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Evolution does not imply the supernatural, its a stretch to believe that ia true since we know most of evolutions basic mechanisms and influences, and implying the supernatural is just an attempt to imply creationism or intelligent design. This line of reasoning is especially bad because it follows the same line of reasoning that implies religious morality is the only thing stopping people from turning into rapists and murderers. Also: How the flying gently caress are you jumping from natural color adaptations as a warning sign to loving telepathy? What the gently caress? CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 15:49
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Effectronica posted:Well, thank you for saying that you refused to read the thread and are just knee-jerking. I fear that many others will be inspired by your intellectual example.  A thread that is arguing a point based on zero knowledge whatsoever, surely a good faith argument should follow Effectronica posted:Just like how my last laptop overheated and died the instant I attached a 1TB hard drive by eSATA cable. No, I'm going to assume this is because something else was wrong. Because this sentence makes zero sense, the CPU is not involved in recognizing or handling the drive, nor would attatching a 1TB SATA to an eSATA port cause overheating. The drive controller is independent of the CPU. HEY LOOK! Its a lot like this thread, you say things you THINK sound inspired and intelligent, but in reality is a bunch of pseudointellectual bullshit. Effectronica posted:Actually, geocentric models are useful in astronomy, because locating stars under the assumption that the Earth is the center of the universe is more practical than using the Sun, or the center of the Milky Way. Similarly, this model is useful, especially since no one has actually shown that the probability of discerning truthful beliefs is inherently high (never mind that you still only have a 0.5% chance of forming 50 correct independent beliefs with a 90% chance of forming truthful ones) or that despite appearances, induction is essentially foolproof as far as discovering the truth goes. Its useful in teaching navigation and in designing planetariums. Otherwise it is not use. Sorry. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 16:32
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Effectronica posted:This is an extremely stupid post. Not as stupid as a guy who thinks plugging in his eSATA hard disk overheated his laptop. Because it demonstrates that you don't know how a basic computer functions, or how the individual systems function. Much like your thread discussing how evolution implies the supernatural. Effectronica posted:Because we have no naturalistic mechanism to explain this prevalence, as of yet. I suspect that one will be discovered, as opposed to anything conventionally supernatural, but until then, like plate tectonics stood for 50 years, it lies outside the boundaries of naturalism. No, Supernatural ideals are not like tectonic plates. Tectonic plates still have some evidence supporting their existence prior to their discovery, supernatural phenomenon mostly depends upon coincidences and pseudoscience. I sincerely doubt that in 50 years, we'll be praising someone for the discovery of the supernatural world that was hidden all this time. Plate tectonics had evidence even before their discovery, as of right now, the supernatural has even less evidence than the evidence of the idea of the atom during the classical Greek era.
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Aug 16, 2015 16:46
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Effectronica posted:This is another stupid post, which binds together ignorance, willful ignorance, and an inability to understand basic sarcasm. If your inability to make valid comparisons is sarcasm, you need a lot of help.
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Aug 16, 2015 16:54
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Effectronica posted:It is possible to construct more complex methods of evaluating truthfulness of beliefs and so on, but the basic problem right here is that most of our beliefs seem to be true ones. Snakes can be poisonous or otherwise dangerous, we generally are pretty good about determining whether there's a beer in our fridge or not, and so on. Our senses tell us that our beliefs are truer than they must be by probability. So: "biology is true, and that our general theory of scientific knowledge is true, and that only things that can be scientifically analyzed are real". Pick two. Either our senses can't be trusted, or creationism is true but there is no god directing it, or, and this is frankly the most reasonable- the supernatural exists. Something, which is beyond our perceptions and knowledge, is a phenomenon which ensures that our beliefs are more likely to be true than they should be given natural selection. Effectronica posted:Consider the subset of beliefs where learning is rare because the events about the beliefs are rare, so direct testing and transmitted knowledge of testing is, in turn, rare. These are still very likely to be truthful, much more likely than by chance. You are ignoring instinctual knowledge, things that are carried by genetics and implanted in your mind due to thousands of generations of implied knowledge from actual experience, like: to avoid predators (which is still largely a taught knowledge, but you have an instinctual push to avoid things that present in certain ways, its why children even today fear monsters in the dark.) or to avoid poisonous things (taught) or personal faith (overwhelmingly taught and varied by culture). Someone learned this long ago, and passed it on because they survived. There was no supernatural element. Regardless, there is no reason to believe, say, an undiscovered or uncontacted tribes beliefs are true. Its an incredible stretch to try to imply that beliefs are supernaturally inspired instead of taught, especially when evidence is strictly against your claims. Most of our beliefs are taught. Isolate a subject in an environment where he cannot generate those beliefs, and he will not have them. Technogeek posted:I really don't see how that implies supernatural agency, though. Going back to the tiger example, one could apply the pattern of "large animals with sharp pointy teeth are dangerous" to tigers and still get a true belief despite no experience with tigers specifically. He's assuming that our ancestors had no instinctual fear of predators. Which is pretty stupid, because even the most basic of animals has an instinctual fear of things which might hunt/eat it. Survival is a natural instinct, but what specifically is dangerous is a taught ideal. Infants were taught by their parents to fear predators but still has a basic self-preservation instinct to fear the unknown, and then as small children LEARNED what those predators were, and then if they survived they taught their offspring the same thing, as well as any new predators they run into. I cannot grasp where he's getting the idea that we'd be unable to survive without some sort of supernatural inspiration for survival. Its disingenuous, and presents animals as incapable of learning by experience and holds humans as stupid without divine guidance. At the same time, we've directly observed what happens to animals that have not had an instinctual AND taught fear of predators, we find it in places like New Guinea and the Galapagos, where animals tend not to have natural predators. They show no fear of those who WOULD harm them, and led to the extinction and near extinction of multiple species. But some of them learned and survived. quote:Even the most simple of living organisms (for example, the single-celled bacteria) are typically under intense selective pressure to evolve a response to avoid a damaging environment, if such an environment exists. Organisms also evolve while adapting - even thriving - in a benign environment (for example, a marine sponge modifies its structure in response to current changes, in order to better absorb and process nutrients). Self-preservation is therefore an almost universal hallmark of life. However, when introduced to a novel threat, many species will have a self-preservation response either too specialised, or not specialised enough, to cope with that particular threat.[citation needed] An example is the dodo, which evolved in the absence of natural predators and hence lacked an appropriate, general self-preservation response to heavy predation by humans and rats, showing no fear of them His argument would make more sense and have more validity of multiple associated and never contacted tribes had the same beliefs and the same learned/taught survival knowledge. But that isn't so. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 17:07
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blowfish posted:New Zealand is even better: Moas were only used to eagles as predators, so Maori could pretty much walk up to them and take a bite. An estimated population of a few hundred people ate all the Moas on NZ in a few centuries. While we have knocked out the larger examples of such animals, we still have smaller case going on with invasive species on islands, e.g. invasive snakes on Guam or Partula snails which are literally too dumb to crawl away when imported predatory snails start nibbling. Either way, Effectronica's argument assumes that all humans have the same beliefs regardless of culture, which is not so. Even instincts are very basic, and require further expansion through teaching, in which the teacher has been taught the knowledge that would be passed, and somewhere along those lines someone LEARNED what is to be taught through first hand experience or observation. Things that survive the longest are the ones that have learned the most what to avoid/what to exploit. Its a basic keystone of evolution: It was never survival of the STRONGEST but the survival of those who can better adapt to their environment through exploitation or inherent knowledge that they've built up. I mean, unless its religious beliefs. Where its usually just a cultural stigma and/or tradition. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 17:29
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Effectronica posted:But, large predators rarely attack humans, so the basic problem remains. Not only do we have the adaptive behavior, but we have a true belief about why this is a wise behavior, and it relies either on a constant string of attacks by predators or a continuous chain of knowledge from one of the few people who witness such attacks, both of which are not especially plausible. Ironically, this is only true in the past thousand years. There is good reason to believe large predators attacked our ancestors, but after we began to become more social and travel in larger groups and learned to hunt as a group, we became less of a target of opportunity. Large predators tend to recognize themselves that humans are dangerous and not easy prey, yet our offspring IS easy prey and in more wild places, large predators will still kill/eat small children and infants if they think they can get the upper hand. They learned. They learned that humans in large groups are dangerous, that an adult human is still a challenging meal and unlikely to be worth the expended energy. Large predators want to survive overwhelmed their want to eat humans. Its basic risk/benefit knowledge that even the most basic animal has. Effectronica posted:Not only do we have the adaptive behavior, but we have a true belief about why this is a wise behavior, and it relies either on a constant string of attacks by predators or a continuous chain of knowledge from one of the few people who witness such attacks, both of which are not especially plausible. Do you know WHY first hand knowledge is considered so valuable? The knowledge that a predator is dangerous does not have to fade in humans regardless of the current existence of the predator due to our longer memory and tendency to pass knowledge down by tradition. I can teach my son that a tiger is dangerous, despite never meeting one, because someone else gained that knowledge first hand and wrote it down to pass it on to others. In more basic animals, if you remove a predator from the cycle for several generations, they may no longer show fear of that specific predator. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 17:34
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blowfish posted:And even then, one attack in decades would be enough. You only need to know that you kill stuff for a living, tigers kill stuff, and a tiger killed your buddy's uncle's grandpa. We remember. Someone survived an experience, and passed on that fear through teaching. No supernatural involvement needed. Tigers, at the same time, learned WE are dangerous. We are to be avoided. They learned that the animals that walk on two legs can kill them or harm them. They didn't know this before, and many paid the price for it. But that is beside the point: predators tend to be wary of things to begin with, usually due to the first hand knowledge of basics of how hunting works.
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Aug 16, 2015 17:47
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blowfish posted:The fun thing is that social learning is present even in social animals. For example, hand raised crows will suddenly become wary of humans after being around wild crows. Not to mention how many socially learned beliefs are wrong, like the guy who thinks certain colored berries are safe to eat even though they are not because someone passed on the wrong info. If the guy who eats the very poisonous berry that he thought was safe survives, he will (hopefully) pass on the NEWLY corrected knowledge versus the flawed previous knowledge. You figure that supernaturally inspired belief would have corrected that in the first place... CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 18:06
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Arglebargle III posted:This thread is its own conclusion. Exactly. Effectronica made it pretty clear in his OP that he had already drawn his exact conclusions about his chosen belief by calling his conclusions 'the most reasonable' which implies nothing more than a foregone discussion about why he is right and everyone else is wrong.
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Aug 16, 2015 18:16
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blowfish posted:I like Effectronica threads because they provide an opportunity to laugh at idiocy with no feeling of remorse. In fact, I propose we now discuss the hypothesis that Effectronica threads provide adequate baseline data for the proportion of human beliefs that are correct by random chance. I think Effectronica's OP is good evidence as to why its neccessary to keep empiricism as a cornerstone of the scientific method. Because otherwise we get metaphysics-like claims like this.
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Aug 16, 2015 18:25
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blowfish posted:Yeah. But it's not like there aren't scientists who are just as bad at reasoning and providing evidence. See for example the current debate in sustainability circles on solutions to climate change & land use where grown professors are seriously throwing around bullshit about how it's concerning that more and more scientists are looking at climate change as a problem to be solved rather than a case for questioning the human condition (the questioning is supposed to lead to a more interconnected, less divorced-from-nature society, of course) and intentionally fail to distinguish their vision of an ideal society from the science of ecology and conservation. Plenty of very intelligent and well read scientists say incredibly stupid and moronic things. They just tend to be on things not related to their immediate field of study. One of my physics professors believes vaccines cause autism. He knows nothing about biology and his specialty is isotope separation.
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Aug 16, 2015 18:31
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McDowell posted:You have your chicken and your egg mixed up in my opinion, OP. Not to mention, we've got studies showing 'learning' among even the most basic of living things: Bacteria and Protozoans, Who have the most basic of nervous systems, which means learning is not tied only to a large brain but even the most simple of nervous networks can exhibit the specific ability to learn about their environment. Of course, at that level the information is passed genetically versus taught. They can learn to anticipate future events based on recurrence. Based on that and the path evolution has taken, learning and knowledge is easily explained by simple trial-error rather than supernatural involvement. EDIT: Yeah, cells don't have nervous systems. I miss-spoke, my mistake. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 18:40
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McDowell posted:They don't have nervous systems, they don't have tissue. Bacteria are more like single cell nanorobots than tiny people. The individual units die to warn the hive mind. I meant the nucleus, but you are right, its not a 'nervous system' per se, more similar to a computers BIOS: Pre-written genetic instructions that the cell must follow. blowfish posted:You do realise neither bacteria nor protozoans have nerve tissue, what with them being bacteria and protozoans? Yeah, I misspoke. You are both right. I'm a physicist, not a biologist 
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 18:46
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blowfish posted:I would like to come back to this point, as Effectroonica's insistence upon defining the supernatural as "anything we don't currently know" is astonishingly terrible. In practical terms, this means that if a bunch of stupid rednecks were the only people to survive WW3, the supernatural would suddenly encompass anything from evolutionary biology to making digital watches (quantum physics ho). It really only makes sense to use consistent definitions independent of the changing state of knowledge, e.g. the natural world is everything that is in principle empirically observable, or basing the definition on falsifiability of potential understanding. Its a 'God of the Gaps' argument. He's trying to fill in blanks with assumptions, but in this case especially he is making assumptions about things that are already basically known and confirmed. But that is beside the point, even IF his definition of 'Supernatural' was assumed to be 'Simply the Unknowns', he then appeals to Creationism as a rational possibility, which ignores all the KNOWNS in favor of his unknowns. In the end, why the need to fill in the blanks at all? Its far better to simply say "There are some things that are still unknown and until we find evidence for the unknowns, they shall remain as unknowns instead of filling in the blank with comfy pseudoscientific reasoning." Even the things we didn't really known about like Plate Tectonics, Evolution, or Atomic theory, we had basic evidence that supported such ideas even before they were firmly discovered. blowfish posted:But in this case it's sustainability scientists being unscientific about sustainability things, so they should be doubly ashamed. Even the most intelligent people are willing to fool themselves in order to give them some semblance of mental comfort, and I think a lot of those scientists are making one of the biggest mistakes in allowing their political viewpoint to influence their scientific, which is dangerous thinking. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 19:07
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botany posted:Rarity doesn't matter though? You're ignoring how information spreads. There might only be a single instance of a tiger attack or there might be a hundred - what matters is how many people talk about it and for how long people talk about it. (There was only a single Chernobyl disaster, and look what an impact that had.) He's making arguments from ignorance. Whether that ignorance is intentional or unintentional, this is stuff he could look up with ease on readily accessible internet resources.
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Aug 16, 2015 19:31
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Wow, the majority of posters have both argued against your points and your reaponse is to almost wholly dismiss all their arguments out of hand. Well done.
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Aug 16, 2015 21:08
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Effectronica posted:You have misrepresented me repeatedly, even after I have offered corrections. Inductively, the rational response is, in fact, to dismiss you out of hand, as you have shown no sign of being able to accurately represent what I am saying, which means that even if I simply respond to the parts you get right, presumably on accident, it still will eventually degenerate to you completely misrepresenting me. Thus, I am simply behaving reasonably. No, I think its safe to say you think everyone presenting counterpoints is below you and hence even if they understand your arguments correctly, you can dismiss them off hand as being wrong and ignoring their counterpoints. Which is what you do in every thread. You presenting Creationism as 'reasonable' basically makes any points you are trying to present as reasonable bunk.
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Aug 16, 2015 21:21
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Man, if only biological and chemical systems were subject to philosophical notions, you might have a leg to stand on. They are not.
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Aug 16, 2015 22:09
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Effectronica posted:I'm not offering a definition of reason here. I'm also not saying whether reason requires correspondence. I am saying why I believe that phenomenological reality is generally consistent with noumenal reality, namely that in order for noumenal reality to be meaningful, we either need some form of supernatural process or entity to believe in which deceives us with phenomenology, or which offers a way out of deception, or we must believe that phenomenological reality corresponds closely to it. So, not only do you like making 'God of the gaps' arguments, you like pretending that said god is being purposefully deceptive by disguising his actions are natural occuring instances. .......riiiiiighhhhhtttt....
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Aug 16, 2015 22:31
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Effectronica posted:If you want people to treat your insults as sincere arguments, disguise them better, and also don't accidentally imply that truth relies on popularity. Seriously, are you self aware?
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Aug 16, 2015 22:42
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rudatron posted:Well at least that explains the reason you've basically refused to engage with anyone fairly, but I do wonder how you can call what you're doing 'trolling'. Where is the entertainment? This is kyrie-level incompetence here. If you're goal was to show up D&D, then I don't think you've actually succeeded, because you've been taken apart pretty thoroughly so far. Maybe he just wants to get probated again.
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Aug 16, 2015 23:58
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Effectronica posted:By "trolling r/atheism types", I meant that this topic would be so offensive to that sort of person that they would produce amusing reactions, like not reading what I write before responding, baldly lying about what I say, etc. Yeah. People engage in D&D expecting honest debate. Shocking, I know.
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Aug 17, 2015 00:05
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Its almost like abusing philosophy to troll athiests makes you look like an idiot or something, especially when you are blatently wrong and promoting models that are completely false in the name of the 'Lulz'
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Aug 17, 2015 00:15
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Effectronica: Abusing philosophy to troll athiests via lovely conjecture while pretending he's smarter than everyone else.
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Aug 17, 2015 00:21
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rudatron posted:I don't 'think you're really acknowledging anything anyone has said to you. Is this entertaining to you? If not, how are you trolling? By 'trolling' Efftronica just starts a thread or jumps in one, starts raising asinine points and then never answering anyone, instead reverting to name calling and hollier than thou self-praise. Effectronica posted:I am using extremophiles, specifically thermophiles, as an example. So while I am wrong about this, I can still recast it without it actually affecting the argument. So, to continue it, if thermophilic archaea had been discovered before discovery of the enzymes that allow them to survive at high temperatures, they would have been part of the supernatural in my definition, until such a time as the discovery of their enzymes allowed them to become part of the naturalistic world. Another, better example, is plate tectonics, which was proposed in the 1910s but not adopted until the 1960s, because the means by which continental drift could occur were not discovered until that time. While plate tectonics was true, it was also outside the bounds of naturalism because there was no natural mechanism by which it could happen. No natural mechanisms known, that doesn't make them supernatural, just that evidence could not at that time be observed. It does not make it supernatural, just unknown. Plate tectonics was not above and beyond nature, it was simply undetectable at the time. It was happening all the time in nature. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 01:57
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Effectronica posted:Okay, so you object to the definitions, and probably believe in fixed definitions, which were handed down by Yes. I object you your blatant abuse of Philosophy and your borderline Metaphysics bullshit. You're a pretty boring troll. Effectronica posted:All you can do is snipe and cheerlead, it seems.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:07
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Effectronica posted:Stop capitalizing things like a schizophrenic, you rear end. Nah, I love cheesing you off.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:10
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Let's be honest Blowfish, he ignores any post that he can't just dance around as part of his troll with pseudointellectual bullshit
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Aug 17, 2015 02:11
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blowfish posted:Poe's law is in effect here. If you troll into the abyss, does the abyss troll back?
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Aug 17, 2015 02:14
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ShadowCatboy posted:He called me a worm whereas I am obviously a catboy. An atheist catboy who believes there is nyo God. He's already admitted the entire thread is about baiting and trolling.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:35
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waitwhatno posted:It's funny how people always view themselves as distinct from the rest of the universe. The boundary between life and non-life is extremely blurry and somewhat arbitrary, just as the line between intelligent and non-intelligent life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle Its part of the whole self-justification of why humans are 'unique' and therefore the universe is oriented around our existence. Its just one of the many chauvinisms left over from the distant past.
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Aug 22, 2015 21:35
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