I had something more clever to say. As much as I disappoint myself, you lot (with a few exceptions) disappoint me ever more.
There are thinking men among you, but not many.
Moar cartoons plez
Quote from: Pergamos on January 22, 2020, 01:07:52 AM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 18, 2020, 09:43:14 PM
I should have known this thread would devolve into an ignorant circle-jerk, completely devoid of any semblance of genuine conversation stemming from what at least a few of you recognized as a good-enough jumping-point for discussion.
And this has nothing to do with whether I was "right" or "wrong".
You're all just a bunch of stupid, self-absorbed ignorangt jackasses who don't deserve what you've been gifted with; the mantle of the closest thing to "official" Discordianism that exists (it doesn't).
I wish I had something more clever to say. As much as I disappoint myself, you lot (with a few exceptions) disappoint me ever more.
There are thinking men among you, but not many.
Moar cartoons plez
:lol:
That was cold as fuck.
:lol:
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 18, 2020, 09:43:14 PM
I should have known this thread would devolve into an ignorant circle-jerk, completely devoid of any semblance of genuine conversation stemming from what at least a few of you recognized as a good-enough jumping-point for discussion.
And this has nothing to do with whether I was "right" or "wrong".
You're all just a bunch of stupid, self-absorbed ignorangt jackasses who don't deserve what you've been gifted with; the mantle of the closest thing to "official" Discordianism that exists (it doesn't).
I wish I had something more clever to say. As much as I disappoint myself, you lot (with a few exceptions) disappoint me ever more.
There are thinking men among you, but not many.
:tldr2:
It's such an awesome thing that this thread now has literally nothing to do with itself, for almost no reason.
You guys are so good at your jobs, I wonder if you even remember what your jobs are.
One person comes along and says, "This is bullshit because hurrdadurddhurr" and everything collapses. You give undue power to regulars. It's like points for showing up.
And I wonder why I got bored here.
Mission Accomplished! Das vidanya.
it's like this thread was part of some sort of explosion and there was a strand that the posts were supposed to follow, but no matter what, every time a post tried to be "in the box" it would just get derailed again. . .
Quote from: rong on January 22, 2020, 04:34:05 AM
it's like this thread was part of some sort of explosion and there was a strand that the posts were supposed to follow, but no matter what, every time a post tried to be "in the box" it would just get derailed again. . .
this is discordia - there are no rails
Quote from: MMIX on January 22, 2020, 10:31:26 AM
Quote from: rong on January 22, 2020, 04:34:05 AM
it's like this thread was part of some sort of explosion and there was a strand that the posts were supposed to follow, but no matter what, every time a post tried to be "in the box" it would just get derailed again. . .
this is discordia - there are no rails
That's just because Eris hoggs all of the cocaine.
Maybe you think this is like a lecture hall, where an OP declares a topic and everybody responds only to that and not each other
and I know where you're coming from--I'd always get frustrated when people didn't bite the hook in the way I'd hoped and we get sucked into a lengthy subthread about the definition of magic or unpacking doubts about astral projection (that's all on you, btw... you enthusiastically followed that trail away from your OP)
and maybe now you're thinking -- no, a thread is more like a conversation at a party, people are sharing their thoughts with each other, and sometimes that takes on a momentum of its own
but no, you'd be wrong there, too. This is the Recipe Forum.
The Recipe Forum is about blood
Quote from: rong on January 22, 2020, 04:34:05 AM
it's like this thread was part of some sort of explosion and there was a strand that the posts were supposed to follow, but no matter what, every time a post tried to be "in the box" it would just get derailed again. . .
:169:
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
It's such an awesome thing that this thread now has literally nothing to do with itself, for almost no reason.
I liked the "Universal Tedium Principle" bit. I also learned something about wasps.
Quote
You guys are so good at your jobs, I wonder if you even remember what your jobs are.
What do you think my job is, on this forum?
Quote
One person comes along and says, "This is bullshit because hurrdadurddhurr" and everything collapses. You give undue power to regulars. It's like points for showing up.
This is bullshit because you've disengaged from your own arguments, and are now just blaming everyone else. You can't win a boxing match by stepping out of the ring and yelling at the audience. That would be
pro wrestling.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
It's such an awesome thing that this thread now has literally nothing to do with itself, for almost no reason.
You guys are so good at your jobs, I wonder if you even remember what your jobs are.
One person comes along and says, "This is bullshit because hurrdadurddhurr" and everything collapses. You give undue power to regulars. It's like points for showing up.
And I wonder why I got bored here.
Mission Accomplished! Das vidanya.
What has happened (obviously) is that you are not predestined to discuss these things. When you try, the BIP forces us through no fault of our own to gang up on you and tear the conversation to pieces in order to preserve the time strand.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
It's such an awesome thing that this thread now has literally nothing to do with itself, for almost no reason.
oh there's a reason
Your pattern on this forum is to show up every 2-3 months, immediately climb up into the Throne of Judgment, and lecture everybody about how we're neglecting our sacred responsibilities to The Discordian Society.
if you could change your pattern, you would get different reactions
QuoteYou guys are so good at your jobs, I wonder if you even remember what your jobs are.
:lulz: I definitely forgot my "job title"
oh yeah-------POPE
I hereby use my papal powers to forgive myself for not leaving the thread when I knew I should have
which was literally your second post in the thread -- people asked you to clarify your confusing metaphor, and you said "I just told you..." and linked to an hour and a half long video (because I'm going to spend an hour and a half getting the background needed to discuss your 9 sentence post...)
by post 2, you were already climbing up the throne. How's the view up there, your holiness?
anyway,
see you in 2 months when you're drunk and need people to yell at for some reason
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
You give undue power to regulars. It's like points for showing up.
And what powers are they, you are aware The Mgt hasn't signed in in years, there is no one at the wheel
THEN WHO IS DRIVING CAR?
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
You give undue power to regulars.
You don't seem to understand properly how primates function in group settings.
That is hardly our fault.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on January 22, 2020, 01:30:33 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
It's such an awesome thing that this thread now has literally nothing to do with itself, for almost no reason.
You guys are so good at your jobs, I wonder if you even remember what your jobs are.
One person comes along and says, "This is bullshit because hurrdadurddhurr" and everything collapses. You give undue power to regulars. It's like points for showing up.
And I wonder why I got bored here.
Mission Accomplished! Das vidanya.
What has happened (obviously) is that you are not predestined to discuss these things. When you try, the BIP forces us through no fault of our own to gang up on you and tear the conversation to pieces in order to preserve the time strand.
This is why we call Pango "The Chairman of the Board."
Quote from: LMNO on January 22, 2020, 02:00:10 PM
THEN WHO IS DRIVING CAR?
Do you really want to know?
Quote from: Cramulus on January 22, 2020, 01:42:57 PM
Your pattern on this forum is to show up every 2-3 months, immediately climb up into the Throne of Judgment, and lecture everybody about how we're neglecting our sacred responsibilities to The Discordian Society.
The only reason I joined this Goddamn religion is because I am encouraged to neglect my duties as a member.
you know what though, Elvis-- looking through the archive, you haven't had one of these UR ALL DUMB episodes in like a year, so let me retract some of the acid; maybe I'm overreacting to Elvis(2017)
Like I said, for what it's worth, I felt like I had a good discussion both with you and with others in the thread - it's why it's so annoying to have you flip into the pidgeon-on-the-chessboard mode
all things considered
it IS nice to see some ENERGY here
Quote from: LMNO on January 22, 2020, 02:00:10 PM
THEN WHO IS DRIVING CAR?
ERIS IS DRIVING CAR!
:omg:
Funny how quickly you guys lose your shit just because little ol' me throws a hissy-fit.
You all and I have an interesting dynamic. I wonder why that is.
Quote from: LMNO on January 22, 2020, 01:06:29 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
You give undue power to regulars.
Well, that's fairly telling.
Telling in that you're more likely to listen to someone if you're more comfortable with them. It has nothing to with truth, and more to do with familiarity.
Almost nothing about human relationships, let alone politics, operates on truth. Truth is a last resort.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 27, 2020, 10:37:48 PM
Quote from: LMNO on January 22, 2020, 01:06:29 PM
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
You give undue power to regulars.
Well, that's fairly telling.
Telling in that you're more likely to listen to someone if you're more comfortable with them. It has nothing to with truth, and more to do with familiarity.
Almost nothing about human relationships, let alone politics, operates on truth. Truth is a last resort.
define "truth"
Quote from: Cramulus on January 22, 2020, 01:42:57 PM
which was literally your second post in the thread -- people asked you to clarify your confusing metaphor, and you said "I just told you..." and linked to an hour and a half long video (because I'm going to spend an hour and a half getting the background needed to discuss your 9 sentence post...)
Cram, you're one of the active Discordians here that I respect the most, and I always value your opinions, but I think you're dead wrong in this assessment. If you re-read the thread, you'll see that I was rebutting the accusation that "everything" is pre-ordained, and I pointed to that which I had already said; only the "framework" of the world is set in stone, and our actions within it are limited, but free. I provided the link to the Stanley Parable as an example of what I was trying to talk about. You don't have to watch the entire 45 or whatever minutes of it to grasp the concept. It just happened to be the best illustration of what I was trying to convey.
Do I get drunk and act like a dipshit sometimes? Yeah. I do. But that has almost nothing to do with this topic, or almost anything I've said so far. And I'm surprised that this deep into it, you've absorbed almost nothing of the contents of the most important and first few contributions to this thread. I'd think that this sort of thing is highly uncharacteristic of you.
Assuming what I've just said is true, where do you get off having anything to say at all?
What's super funny is that we just got done having an exactly inverse experience with a TOTAL newbie.
Newbie advertised an interesting thing, misinterpretations and criticisms were made, it was made clear I specifically was coming at things from THE wrong angle, revelations were made that the newbie's venture (encouraged by third parties) may not have been entirely in good faith on the other side, both sides adjusted their approach, we encouraged the newbie to stick around and be cool like they already had been.
It's almost like there's something other than "regulars" involved here.
Quote from: altered on January 27, 2020, 11:06:39 PM
What's super funny is that we just got done having an exactly inverse experience with a TOTAL newbie.
Newbie advertised an interesting thing, misinterpretations and criticisms were made, it was made clear I specifically was coming at things from THE wrong angle, revelations were made that the newbie's venture (encouraged by third parties) may not have been entirely in good faith on the other side, both sides adjusted their approach, we encouraged the newbie to stick around and be cool like they already had been.
It's almost like there's something other than "regulars" involved here.
I'd hazard a guess that it's paranoia.
Wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of being someone else.
Whatever. Predictable. And boring.
I would not say that you tend to argue in good faith, either. Not necessarily bad faith, but you make far too many assumptions and declarations. At least, that's been my experience, so far.
:lulz:
Further proving my point: you didn't read what I said, or you'd know I was, if ANYTHING, accusing you of having nothing in common with the other user I was describing.
As a point of fact, you are poorly adjusted to the style of this forum. As a point of fact, the nature of your maladjustment means you see enemies where there are only people who find it hilarious that you act silly about this stuff.
The point of the post was a complete newbie getting heated responses and responding like a human, leading to everyone walking away pretty damn happy about how it all went down.
There's nothing to do with regulars getting more airtime. There is you, showing inflamed ass every time something rubs you the wrong way. That's what it is. This isn't even the first time someone has pointed this shit out to you, but you treat it as if the entire community should change for you when plenty of folks join up and do just fine.
Join up (or at least become active) after you did, even: Al Qedic and Baltshazzar both come to mind immediately. And neither kissed ass, so you can put that out of your head.
Quote from: altered on January 28, 2020, 01:01:52 AM
:lulz:
Further proving my point: you didn't read what I said, or you'd know I was, if ANYTHING, accusing you of having nothing in common with the other user I was describing.
As a point of fact, you are poorly adjusted to the style of this forum. As a point of fact, the nature of your maladjustment means you see enemies where there are only people who find it hilarious that you act silly about this stuff.
The point of the post was a complete newbie getting heated responses and responding like a human, leading to everyone walking away pretty damn happy about how it all went down.
There's nothing to do with regulars getting more airtime. There is you, showing inflamed ass every time something rubs you the wrong way. That's what it is. This isn't even the first time someone has pointed this shit out to you, but you treat it as if the entire community should change for you when plenty of folks join up and do just fine.
Join up (or at least become active) after you did, even: Al Qedic and Baltshazzar both come to mind immediately. And neither kissed ass, so you can put that out of your head.
Alty, you might as well give up. You've never made a single convincing argument, as far as I'm concerned. Everything you've ever said when engaging me has relied on fallacy, assumption, emotion, and bad faith. I almost wonder why you continue to bother.
I perceive a pattern. When he enters a state of self-delusion, he declares that he is bored.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 10, 2020, 04:33:18 AM
I'm bored. Does anyone else have anything mildly interesting to say?
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 22, 2020, 03:55:45 AM
And I wonder why I got bored here.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 28, 2020, 12:00:10 AM
Whatever. Predictable. And boring.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 28, 2020, 01:18:46 AM
Alty, you might as well give up. You've never made a single convincing argument, as far as I'm concerned. Everything you've ever said when engaging me has relied on fallacy, assumption, emotion, and bad faith. I almost wonder why you continue to bother.
I don't think she's talking
to you, but rather
past you.
Your reply to her earlier post had nothing to do with what she actually said. You're demonstrating, quite convincingly, that you're incapable of processing anything that contradicts your ingrained self image. Kind of a pity, really; there were a couple of moments I thought you were showing glimmers of potential.
Quote from: Reverend Elvis Pope Pelvis on January 28, 2020, 12:00:10 AM
Quote from: altered on January 27, 2020, 11:06:39 PM
What's super funny is that we just got done having an exactly inverse experience with a TOTAL newbie.
Newbie advertised an interesting thing, misinterpretations and criticisms were made, it was made clear I specifically was coming at things from THE wrong angle, revelations were made that the newbie's venture (encouraged by third parties) may not have been entirely in good faith on the other side, both sides adjusted their approach, we encouraged the newbie to stick around and be cool like they already had been.
It's almost like there's something other than "regulars" involved here.
I'd hazard a guess that it's paranoia.
Wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of being someone else.
Whatever. Predictable. And boring.
I would not say that you tend to argue in good faith, either. Not necessarily bad faith, but you make far too many assumptions and declarations. At least, that's been my experience, so far.
EET EES ALL SO BORRRRING!
:baguette:
Wait.
What happened to the fucking baguette emote? :crankey:
Man, pointing out the fact that I've been saying I'm getting bored three times in one month really shuts down everything.
Can you try harder to be intellectually dishonest?
Oh, and yawn.
Oh, I forgot. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Well, now you are boring me.
I am unsure why you revert into this weird hipster thing every time you visit, but it's tiresome.
We get like a day of you acting like you got some sense, often some really good posts, but then this.
Carry on, I suppose.
So once upon a time I was hanging out with a porn star and her husband when their neighbors come over for a visit and they're like DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT THE SEXY THINGS JUST CHILL AND WE CAN FUCK AROUND WHEN THEY'RE GONE and I'm a dumbass and more than a little drunk so sure whatever fine. Eventually I decide to break out a deck of cards and perform my favorite party trick: Drunk Tarot.
There is a RITUAL to Drunk Tarot. You have to sit on the floor with me. You have to posit a question or at least a subject. You have to shuffle the deck. And, most importantly, you have to give me a sip of your drink.
Drunk Tarot is performed with a standard 52 deck of cards, borrowed from the host. I explain that the suits of a playing card deck map to the suits of a tarot deck: diamonds to coins/pentacles, clubs to rods, spades to swords, hearts to cups. The layout is always the celtic cross, because it's big and fancy looking.
After doing a read for our host and hostess, one of the friends asks if he can go. He has seen this ritual play out. He shuffles the deck, I take a sip, we lay out the cards.
10 of spades shows up in the distant past slot.
I make a face. "This might be a mistake, this card is supposed to map to the ten of swords, which often represents a violent or untimely death..."
He loses his shit.
"HOW DID YOU KNOW MY COUSIN GOT MURDERED?????"