Oh come on, don't say it like that right after you corrected people saying apes were our brothers.

For us it goes ancestor-rat, rat-monkey?, monkeys, apes, humans- at a layman level. I don't think anyone in here who doesn't already know where to look would appreciate the particular species names and a dozen steps that just give the same general chain.

Now as for why we don't have tails it's important to note that apes fight each other quite a bit more than monkeys. If you look at a gorilla they've got really short legs.

People used to just say "that helps them balance in the trees" almost without thinking but if you look at the primates with the best balance in trees they have very long legs.

So no, the short legs have some other purpose. What male gorillas do is grapple. The best fighter ends up with the biggest harem like this so they want to be excellent fighters. A low center of gravity is important for grappling (you can see that we lower ours in those sorts of sports and you can see dogs bred for fighting have shorter legs as well,) and so now it becomes obvious what's going on.

Back to the tail- aside from it's prehensile function tails are used for balance. As our ancestors steered away from that set of traits they may not have just lost their tail from non-use but because shortening their legs had an impact on tail growth.

And of course if fighters could easily break each other's tails it would be better not to have it at all than to lose a lot of fights because of a cheap shot and then maybe even have it get infected and result in death.

If you had half the experience you claim you'd know that science only deals with "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," much like our court system.

It's close to interchangeable with "perfect" in the etiquette sort of way. "Impeccable timing" being the sort of thing where you manage something at exactly the right moment so impeccable words would basically just be perfectly clear.

Unfortunately scientific terms are not recognized by layman so we have to spend a lot of time explaining them in simpler words (just to have abra lie to me about already knowing. He's vaguely familiar at best.)

Every decent scientist understands that you can't tell laymen the whole story because they won't understand it. You've got to keep it simple so they have some indication of how important different concepts are.

We're all of the understanding that we don't give a shlt if you prove things exist. On the assumption that our world does exist we can prove lots of things.

Explain to me how you can tell that Pi is not a rational fraction and I'll let you talk about how much we actually know. Before then (or similar subject,) you're only allowed general concepts because you twist things out of context so much.

How so?

argument from ignorance fallacy, if you pursue that as an actual reason for any of that mysticism to be valid.


Show us that you comprehend the hinges of this door before you talk about it's position.

He'd imagine us to have someone to fight.

But really what's meant there is clearly that abra is dellusional and living in his own little fantasy world cut off from the reality the rest of us reside in. Talking to him is much like arguing with a brick wall.

You're an annoying pest. Attacks on character are not valid arguments any more than ad hominem so please deal with the topic dumbass.

I don't see how this is a good transposition. As an atheist I seem to be asking a lot of questions and saying that we know an awful lot. This is rather opposed to "you can't know the will of God" and related ideas.

I've even suggested that our actions could be deterministic which means that if you can just get a proper snapshot of the universe for a single moment you automatically know everything, so long as you have the computing power to handle it.

What coin are we talking about?

Hrm, let's scan a bit-

"You can't expect the young greenhorns to comprehend this kind of wisdom" = inexperienced fool
"believes that he's a sack of atoms that's not playing any game" sort of= shallow fool
"If you ever grow up" = foolish child
"filling people full of your pseudo-science nonsense" = stupid fool

In two pages you've devalued people four times, or three if that first one wasn't part of the meaning in what you were saying. My personality analysis of you in all this time says that you probably meant that subconsciously but I can't say for sure so I'll make the numbers nicer and say three.

But hey, three is practically the same as zero compared to infinity right?

Most of the people that call something deep can't understand anything greater than "ankles deep."

You certainly call it a failure a lot for being aware of that.

Yet you won't tell us what subject you taught or give any of that sort of information.

It looks suspiciously like (read: is clearly) you're just saying this so you can sound like an authority and then just feed up appeals to authority nonstop.

Of course, if you're not just baiting us you can share a little bit of that information. We're no asking for your social security number or anything after all~

A bit nitpicky but I wouldn't say the entire cities were destroyed. With conventional bombs we lit up a city in the middle east (sorry, I don't recall the name and search results are too loaded with terrorist bombings,) for about three days and killed about 1/2 as many people as either of the nukes we dropped (averaged.) My memory is, unfortunately, really fuzzy here.

Anyway, we chose big urban areas that a 3 mile wide circle would devastate but avoided smaller targets for fear that they might be able to recover a dud bomb and reverse engineer it.

However you might just be using the term "destroy" loosely in which case I'm only clarifying that you meant basically the same as devastate.

That's always how it has to be before people give any ground in "God matters."

Quite a ways back saying that Pi was an irrational number was too offensive to people's beliefs but today it's undeniable. No creator seems a similar belief, though significantly less violently enforced, and years and years down the road people won't be able to deny the things that don't fit it.

I'm so glad you said that before that post of mine where I went into the same thing (reply to Bushido.)

Just one problem: so what if it's an idea/game? Labeling it idea or game doesn't change what it is. (Although it may change one's own attitude or perspective toward it - which may or may not be beneficial depending on the person.)

This is ultimately why I started pressing you about this topic.

Well no, you don't necessarily have any power and if everything you see is an illusion you're basically trapped.

Getting awfully close to the No True Scottsman fallacy...

Organize.

Now what is it that you have done to others?

That doesn't seem to match what we've seen of our existence. Argument from ignorance perhaps?

Show us some of that truth and information please.

You just showed that you don't understand. Our designing things has nothing to do with the term intelligent design. It's a lot like how women's suffrage means something very different from suffering women.

I have told you repeatedly that intelligent design does not refer to our designs and I've told you that everyone agrees that we are at least sometimes intelligent and at least sometimes design.

Nobody is telling you otherwise.

You don't know. Your evidence has been considered. It looks something like this:
"Any evidence for the new popular word for a creator god?"
"Ya. Us. We design and are intelligent."
"That's got both of the words in it so it's got two points so far. An intelligent designer would have to be around before us though because we know we weren't always here and intelligent design is really about asking where we came from."

Now I'm sure you think we've discarded your views at this point but that's not the case at all. It is now your responsibility to add to the evidence or come up with some other evidence to the effect of us having always been here somehow or anything else that resolves the problem of how your evidence doesn't seem to explain our origin.

Like how I explained that I ask questions to see what you believe instead of just painting over it with what I believe to fill in gaps it's very important for a believer to do this part of the job.

You can mull about waiting for someone that shares your beliefs if you really want to but there's not really anyone that believes exactly the same thing as you and if they explain it poorly then what you believe looks worse. The reality is that it's up to you and if you don't want to take that responsibility you should stick to saying you only have an opinion and keep out of matters of evidence.

Besides, if you don't have such a shaky faith that you have to justify it to yourself or desperately work to spread it to others (both things you've basically said aren't the case,) why the hell would you need evidence for it in the first place?

Isn't that what it would mean to reject it as evidence?

Thing is we do get it and there are problems you need to address before our considering it any further could possibly show that you've got some full piece of evidence.

We get exactly what you're talking about. We're humans and we have the same inclinations and we work out what we are seeing the same way.

What we don't have is the same set of experiences as you. Instead of waking up in the middle of the night unable to move without any explanation as to why (something you may or may not have experienced,) I have a laptop that doesn't turn on properly half of the time. What I did was recall a solution my friend used of dropping it several times about the distance of 1 inch onto my lap and trying to turn it on again. It worked and I did that for months before I thought about it at a time I wasn't busy and decided to test if that really had anything to do with it.

Turns out it's a lot like a slot machine. Sometimes I win just by trying a few more times and others times it seems like I have to at least tilt the thing while I turn it on but that could just be more superstition eating it's way into my psyche.

Now you probably won't agree that that's the same thing and might not even see how it's relevant but I told that story to show that I believe things without evidence too. Flimsy evidence makes me believe even stronger than solid evidence and I have to constantly remind myself that I work like that if I don't want to let it take control of me.

You haven't shown that you understand these tendencies in yourself and much of what I've said to you have had the second purpose of drawing that understanding out if there was any.

Calling something superstition irrevocably is unfair though so I'm not doing that. You've got a chance to defend what you've said so use it.

I'll stop asking the same question when you answer it for once.

[quot]Your questions clearly shows that you don't even get what I am talking about. You asked:

"What evidence do you have for an intelligent designer before life on Earth?"

You are still talking about a single "designer" supposed to have created life on this earth.Could be several or many but you've got to give evidence that matches that but doesn't match single designer or no designer.

I keep the starting point of the subject small because you haven't shown that you can handle larger.

I know how to do that and I've done it in the past. The thing is there are a lot of ways to rearrange my thinking but only, roughly, one way that will match yours.

I know about a shortcut though. Be vague and shower you with praise as I speak nicely about anything you think.
Quite frankly that's a shltty thing for shltty people to do and I'm treating you like an adult rather than a child. If you'd rather be treated like a child just ask.


The problem is with everyone but you eh?

My computer had to go away for a few days but luckily it looks like this topic is dead in the water without me. I'll try not to hold it over anyone n_n
Or that there is no mind. All of existence could be precariously balanced on the lack or realization that it doesn't really exist.

But these lines of thinking are fruitless. Disproving the notions, if that were possible, would gain us nothing and confirming any of these fiction realities would just strand us in the knowing that there was nothing left for us except to delude ourselves and play back into the mystic veil.

Personally I don't care much about these notions of truth. People only ever resort to the possibility of unreality as they backpedal to keep their beliefs practical. The only use for that question is to stall out an argument so I prefer to cut to the heart of the matter and just focus on what we can learn about the world under the assumption that it real.

No matter the belief we assume that we are having real experiences and that that is an important aspect of our reality. As there is no argument there I think we should focus our attention elsewhere.

Do you think that doesn't look like petty name calling to anyone? Is there somebody you're trying to impress?

The problem with cognito ergo sum is that it assumes logic is not part of the deception.

Well that's the simplest definition. If you go deeper it's about about what it's possible to know.

The problem with religion (that I think everyone here recognizes,) is that it stalls your personal growth. You end up a permanent child and the only form of maturity praised is the growing dull enough to not ask questions.

Unfortunately I see most of this spiritualism in the same light. What I would really like right now is not for them to go on the defensive about that but look at themselves and see how this "whatever you believe" stuff is just a way to halt ever having to accept reality.

There's nothing to be found in what you believe. To say that's all that matters is to claim that you already know everything and with as much distaste as they seem to have when they claim we're doing that I can only hope that this is eye opening.

Ya, it applies less to your vision but with what sky has described these characters would most definitely be fictional entities.

So we could decide that sniper bullets just bounce off of people?


Hey sky. See what he's doing here? It's relevant to what I was talking about earlier.

I don't believe anything, I've just been explaining atoms and things because you claimed to be an authority on science and were terribly inaccurate in your descriptions of it. I'm more involved in philosophy now because everyone seemed to prefer that and you stopped claiming your science was any good.

-

And I'm a goldfish but that doesn't make me have gills of scales or a swim bladder. Belief doesn't have much impact on what you are, just a lot of impact on what you think and do.

The characters in a game are representations of people- are they actual, real people? No. They're illusions that look like people.

I know illusion sounds a bit more like magic than technology but there's no significant difference between how "real" these things are.

If our whole existence is a game we're all just imaginary. Whether it's exactly an idea in someone/thing's head or that idea has been written out into some kind of computer program doesn't matter. It's just as fictional.

These words are all interchangeable as far as the idea behind solipsism is concerned. It's the same concept and these little details don't matter.

Actually it's their estimate. They defined what was significant and then the baseline went past that boundary. By their own definition the baseline isn't random.

Want to tell me about the others?

Also something other groups haven't found to work the way PEAR said it did.

What was that by the way? I may have accidentally skipped it.

I'm going to take this claim seriously but unfortunately I'm technically too tied up right now to even be taking the time to keep replying in here (bad me, bad,) but I'm going to have to ask you to dig up the relevant posts that show this stuff.

What did I skip?

So does this mean that morality is nothing but random nonsense? That our only reason for being moral is because our players feel like it?

No, it would be an argument from ignorance if I was saying my not understanding something was the reason it couldn't work that way.

The obvious other reason that word traveling fast yet there not being any exploiters would be that we don't reincarnate with any kind of ability to make use of what we learned in previous lives/characters, like what a player would know. To maintain that there is a player who may have played previous characters you can explain why word wouldn't have traveled fast or why nobody would know about exploits-

and I'd say the "everyone is a designer of the game so they don't want to screw it up" thing is an argument for why they wouldn't spread exploits, though I don't see why it would take billions to program the game engine and if most are participating at a more user-based level of creation then there are lots of reasons left for them to cheat.

It's getting relatively abstract though and I don't expect you to necessarily understand massively multiplayer meta-gaming mechanics so you don't have to keep pursuing this point if you don't want to.

Just look at company CEOs and the ilk who embezzle huge sums of money. There are very obvious motives to exploit your own system when it involves other people.

I meant exactly what that sounds like. A WoW character may be an expert leatherworker when their player knows jack squat about leatherworking.

Does a driver need to know how an internal combustion engine works to press the pedal that makes the car go forward?

*I'm considering this a two parter so if you want to respond to this read the next piece first.

And our bodies/the characters might be strictly stimulus-response. What would it look like if we weren't?

For all we know the player interface just lets them type in what they want us to do and then like pressing the gas pedal we go and do it without them having had to know how.

I didn't take it out of the post. It's sitting right there for anyone to read and say "oh, it was silly of Sho to complain like that right before sky did what he was saying he should."

But you're right (enough.) I write my responses as I'm reading through these so I don't know what's coming next. Any time I make irrelevant objections like that you can just say "way ahead of you" or something and move on~

But messing up someone else's creation is clearly possible here. If not for the sake of angering anyone you're not on the best of terms with then you can save it for coercion purposes (and if you don't go through with a few threats people learn that they're hollow and won't let you influence them that way anymore.)

Humanity has broken peace treaties many times. It should be plain as day that as time marches on people have reason to no longer feel so attached to their agreements.

Ya, I just didn't think there was any reason to type out that many extra words when "breaking the rules" conveys the same idea.

So why don't people change them to get their way? Why not just give your character a million bucks and servants to deal with the crap they don't want to?