XX Spukhafte Fernwirkung

11·21·09
"Metaphysical bagage."

The only reason to do anything ever is because it pleases you. (Or because some extended effect of it will please you.)
I pay the price in ill-conceived laughter.
Flowers it is.

11·23·09
How does one go about confronting a delusion? If someone suffers from a delusion, how might someone else confront them? What if the are delusional about everything? How might one recognize self delusion?

How does one differentiate between the sensation of deja vu, versus actually experiencing something they have experienced before? Does AJ ever experience deja vu? My own interpretation of deja vu is that it is a simple dating error in our brain.

11·28·09
REM dreaming may be simulations.
Clearly dreaming (both REM and non-REM) must be evolutionary selected. (Otherwise it wouldn't persist both throughout our species and throughout many species.)

11·30·09
"knowing, that you don't know, is the most, essential step, to knowing, you know?"

La terre est bleu comme une orange Jamais une erreur, les mots ne mentent pas
(The Earth is blue like an orange, never a mistake words do not lie.)


12·1·09
Science is a tool, method, or process, or collection of these things, that distill information out of the noise. It's a system of doubting. Science is a system of doubting information, and testing it, validating it, always trying as hard as possible to invalidate information, to disprove it. In this way, it is a reliable process for distilling truth out of the nonsense of noise that pervades human thinking.

12·2·09
A good amount to think about.
Short-circuited compassion unit.
Do double contractions exist? E.g., might'ven't, instead of might have not, might've not, or might haven't? Is one of these more correct than the others?


12·3·09
You prove it's true.
You prove it's not true.
You prove it can't be proven.
you prove it can't be disproven.
You prove it's ill-defined.

It's sufficient to happen.
It's necessary to happen.
It's both sufficient and necessary.
It's neither sufficient nor necessary.

Immediately he recognized only four possibilities: either he was mistaken, or everyone else was. Or they were liars, or, most dreadfully, it was hallucination, and he was therefore mad.

It is necessary and not sufficient.
It is sufficient and not necessary.
A
B
A and B
Not A and not B
A and not B
Not A and B
It is either sufficient or necessary.
It is either sufficient or necessary, but not both.
It is sufficient or it is not necessary.
It is necessary or it is not sufficient.
Porch on cat a is there.

Reason is the only path to reality.
Science is our only hope.
The only road leading to absolute certainty.

Of course it appeals to my self nature, being an overtly cautious fellow.

"My curiosity barely exceeded the fear of getting caught."
"This moment marked a terrible disappointment. …but ignited the rest of my life."

The greatest nightmare, of madness, threatens the considerate.
"Were it not for the hope of reason. …The vision of a totally logical world I had glimpsed in mathematics."


12·5·09
Hot, three-way oval action. Oval on oval action.


12·8·09
Privacy is such a strange issue to me; I tend to think I might be an intensely private person, but I believe that is largely due to me not knowing where other people's barriers lie, and fearing that overstepping barriers of personal privacy would be highly offensive to most people. This is severe hypocrisy for me, since I tend to be very difficult to offend, and would not find personal questions offensive in any way imaginable. (Does it count that if I don't want to reveal something asked of me, I would simply explain I don't want to reveal that? Or does that count as taking offense?).

I tend to have a real fear of girls that I am very attracted to. And this isn't always the case, I'm fairly certain the fear is directly related to how interested in me they seem; if it is very obvious that a girl is interested in me, and I actually notice, (a hugely improbable qualifier), then I am much more able to interact meaningfully, or express my own feelings. If, alternatively, a girl is at all ambiguous about her feelings towards me, I tend to actively suppress all expression of feelings, not just towards her, but towards anything, probably in an attempt to not offend. (Should that be "possibly in an attempt..."?)

I am constantly consciously cautious with respect to offending other's opinions, what a tragedy.

There is a lot of debate among various types of atheists (and critics of atheism), about how honest we should be, or how vocal we should be, or how "offensive" we should be. I am a "new atheist", which means I think we should be as honest and vocal as possible, and I believe the charge of offensiveness is misguided—the consequence of the privileged position that religion has enjoyed for far too long. As has been said with increasing frequency lately, criticizing another person's beliefs, or questioning their reasons for those beliefs, is not considered offensive in politics, or science, or most other areas of our lives (e.g. movies, music, books). The religious however are excused to get all riled up simply if an atheist mentions god might not exist, or that one can be good without god (google "atheist bus campaign" for more info). The tragedy of this situation is that atheists (like many theists, and apologists from both sides, I imagine), are so vocal precisely because they are convinced this is the most effective strategy to improving the world. My own experience with this originated in learning some history of science, specifically about Giardano Bruno, a contemporary of Galileo.
Bruno was burned alive at the stake, for merely suggested that the earth might not be the center of the solar system. They cut his tongue out as a sign of mercy. They probably would have spared his life, if he had only recanted. 22 years later they banned Galileo's book (placing it on the list of books that if read, would damn you to hell for eternity). Later they forced Galileo to recant, but he remained under house arrest in the later years of his life. His book was not taken off the "burn in hell" list for 200 years. An apology from the church only came in 1992! This institution, the catholic church, has done incalculable harm to the human race, and it is unforgivable. We can forgive the individuals, we can help them recover, we can free the masses, but the institution itself, the traditions and doctrines, should not be celebrated, but abhorred. It was this history specifically that motivated me to vocalize my criticisms of religion. Imagine, this is only the tip of the iceberg, we don't know how many geniuses were murdered over the eons by self-proclaimed authorities suffering from the same superstitions as nearly everyone else of their time. People cite all the great art and music created in the name of music over the last millennia. Though there are many good, valid arguments to describe why religion cannot take sole credit, we must ask, what might humanity have accomplished if religious authorities had not murdered the most creative, most insightful and most bold thinkers of any given era? And although this is a bit off topic, can anyone give a compelling argument why we, the new atheists, should not speak the truth? The reality of this situation is that we are not being mean, we are not going out of our way to offend, we are most definitely not violent, not on a personal, physically threading level, nor on a terrorist level (as many religious groups are). Given that we are merely asserting the truth, why should we stop again?


12·9·09
This is so sad. And scary.
Seems like a good idea.

Atheist nations are more peaceful.
Might atheists be distrusted because they are simply unknown, as this article suggests? Or is there more to it?
"Home is wherever I'm with you."
Neat.


12·10·09
"Hey Goldman Sachs, put down the crack pipe!"

12·11·09
"Love of color sound and words, is it a blessing or a curse."

What is it about humans that causes us to side on sets of issues? I can understand religious influences, for instance, as in-group behavior. And I can understand scientific consensus as a set of convergent opinions arrived at through independent lines of reasoning. But how is it that someone who isn't very religious, sides with the typical base set of religious beliefs? Case in point, Joe G, who buys both the intelligent design argument and the global-warming is a hoax conspiracy theory.

Why is it that the uniformed feel so justified in faking their qualifications as if it will convince the informed? For instance, creationists will sometimes claim they were formerly atheists, and then were convinced. Don't they understand how frequently atheists originated from some sort of religion? That it is the non-believers who have typically considered both sides in detail, not the believers?

"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
—Victor Stenger

"I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous ideas."
—Johann Hari


12·13·09
A.C. Grayling is so awesome. If you want to watch the whole thing, you can wander through that list on youtube, or you can see it here as well.