sun_the_second
No bio...
User ID: 2725
sun_the_second
2mo ago
You'd rather get locked up instantly? UrgentSloth was commenting on the dichotomy between "due process" and "locked up without", not between "due process" and "unmolested".
sun_the_second
2mo ago
Come on, "3 rings for the Jews" was right there on the surface.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
When the left identifies with orcs it's usually about the orcs being less evil than they are pictured.
When the right identifies with orcs it's usually about behaving exactly like the orcs do against the Others.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
If you're implying that since Hispanics voted for Trump his future policies couldn't possibly be bad for them, I refer you to Blacks voting for Democrats => shooting deaths in Black ghettoes.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
This comment was collapsed by default in my Comments list.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
As categories are made for man, so is advice made for people. If an advisor insists on giving "good" advice despite knowing full well that his employer does not possess the capacity to follow it, he is a shitty advisor.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
One point that might be relevant is that it was really easy to lose the favour of pagan gods. Maybe you were stingy with the sacrifices, or the other side were more generous, or you get fucked despite doing nothing wrong because Zeus fucked his milkmaid and now Hera hates you.
If anything, that seems like it's easier to believe in. The idea that the intelligences behind your weal and woe are multiple, capricious and far from omnibenevolent has more explaining, and dare I say coping power to me than "I promise God loves loves loves you very much, but he's taking that baby away now because God's plans etc etc".
sun_the_second
2mo ago
I don't see how it's cynical to, of all things, want there to be less random suffering for random innocent people. I mean, you could spin it around to "you actually want it because that would also mean less chance of bad things happening to you, specifically", but still a rather non-central use of the word "cynical".
sun_the_second
2mo ago
Sounds like a strict downgrade from the pagan gods whose favor could actually be won.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
Would people still play gacha if they got everything for free?
Highly doubt it. Everyone I know who plays gacha is motivated by the resources from the daily/weekly missions rather than the feats of completing a particularly difficult mission or the joy of the gameplay.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
I guess all those Christians who always pray to be delivered from this or that kind of trouble/danger on any given day are just not true Christians, then.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
The likelihood of being carried out is part of being a good (or a bad) idea.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
And you will, if you follow the advice.
No, it's the other way around: if you will, you'll have followed the advice.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
What's ugly about it is that Americans who are not sufficiently white don't like the idea that their white coworker or whoever is basically fine with them being seized and deported to El Salvador just because they're a bit too far on his circles of concern.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
I reckon it'll be more like "sanitize your speech in phone calls in real time 20 years before you pass".
sun_the_second
2mo ago
sun_the_second
2mo ago
Wouldn't deducing any moral code after reading Nietzsche by definition not be "on your own, not through mimetism" etc?
sun_the_second
2mo ago
Strange to assume that I'd say "gravity can kill you" implying that I approve of it, but no, I meant that it is capable of killing you.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
How so? It seems to work pretty well against a wide variety of Gods that purportedly intervene in notable and noticeable ways into human life.
Humans are curious, we want to discover things. Want to discover the truth. I think we're interested in more than just utility.
So am I, yet religions are notoriously opaque to truth-discovery. "The ways of God are inscrutable" and all that. If you are saying they are inscrutable, why would I bother searching for the truth the way you told me, rather than my way (which tells me you are likely to just be a meme carrier)? It appears to me that for most people religion's function is to stop curiosity at certain points where it can't actually explain things further, not foster it. Meanwhile the "religious scientists", the way I see it, just do science the regular materialist way and resort to God when outside of their sphere of knowledge.
I mean, a lot of searching for truth had been prompted by one-off events. But searching for truth doesn't mean one must accept the religious premise ("it was a divine miracle") on face when one begins.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
I do not think I am determined not to believe. I think there is simply more evidence and more reliable evidence, on the level of "gravity can kill you", in favor of a world that has no God.
I do think I am somewhat determined to not be faithful, even (especially?) if I was convinced by some arrangement of miracles that (a) God existed.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
So if something cannot be experimentally tested, is it an invalid hypothesis?
I'm told that's what the principle of falsefiability is, but again, I'm a layman. All hypotheses I create in daily life could be tested by attempting to write code and seeing if it works.
What is science supposed to do for "one-offs"?
Shrug, say "that's very cool but can we make use of it again?" and continue on? At least we spare the energy and time of praying that way.
As for the rest, I'm not sure we even are at a disagreement, I've lost track of the argument.
Theories prove themselves insufficient and new theories are created to fill the gap. "God did it" proves itself insufficient compared to scientific (or rather, materialist) theories, and retreats to ever-shrinking gaps.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
With all this being said, if I do encounter something extraordinary* that seems to be the direct result of prayer I will certainly consider reporting it to the Motte.
Please also report extraordinary events that did not seem to be the direct result of prayers.
Because that's the thing about miracles, even if I watched you regrow a limb before my own eyes and you told me God personally spoke to you and told you it was because you prayed for it, it would move my needle on spontaneous limb regrowth a lot, but not so much on God. I've heard of many, many people praying and receiving fuck all.
sun_the_second
2mo ago
My layman's understanding is that dark matter was invented to explain the otherwise unusual expansion of the universe, has never been observed, and conveniently (like miracles) is believed by its nature to be difficult to observe because of the way it does (or doesn't) interact with regular matter.
Yes, that's how it works. When something works in a way that doesn't fit the rules we've observed so far, we can put forth new hypothetical sets of rules that would explain the observations and can also be hypothetically tested.
I bet the "invention" of gravity has attracted similar comments once upon a time. It's so convenient that gravity can make things both go down and spin around other things, isn't it?
The difference between "scientists invent things" and "priests invent things" appears to my layman's understanding to be that while scientists put forth a considerable amount of effort to hypothesize the things they invent, priests already have a ready-made Source (God) of all things that they defer to without any insight into the mechanisms.
Full Scale: 143
Memory: 144
Verbal: 135
Spatial: 144
This is close to the score I typically get on the "obvious crap" "IQ tests" that are commonly encountered on the internet, so I'm not in a hurry to apply for Mensa yet.
Spoilers for the test methodology.
They say their scores are normalized based on the slice of the population that takes tests. I wonder what's the real distribution of people who took this specific test w.r.t. their scores.
More options
Context Copy link