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Well, for courtesy's sake, may as well start things here.

I'm difficult, alright?

1. Vegetarian. I've already cringed a bit at some remarks about using turtle shells as currency, since it would just result in yet another innocent species being imprisoned, tortured, and mass-slaughtered.

2. Biological realist. From all our best knowledge... Men and women are inherently different. Different ethnic groups have different population levels of various genes, including ones which effect behaviour and brain function.

3. Not a dogmatist. Gnostic atheists are little better than gnostic theists, to me--pretending you know more than you really do is always arrogant, even if the side you stick to is more likely to be right. Actually... even if you turned out to be 100% right, and it were absolutely proven, a poor argument that arrives at the correct conclusion is still a poor argument.

4. Nihilist. Specifically, meta-ethical emotivist, existential nihilist, epistemological solipsist. So, uh, spare me the ethos, eh? I probably won't listen. But if you have some semi-deranged pipe dreams to spit out at me because "hey it might technically maybe be possible kinda?" I'm all ears--if nothing else, imagination is one of our greatest gifts.

Soredeha... yorosiku onegaisimasu.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 15, 2018, 09:25:39 PM
Well, for courtesy's sake, may as well start things here.

I'm difficult, alright?

1. Vegetarian. I've already cringed a bit at some remarks about using turtle shells as currency, since it would just result in yet another innocent species being imprisoned, tortured, and mass-slaughtered.

2. Biological realist. From all our best knowledge... Men and women are inherently different. Different ethnic groups have different population levels of various genes, including ones which effect behaviour and brain function.

3. Not a dogmatist. Gnostic atheists are little better than gnostic theists, to me--pretending you know more than you really do is always arrogant, even if the side you stick to is more likely to be right. Actually... even if you turned out to be 100% right, and it were absolutely proven, a poor argument that arrives at the correct conclusion is still a poor argument.

4. Nihilist. Specifically, meta-ethical emotivist, existential nihilist, epistemological solipsist. So, uh, spare me the ethos, eh? I probably won't listen. But if you have some semi-deranged pipe dreams to spit out at me because "hey it might technically maybe be possible kinda?" I'm all ears--if nothing else, imagination is one of our greatest gifts.

Soredeha... yorosiku onegaisimasu.

Ummm.....welcome, I guess.  Oh yes, welcome to that large white charger you rode in on as well.

BTW, what is a 'gnostic atheist'??

Quote from: omokuroi on January 15, 2018, 09:25:39 PM

2.  Different ethnic groups have different population levels of various genes, including ones which effect behaviour and brain function.

well....this should be fascinating reading....

Quote from: omokuroi on January 15, 2018, 09:25:39 PM1. Vegetarian. I've already cringed a bit at some remarks about using turtle shells as currency, since it would just result in yet another innocent species being imprisoned, tortured, and mass-slaughtered.

This (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=12188.msg1200777#msg1200777) triggered you? Man, you must be really high strung!  I was talking about using shells in general as currency, which people have done historically.  I'm not aware of any resulting apocalypses.  The idea that they'd be mass-slaughtered for their shells never even occurred to me.  Also, wouldn't breeding turtles be the smart move there?

Quote2. Biological realist. From all our best knowledge... Men and women are inherently different.

Well...yeah.  There are some pretty obvious differences, lol.  No one's denying that.  It's when you get into "women aren't logical, can't drive, etc" territory that there's furor.

QuoteDifferent ethnic groups have different population levels of various genes, including ones which effect behaviour and brain function.

Could you be more specific?  *hands rope*

Quote3. Not a dogmatist. Gnostic atheists are little better than gnostic theists, to me--pretending you know more than you really do is always arrogant, even if the side you stick to is more likely to be right.

We've discussed the topic to death, but basically the gnostic atheists aren't really claiming to be able to "prove" that God doesn't exist - only that they're confident this God stuff is a human creation in the same vein as leprechauns and faeries and vampires.  Sure, one can't prove that faeries don't exist, but why should one consider that they do exist?

QuoteActually... even if you turned out to be 100% right, and it were absolutely proven, a poor argument that arrives at the correct conclusion is still a poor argument.

True enough.

Quote4. Nihilist. Specifically, meta-ethical emotivist, existential nihilist, epistemological solipsist. So, uh, spare me the ethos, eh? I probably won't listen. But if you have some semi-deranged pipe dreams to spit out at me because "hey it might technically maybe be possible kinda?" I'm all ears--if nothing else, imagination is one of our greatest gifts.

Sounds like you're bracing for some push-back there.  I don't know why exactly.  Existentialism and nihilism are two fairly common viewpoints around here.  Though the solipsism part raised a little bit of a red flag.

Soo...welcome?

Welcome to thee forum!

Quote from: aitm on January 15, 2018, 09:36:54 PM
well....this should be fascinating reading....

Guess which group the OP will be in, by the grace of god.

Welcome also.

At least you are an interesting person, aside from the nihilism that is.

Simply put, know it alls are gnostics ... so most of us are gnostic.  Only a very few are skeptical enough to be agnostic.

And ... ohayo gozaimasu back at you.  Lots of anime fans here.

Confession is good for the soul.  You've come to the right place.  Just put it all out there, and we will mark it with our stamp of disapproval. 

But seriously, I don't care that much about your special quirks.  My first advice would be just to chill.  Being here is not a big deal.  You don't get money for it or ribbons.  And there is no physical retaliation to worry about in cyberspace.  Just relax and enjoy the experience the way you would enjoy a warm bed or a good meal.  If it doesn't fit, it won't be the end of the world, and you can move on.

Yeah, whatever & welcome. *shrug*

Quote from: Mike Cl on January 15, 2018, 09:30:24 PM
BTW, what is a 'gnostic atheist'??

"I know for a fact there is no god!" ...basically.

Quote from: Hydra009 on January 15, 2018, 09:57:52 PM
The idea that they'd be mass-slaughtered for their shells never even occurred to me.

Is there an economically valuable species that isn't mass-grown and mass-harvested? If humans are good at one thing it's manipulating their environment for personal gain, you know?

QuoteThere are some pretty obvious differences, lol.  No one's denying that.

I lost my old best friend in large part because she went off into the "brain differences are a social construct" territory with regards to things like spatial reasoning (product of confidence variation, mostly modified by... testosterone) or empathy (product of emotional processing variation, modified by... estrogen and testosterone). Many people will make the same denials she did.

QuoteCould you be more specific?  *hands rope*

Oh, certainly. (http://www.internationalgenome.org/data-portal) Our lesson can begin with population prevalence variations by ethnicity in oxytocin receptor alleles, since they're well-known and researched. They would appear to suggest the perceived less-warm, less-open demeanour of East Asian cultures is actually genetic in origin. (Not that I can speak, since I have a number of the more-common-in-East-Asia alleles myself, despite being mostly English.)

QuoteSure, one can't prove that faeries don't exist, but why should one consider that they do exist?

How can you call yourself rational if you refuse to consider all possibilities?

I would never suggest you should treat the most remote possibilities equally, but placing your faith in modern understanding is what produces the so-called "science advances when the old guard dies" effect. Nasty business.

QuoteSounds like you're bracing for some push-back there.

Because I've seen some general sniping directed at nihilism. Including from another response on this thread, now. :p

Quote from: Draconic Aiur on January 15, 2018, 10:01:26 PM
Welcome to thee forum!

Thanks bruv.

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on January 16, 2018, 06:27:04 AM
Guess which group the OP will be in, by the grace of god.

Not sure "god" and "grace" really belong in the same sentence... Have we been reading the same holy books?

Quote from: Baruch on January 16, 2018, 07:11:48 AM
And ... ohayo gozaimasu back at you.  Lots of anime fans here.

Yoku sitta ne. Though, I mostly read light/visual novels and occasionally play games, not so heavy on the anime itself necessarily.

Quote from: SGOS on January 16, 2018, 08:18:48 AM
Confession is good for the soul.

Probably wasted on me then eh.

QuoteBeing here is not a big deal.  You don't get money for it or ribbons.

...

So you're saying I was lied to?

Goddammit.

Quote from: Sal1981 on January 16, 2018, 08:30:52 AM
Yeah, whatever & welcome. *shrug*

Oi, if you were going to be that dismissive you could've just not responded! :c

Howdy and welcome!  Sorry I'm late to the party.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 10:30:27 AM
"I know for a fact there is no god!" ...basically. (This is what a gnostic atheist is)

Okay, I see your point.  And to an extend, agree with it.  Gnostic reasoning or believing is based upon an internal process; a process that if done correctly will reveal to that person the 'truth' about existence--ours and/or god.  As an atheist I suppose I could now be called a 'gnostic atheist.  Why?  Because of the process I used to become an atheist.   I now 'know' there is no god/gods of any kind; all are the invention of humankind.  I fully understand that one cannot completely prove there is no god or that it is impossible for a god to exist.  Yet, there is no empirical data or facts to show that god(s) exist, have ever existed or need to exist. Not one.   The absence of data, for me, is proof of the 'fact' that god(s) do not exist.  That is all the proof I need.  So, I 'know' in a gnostic way and in a critical thinking, skeptical way as well.    God does not exist!  And to those who disagree, prove it!

Quote from: Mike Cl on January 16, 2018, 12:42:50 PM
Okay, I see your point.  And to an extend, agree with it.  Gnostic reasoning or believing is based upon an internal process; a process that if done correctly will reveal to that person the 'truth' about existence--ours and/or god.  As an atheist I suppose I could now be called a 'gnostic atheist.  Why?  Because of the process I used to become an atheist.   I now 'know' there is no god/gods of any kind; all are the invention of humankind.  I fully understand that one cannot completely prove there is no god or that it is impossible for a god to exist.  Yet, there is no empirical data or facts to show that god(s) exist, have ever existed or need to exist. Not one.   The absence of data, for me, is proof of the 'fact' that god(s) do not exist.  That is all the proof I need.  So, I 'know' in a gnostic way and in a critical thinking, skeptical way as well.    God does not exist!  And to those who disagree, prove it!

How much of all that evidence have you even personally verified?

And you claim you know?

You can believe there are no gods, you can be convinced there are no gods, but to claim you know there are no gods is a matter of nothing more than faith.

Faith that all the evidence you know of is valid, has been properly interpreted, and is bereft of omissions. Faith that the evidence which has not yet been discovered will not overturn your "knowledge."

It cannot be held up as rational. To be a proper sceptic is to accept only that which has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt--a bar yet higher than any court in any land.

To operate as if there is no god is right and true, and to operate as if there is a god is sorely irrational. But to claim you know?

If you have such perfect knowledge, then go ahead and prove it.

Quote from: trdsf on January 16, 2018, 12:36:45 PM
Howdy and welcome!  Sorry I'm late to the party.

Hello~ Don't worry, I hear being late is fashionable or something anyway.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 12:59:32 PM
How much of all that evidence have you even personally verified?

And you claim you know?

You can believe there are no gods, you can be convinced there are no gods, but to claim you know there are no gods is a matter of nothing more than faith.

Faith that all the evidence you know of is valid, has been properly interpreted, and is bereft of omissions. Faith that the evidence which has not yet been discovered will not overturn your "knowledge."

It cannot be held up as rational. To be a proper sceptic is to accept only that which has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt--a bar yet higher than any court in any land.

To operate as if there is no god is right and true, and to operate as if there is a god is sorely irrational. But to claim you know?

If you have such perfect knowledge, then go ahead and prove it.

All statements of knowledge based on evidence are necessarily provisional, with varying degrees of confidence.

And so I would claim to know based on the current evidence that there is no god.  There is, of course, always the possibility that new evidence might come up, and it will be evaluated at that time.  But for now, there is not enough evidence to accept the god hypothesis even provisionally, and the current state of knowledge contraindicates the existence of a divine authority.

And it's not even my responsibility to look for new evidence.  Researchers at CERN aren't required to re-examine luminiferous æther theory just to make sure it's still not an accurate descriptor of physics before applying relativity, nor are chemists expected to re-disprove the Thompson model of the atom before trying to calculate how a reaction will proceed and a novel molecule form.

In short, the god hypothesis belongs in the same file that caloric and phlogiston and æther have been relegated to.  Where it makes predictions about the physical universe, we have better ones that withstand physical scrutiny, and where it makes metaphysical claims, those are designed to be impervious to examination and so are not worth considering.

So sure, I'll say it: there is no god, insofar as there is no reason to accept that hypothesis in the first place.  Until someone can prove otherwise, I am entitled to so say, based on the historical failure of the god hypothesis to either explain the universe we see around us nor provide rigorously testable predictions, and based on the existence of better theories and hypotheses that have either withstood rigorous examination and/or provide predictions that can eventually be rigorously examined.

Hi omokuroi!

I hope you have as much fun here as I do, and I look forward to some interesting posts.

I am absolutely certain that I don't believe in any [G]od or gods, or any other supernatural claptrap.

Quote from: Charles Bradlaugh

The atheist does not say,"There is no God", but he says, "I know not what you mean by God"; the word God is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation.

The word "God" can mean anything at all, and therefore it means nothing at all.

Two kinds of nihilism here, apparently.  There is the political kind aka anarchism.  And the epistemological kind ... that nothing is knowable at all.  And all sorts of degrees.  One person says that life has no overall, objective meaning, but there are many individual subjective meanings.  I don't consider that real nihilism ... in that area, one would have to also deny any individual subjective meaning as well.

As an empiricist, not a rationalist, I only accept something I have experienced myself.  I don't accept authority, nor majority opinion, nor hearsay, nor yet ideology or dogmatism, nor any writings.  If I can rationalize what I have experienced, fine and good, but if my rationalization (is that even a good?) can't reconcile something, I accept the thing anyway.

I love animals, but I am not a vegetarian.  But I can appreciate that.  I am not an anarchist or pacifist, but I can appreciate people being disturbed about social constructs or governments.  Life is disturbing and confusing, and I have learned to live with that.

Quote from: trdsf on January 16, 2018, 01:23:35 PM
And it's not even my responsibility to look for new evidence.  Researchers at CERN aren't required to re-examine luminiferous æther theory just to make sure it's still not an accurate descriptor of physics before applying relativity, nor are chemists expected to re-disprove the Thompson model of the atom before trying to calculate how a reaction will proceed and a novel molecule form.

Responsibility is such a slippery word...

We have plenty of evidence that humans make countless errors, distort everything they see to fit their biases, and on and on. Yet you accept on faith that the conclusions and hypotheses of certain humans are valid, while summarily dismissing the conclusions and hypotheses of others.

I know as well as you do that one of these groups of humans is rather more trustworthy, if not by their nature then at least by the methods they use to subdue that nature. That does not change that they are humans.

As such, you are making nothing more than an educated guess. The probability that either they or you are correct may be more than a coin toss. It may be more than 80%. It may be more than 95%. It is not 100%.

Claiming knowledge is counting your chickens before they hatch. Nothing more, nothing less.

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 16, 2018, 01:28:06 PM
The word "God" can mean anything at all, and therefore it means nothing at all.

...Point taken. Of course, this is a semantic argument, but it's certainly true that a word people can't even consistently define falls far short of philosophical and scientific rigour.

On the other hand, if we take a specified definition of god to begin with, the rest of my points still apply to any given definition. Though I don't know of any definition which would likely correspond to something which actually exists.

Quote from: Baruch on January 16, 2018, 01:34:23 PM
Two kinds of nihilism here, apparently.  There is the political kind aka anarchism.  And the epistemological kind ... that nothing is knowable at all.  And all sorts of degrees.  One person says that life has no overall, objective meaning, but there are many individual subjective meanings.  I don't consider that real nihilism ... in that area, one would have to also deny any individual subjective meaning as well.

More than two, actually. For most any subject you can think of, a nihilist standpoint exists, boiling down to: "<concept> doesn't exist."

An existential nihilist says there is no meaning to existence. You're correct that this extends to individual, subjective meanings.

How can I say that? Because all people--myself included--will say something "has meaning" at one moment and then deny the very same the next. Subjective meaning? Hardly. It's a game of pretend, an insistence that what is felt in the moment is some pervasive, some truly significant quality. It's not. What you love today you will lose your passion for tomorrow. What has scarcely drawn your attention today may seem the most important thing in the world tomorrow.

It's a farce. Nothing you do, nothing you feel, nothing you think will ever "amount to" anything. Not even to you. It all just crumbles, the same way a rock on the beach is ground into sand.

Pure vanity.

Why do you hate vanity?  And are you Buddhist?  I am partial to Mahayana myself, but like a diet of only rice, I am still hungry afterwards ;-)

People recently got excited about evidence that the speed of light isn't constant.  And that is held in a dogmatic way now, as the basis for defining the "meter" off of the physical definition of the "second".  Turned out the experiment was flawed.  But it could be overturned at any time.  Theoreticians have speculated that things change depending on where you are in the universe, or when you are ... aka anti-uniformitarianism ... something always worth challenging.

Yes, most of us accept some authority or other.  But for philosophy/theology, I don't need a microscope or telescope or PhD.

Quote from: Baruch on January 16, 2018, 01:59:13 PM
Why do you hate vanity?  And are you Buddhist?

I don't, actually. I think it's great. The fewer things are solid, the more blank space I have to paint whatever I like.

I am partial to Buddhism, but I'm not technically a practising Buddhist. Occasionally when I don't feel like marking down "nonreligious" on a form that asks the question, I'll mark "Buddhist" instead. Not usually, though.

QuoteTurned out the experiment was flawed.  But it could be overturned at any time.  Theoreticians have speculated that things change depending on where you are in the universe, or when you are ... aka anti-uniformitarianism ...

I don't trust my intuition much, but it does tell me that constants are either context-dependent or slowly changing over time. It's hard for me, personally, to imagine that anything can actually be "fixed." I know that may just be my way of thinking, though.

QuoteYes, most of us accept some authority or other.  But for philosophy/theology, I don't need a microscope or telescope or PhD.

I can't bring myself to trust authority. No matter how well-qualified, experienced, or intelligent you are, you're not omniscient--and most authorities act like they really are!

Humans. Blech.

Some forms of Buddhism are close to non-religious.  But not the Tibetan kind ;-)  I am my own yi-dam.

Was the author of Ecclesiastes a nihilist? I think it's likely. It's the only book of the Bible that really says something interesting.

Vegetarian?!

Not sure where we can find you a tofu-baby for The annual bbq...

But Welcome to our little band of heathens anyway.

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 16, 2018, 02:12:06 PM
Was the author of Ecclesiastes a nihilist? I think it's likely. It's the only book of the Bible that really says something interesting.

Don't confuse with curmudgeon.  We are mostly curmudgeons here, with wrinkles to prove it.

That and the Book of Job.  Both are in the Wisdom Literature section ... for a reason.

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on January 16, 2018, 02:15:17 PM
Vegetarian?!

Not sure where we can find you a tofu-baby for The annual bbq...

But Welcome to our little band of heathens anyway.

You could get him a tar baby courtesy of the Tobacco Institute ;-(

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 16, 2018, 02:12:06 PM
Was the author of Ecclesiastes a nihilist? I think it's likely. It's the only book of the Bible that really says something interesting.

I remember trying to read the Bible a couple times and stopping early on both times.

If you're writing a work of fiction you need an interesting plot, but apparently old-timey Christians couldn't manage that...

Bizarre, when the myths behind so many "pagan" faiths are page-turners in their own right.

I'd've thought that an Omni-everything God could've written a much more interesting, less confusing book if it really wanted to communicate with its creation. I read the thing 3 times, and it was a real slog every time. I've read Ecclesiastes many times, though.

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 16, 2018, 02:33:46 PM
I'd've thought that an Omni-everything God could've written a much more interesting, less confusing book if it really wanted to communicate with its creation. I read the thing 3 times, and it was a real slog every time. I've read Ecclesiastes many times, though.

Or else it knew about the effort-justification effect and devised making its book a pain in the ass just so people would hold it up as more important?

Yeah, no pain, no gain, right?

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 01:42:33 PM
Responsibility is such a slippery word...

Responsibility is a very definite word.  I'm not the one making a claim.  The statement that there is no god simply assumes the universe is as we see it, and so far there is no evidence to indicate otherwise.  To state that there is a god, or even that there might be one, is a statement that the universe is not as we observe it, and that claim requires evidence before I have any reason to take it seriously even as speculation.  And the ones with the responsibility to find the evidence are the ones making the claim, not I.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 01:42:33 PM
We have plenty of evidence that humans make countless errors, distort everything they see to fit their biases, and on and on. Yet you accept on faith that the conclusions and hypotheses of certain humans are valid, while summarily dismissing the conclusions and hypotheses of others.

I know as well as you do that one of these groups of humans is rather more trustworthy, if not by their nature then at least by the methods they use to subdue that nature. That does not change that they are humans.

If human fallibility were the measure, there would be a point here.

But it's not.  The measure is independent repeatability of observations, so we never have to rely on the word of just one researcher, and furthermore that the probability of an error is vastly reduced because of the number of people looking at the problem.

There's a saying in the Linux world that 'all problems are trivial' -- what this means is that what's intractable to one person may be obvious to someone else.  A comparable system works in research: what's obviously correct to one researcher may reveal an obvious flaw when looked at by someone else who doesn't have a potential emotional attachment to a particular theory, and the determinant is the data.

So you can certainly argue that any one human is capable of making a mistake, but to hang back from a declaration of knowledge because 'humans are fallible' is to assume that all researchers are all making the same error.

Even when a scientific consensus is in error, the research community itself will eventually find and correct that error.  That's the fastest route to a Nobel: prove the consensus wrong.  It certainly worked for Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess, who won for demonstrating the accelerating expansion of the universe, when that wasn't even what they were looking for -- much less trying to demonstrate.

That's why the scientific method works: when one researcher makes a claim, it needs to be independently validated.  It is never just taking an observation "on faith".  If you want to argue that I'm "just taking the word" of researchers "on faith", that includes an assumption on your part that the entire research community has a reason to obscure or manufacture evidence, and that treads dangerously close to conspiracy theory.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 01:42:33 PM
As such, you are making nothing more than an educated guess. The probability that either they or you are correct may be more than a coin toss. It may be more than 80%. It may be more than 95%. It is not 100%.

Claiming knowledge is counting your chickens before they hatch. Nothing more, nothing less.

Claiming knowledge based on evidence is more than just chicken-counting.  All the evidence to date indicates the universe is exactly what we observe: a natural object that evolves along natural lines following laws of physics that we are occasionally able to tease out.

I'm comfortable with not having 100% upon which to base knowledge, simply because if we waited for 100%, we'd never get anything done scientifically.  And I am perfectly comfortable with the reliability of the scientific community on the whole, which has over and over and over and over demonstrated its ability to self-police and self-correct.

I'm also comfortable with the odds of being proven wrong, and I don't mind admitting that I am wrong when so demonstrated.

Quote from: trdsf on January 16, 2018, 03:46:08 PM
The statement that there is no god simply assumes the universe is as we see it, and so far there is no evidence to indicate otherwise. To state that there is a god, or even that there might be one, is a statement that the universe is not as we observe it, and that claim requires evidence before I have any reason to take it seriously even as speculation.

Quite right. In order for us to conclude things we cannot experience may exist, we need to prove that things exist--that is, can be indirectly observed--which cannot be directly observed.

Unfortunately, this is quite easy. We now know that many species are capable of seeing infrared and ultraviolet light, and with the aid of technology, so can we. Of course, for millennia, this was entirely invisible and scarcely so much as suspected... to all humans. Fundamentally, human observation of the universe is... limited, at best.

Extending this further, we also know that countless exact "colours" exist, both as a spectrum of wavelengths and as combinations of various component "colours." Through research, we have been able to measure both the variation in said colours, and the ability of humans to tell them apart... and found that human "colour vision" has nowhere near the clarity to perceive colours as they actually are.

Taking another step, we know that a nigh-infinite spectrum of sounds exist. We have also proven that, with age, the ability of humans to perceive many of these sounds is lost--especially those in the higher range. This is leaving out that many of those sounds cannot be heard by even the most capable, youngest human ear.

Speaking of which, we also know that the various senses are processed within a single central nervous system. Oddly, it seems that some people experience colours when they hear sounds... despite sounds, of course, not having any light component. This is called synaesthesia. ...Oh, did I say "some people"? Actually, I meant "virtually all." We can find in almost any person in the world, a tendency to associate certain sounds with certain physical sensations--this is observed both in spoken language, with words which correspond to certain concepts (such as "sharp") also having a sound people describe as "sharp"--across cultures, as it happens--and in writing, with the shape of letters corresponding to the physical appearance of objects known to evoke that physical sensation... at rates greater than chance, across cultures.

Once again, things like infrared light and ultrasonic sound exist, but cannot be directly experienced. Things like the sharpness of sounds do not exist, but are readily observed. The universe has never, in any respect, been quite as humans--either individually or as a species--observe it.

QuoteThere's a saying in the Linux world that 'all problems are trivial' -- what this means is that what's intractable to one person may be obvious to someone else.

Rebuilding my entire system just because the Gentoo devs decided PIEs are worth it really wasn't trivial.

QuoteA comparable system works in research: what's obviously correct to one researcher may reveal an obvious flaw when looked at by someone else who doesn't have a potential emotional attachment to a particular theory, and the determinant is the data.

This assumes all observational inaccuracies and biases are individual rather than systemic, across the entire species or nearly so. This has been shown to be quite far from the case.

Quoteto hang back from a declaration of knowledge because 'humans are fallible' is to assume that all researchers are all making the same error

Science generally holds that there are seven colours in the rainbow, correct?

Unfortunately, we now have good reason to believe some people are tetrachromats and actually see ten. This is quite a recent discovery, actually... because colours don't exist as humans see them, and "human universals" aren't usually quite like humans believe them to be, either.

QuoteEven when a scientific consensus is in error, the research community itself will eventually find and correct that error.

There are two fundamental flaws with this.

First, you just made a claim with no evidence whatsoever.

Second, it's irrelevant. The assumption that the error will one day be corrected in no way implies it does not exist--and you are not committing it--right now.

QuoteThat's why the scientific method works: when one researcher makes a claim, it needs to be independently validated.

And you are resisting exactly that, stating "the system is obviously perfect, because people question things, therefore there's no need to question anything."

Quote...that includes an assumption on your part that the entire research community has a reason to obscure or manufacture evidence, and that treads dangerously close to conspiracy theory.

Hardly. Anyone who arises from particular genes, in a particular environment, will have a corresponding particular bias. To the extent that humans have similar genes, and are raised in similar social environments, it is virtually certain that they will commit the exact same errors.

QuoteClaiming knowledge based on evidence is more than just chicken-counting.

Are you asserting that mathematics, eyesight, et al. don't qualify as evidence? Chicken-counting is something scientists do on occasion. And if we broaden it to counting objects in general, many scientists do it quite frequently. If you had a point here, I'm not exactly seeing it.

QuoteAll the evidence to date indicates the universe is exactly what we observe: a natural object that evolves along natural lines following laws of physics that we are occasionally able to tease out.

Sure. And at what point did you conclude that a god is necessarily outside of nature, other than that certain very specific faiths say so? That's hardly a defining quality of gods. And beyond that, the moon doesn't stop existing if you go blind; likewise, "non-natural" existences wouldn't cease simply because humans are incapable of observing them.

QuoteI'm comfortable with not having 100% upon which to base knowledge, simply because if we waited for 100%, we'd never get anything done scientifically.

As am I.

QuoteAnd I am perfectly comfortable with the reliability of the scientific community on the whole, which has over and over and over and over demonstrated its ability to self-police and self-correct.

"Most published research is false." (http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

(Now Playing: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth - Logic ~ The Way to the Truth)

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 02:38:20 PM
Or else it knew about the effort-justification effect and devised making its book a pain in the ass just so people would hold it up as more important?

Originally the Bible wasn't written to be read.  Most people couldn't read, nobody had any books.  It was meant to be heard.  Same with with the Quran.  Of course with the Quran, as with the Psalms, it is meant to be memorized and chanted/sung.  People since 1500 simply can't imagine earlier illiterate society ... you either had a good memory, or you were a village idiot.  It is a modern conceit, that scripture is to be read by laymen.  Even most clergy couldn't read the Latin Bible, only theologians could.  In the early Middle Ages, it was a Jewish and Muslim ideal, to be able to read, write and memorize scripture, though of course before printing, this was hard to achieve.  Apostle Paul clearly stated that intellect was bad for you, and Apostle Socrates (the Athenian dude) said that reading was the death of true education.

If reality is just as we see it ... then we are demigods.  A rock can't do that.

Quote from: Baruch on January 16, 2018, 06:51:11 PM
Originally the Bible wasn't written to be read.  Most people couldn't read, nobody had any books.  It was meant to be heard.

I mean, even if that's true, other things written down from, and for, oral storytellers can still be page-turners. It seems to me like the Abrahamic faiths have a penchant for being particularly dull.

Matter of opinion, though.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 06:55:54 PM
I mean, even if that's true, other things written down from, and for, oral storytellers can still be page-turners. It seems to me like the Abrahamic faiths have a penchant for being particularly dull.

Matter of opinion, though.

Compared to watching sheep and goats procreate ... it was exciting stuff.  I love the Greek myths in particular, and the Hindu myths too.  And the Tanakh was meant to be the constitution of a theocratic state (think Iran) ... not entertainment.  This didn't work out so well by 135 CE.

Quote from: Baruch on January 16, 2018, 07:01:07 PM
Compared to watching sheep and goats procreate ... it was exciting stuff.  I love the Greek myths in particular, and the Hindu myths too.  And the Tanakh was meant to be the constitution of a theocratic state (think Iran) ... not entertainment.  This didn't work out so well by 135 CE.

I've been partial to the Hindu myths ever since I played Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga.

(Neeeerd.)

There's some really cool stuff in there, though! Even if most of it is kind of, uh, batshit.

The Mahabharata has gay moments, and other Purana have transsexuality.  Arjuna in one scripture becomes a maiden so he can surrender to Krishna.

None of this would be in the Bible or Quran.  But could have been in Babylonian stories.  One form of Shiva, Ardhanishvara is hermaphrodite.  But that existed in Greek myth too.  Common Indo-European heritage.

Hi. Welcome.

Well, enough foreplay, on to your last post:

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Quite right. In order for us to conclude things we cannot experience may exist, we need to prove that things exist--that is, can be indirectly observed--which cannot be directly observed.

Unfortunately, this is quite easy. We now know that many species are capable of seeing infrared and ultraviolet light, and with the aid of technology, so can we. Of course, for millennia, this was entirely invisible and scarcely so much as suspected... to all humans. Fundamentally, human observation of the universe is... limited, at best.

Extending this further, we also know that countless exact "colours" exist, both as a spectrum of wavelengths and as combinations of various component "colours." Through research, we have been able to measure both the variation in said colours, and the ability of humans to tell them apart... and found that human "colour vision" has nowhere near the clarity to perceive colours as they actually are.

Irrelevant. All that is required is that your senses produce mostly consistent results for the same stimulus. It doesn't matter how red "really looks" because 'red' is a label we came up with to tag certain species of light spectra â€" that the same thing that appeared red the last time will continue to appear red in the future. That gives you the consistency of observation that is the start of science.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Taking another step, we know that a nigh-infinite spectrum of sounds exist. We have also proven that, with age, the ability of humans to perceive many of these sounds is lost--especially those in the higher range. This is leaving out that many of those sounds cannot be heard by even the most capable, youngest human ear.

Again, irrelevant. In the short term, the same sound will produce much the same sensation. It's not like we don't know that hearing is inexorably lost over time (though your milage may vary), but over the short term, a recorded song will consistently sound the same each time its played. Again, consistency of observation.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
This is called synaesthesia. ...Oh, did I say "some people"? Actually, I meant "virtually all." We can find in almost any person in the world, a tendency to associate certain sounds with certain physical sensations--this is observed both in spoken language, with words which correspond to certain concepts (such as "sharp") also having a sound people describe as "sharp"--across cultures, as it happens--and in writing, with the shape of letters corresponding to the physical appearance of objects known to evoke that physical sensation... at rates greater than chance, across cultures.

Once again, things like infrared light and ultrasonic sound exist, but cannot be directly experienced. Things like the sharpness of sounds do not exist, but are readily observed. The universe has never, in any respect, been quite as humans--either individually or as a species--observe it.

Once more, irrelevant. It's not that we perceive the universe as it appears; it's that the observations are consistent. We know synaesthesia exists because it produces consistent results. We know that color-number synaesthetics exist because we have tests able to show that such people can consistently show that they perceive additional information consistent with a coloring of numbers.

Furthermore, they don't confuse the color of the ink with the color induced by the synesthesia:

As C relates ... "It is difficult to explain...I see what you see. I know the numbers are in black...but as soon as I recognise the form of a 7 it has to be yellow." - Dixon, M.J., Smilek, D., Wagar, B. & Merikle, P.M. (2004). Alphanumeric-Colour Synaesthesia: When 7 is Yellow and C is Red. in Gemma A. Calvert, Charles Spence and Barry E. Stein (Eds.) Handbook of Multisensory Processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-03321-6

Once you have a sensory apparatus able to measure what corresponds to what your senses consistently experience, then such a thing may be reproduced and used as a standard. This is what allows discovery of the true nature of light, that of photons of disparate frequencies, and of colors, that of different spectra of frequency-vs-intensity.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Rebuilding my entire system just because the Gentoo devs decided PIEs are worth it really wasn't trivial.

Facetious comment is facetious.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
This assumes all observational inaccuracies and biases are individual rather than systemic, across the entire species or nearly so. This has been shown to be quite far from the case.

You say that as if we have never detected any sort of systematic bias, ever. This is not the case. A systematic bias would have to bias everything in just the right way, everywhere, to remain forever undetected. Such things are statistically unlikely to happen. Every systematic bias has limits to how much they skew results, and will be detected sooner or later.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Science generally holds that there are seven colours in the rainbow, correct?

Incorrect. The rainbow has long been recognized as a spectrum and as such has no fixed number of colors or even fixed boundaries or limits. Only convention puts this number at seven.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Unfortunately, we now have good reason to believe some people are tetrachromats and actually see ten. This is quite a recent discovery, actually... because colours don't exist as humans see them, and "human universals" aren't usually quite like humans believe them to be, either.

Which would tend to destroy the thesis that everyone would have the same systematic bias, wouldn't it? After all, it's not like we haven't known about color blindness for hundreds of years, isn't it? Or that different languages break up the color spectrum differently.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
There are two fundamental flaws with this.

First, you just made a claim with no evidence whatsoever.

The numerous examples of science being self-correcting notwithstanding, of course. :roll:

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Second, it's irrelevant. The assumption that the error will one day be corrected in no way implies it does not exist--and you are not committing it--right now.

That, in itself, is irrelevant. In fact, when we find these errors we know something new: that the old way of viewing the world was in error and this new way is a more accurate representation of that world. This constitutes legitimate knowledge about the world.

As Isacc Azimov put it, "When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
And you are resisting exactly that, stating "the system is obviously perfect, because people question things, therefore there's no need to question anything."

Nope, trdsf didn't say that science was perfect, ever. Nor did he say that there was no need to question anything (especially since it is the scientist's job to do exactly that). But there is sensible inquiry and then there's nonsensical inquiry. It makes sense for a scientist on the bleeding edge of his field to question basic assumptions about that field, because he is best equipped to challenge them â€" he knows where the holes in our knowledge lay. Someone like you, however, does not know the limits of our knowledge, and as such he is far likely to issue a PRATT (Point Refuted A Thousand Times) rather than a genuine puzzle.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Hardly. Anyone who arises from particular genes, in a particular environment, will have a corresponding particular bias. To the extent that humans have similar genes, and are raised in similar social environments, it is virtually certain that they will commit the exact same errors.

How do you get from "similar genes and similar environemnts" to "exactly the same errors"? Also, the fact that we accumulate new ways of verifying our knowledge, you apparently think that the "exact same errors" will be somehow be built into each and every one to exactly the same magnitude in each and every new way of measurement as to keep the truth concelaed forever. Sorry, but that's not credible. Just random noise would assure that some of those errors will be too big or too small to ignore.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Are you asserting that mathematics, eyesight, et al. don't qualify as evidence? Chicken-counting is something scientists do on occasion. And if we broaden it to counting objects in general, many scientists do it quite frequently. If you had a point here, I'm not exactly seeing it.

The point is that knowledge need not be 100% to be counted as knowledge. Knowledge is justified true belief, not perfectly assured true belief. To be called knowledge, the belief need only be underpinned by a significant amount of work, data, etc. to give reason why someone not only came to believe some knowledge, but in many ways was forced to the conclusion of that knowledge. 100% assurance for a bit of knowledge is simply too stringent a criterion to be taken seriously.

To take your chicken counting example, if you have counted chickens in many ways, using many different, very disparate methods of determining that number, and they all came up with the same answer, then you can legitimately call that number of chickens "knowledge" because it is very unlikely that all of those disparate ways of counting chickens (which would have wildly different ways of failing to count correctly) would result in not only an incorrect answer, but the same incorrect answer. You are fairly justified to think that the number of chickens in your coup really is that number, so your belief in that number is justified and likely true.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Sure. And at what point did you conclude that a god is necessarily outside of nature, other than that certain very specific faiths say so? That's hardly a defining quality of gods.

For me, it was the fact that each and every one of the proposed gods needed some kind of "out" to the rules in place to establish them in order to do what they needed to do to make them established. They are thus supernatural by definition. Further, I would argue that being supernatural in some way is a defining quality of gods in general.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
And beyond that, the moon doesn't stop existing if you go blind; likewise, "non-natural" existences wouldn't cease simply because humans are incapable of observing them.

The moon is well-established by a large suite of phenomena that are indicative of its existence. The fact that we've brought back parts of it is particularly damning. The same cannot be said of gods. The problem with gods is not that we can't observe them at the moment, but that they seem to leave no trace of their existence at all, anywhere. This is consistent with the hypothesis that they don't exist, and Occam's Razor is a thing. It is thus justified true belief that there is no gods out there interfering with the universe because that is what the evidence indicates, hence it is knowledge.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
"Most published research is false." (http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

Misleading. If you read the study, the key feature that most published research lacks is replication. This is exactly what trdsf is talking about and what is necessary for good science. Indeed, most scientists are resigned to the fact that most of their research will eventually turn out to be duds. Otherwise, the Nobel Prize wouldn't exist.

I agree with everything you've laid out in the OP. While I am a flesh eater, I recognise that it isn't a moral act, given the choice to live healthy while not being a flesh eater - a choice I do have. I just don't give a fuck because I hate life and am so fucked on drugs half the time that I can't be bothered to care with what I eat. Nutrients is nutrients.

You sound like a sharp guy.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 16, 2018, 08:09:07 PM
Hi. Welcome.

I love Dr Pepper more.

Quote
...

All that is required is that your senses produce mostly consistent results for the same stimulus.

...

That gives you the consistency of observation that is the start of science.

...

In the short term, the same sound will produce much the same sensation. It's not like we don't know that hearing is inexorably lost over time (though your milage may vary), but over the short term, a recorded song will consistently sound the same each time its played. Again, consistency of observation.

Oh, really? (http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/06/27/mcgurk_effect_you_think_you_re_hearing_da_when_you_see_ga_and_hear_ba.html)

Unfortunately, senses aren't consistent, either.

QuoteHow do you get from "similar genes and similar environemnts" to "exactly the same errors"? Also, the fact that we accumulate new ways of verifying our knowledge, you apparently think that the "exact same errors" will be somehow be built into each and every one to exactly the same magnitude in each and every new way of measurement as to keep the truth concelaed forever.

I made the point in the prior post, but it doesn't have to remain undetected forever, only right now and for the foreseeable future. If such a bias or observational limitation were present in sufficient magnitude and in the proper direction to prevent the detection of a god, there could be evidence of a god right in front of us right now and we would be unable to make sense of it.

QuoteThe point is that knowledge need not be 100% to be counted as knowledge. Knowledge is justified true belief, not perfectly assured true belief. To be called knowledge, the belief need only be underpinned by a significant amount of work, data, etc. to give reason why someone not only came to believe some knowledge, but in many ways was forced to the conclusion of that knowledge. 100% assurance for a bit of knowledge is simply too stringent a criterion to be taken seriously.

This is a semantic argument, and one many wouldn't agree with you on. It's a point that's been credited to Socrates, and desCartes, and acknowledged by even many celebrity atheists: we don't actually know, people just like to think they do.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 08:40:52 PM
I love Dr Pepper more.
Oh, really? (http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/06/27/mcgurk_effect_you_think_you_re_hearing_da_when_you_see_ga_and_hear_ba.html)

Unfortunately, senses aren't consistent, either.

Yeah. Really. Notice that, actually, the McGurk effect is consistent. The mishearings don't occur randomly. This is because the brain regularly gathers up data from all sorts of sources, and what you "hear" is actually what you understand what the person has said, which is actually a composite of what the clues your brain has gathered, not a raw input. Notice also, that when you close your eyes, the McGurk effect disappears.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 08:40:52 PM
I made the point in the prior post, but it doesn't have to remain undetected forever, only right now and for the foreseeable future. If such a bias or observational limitation were present in sufficient magnitude and in the proper direction to prevent the detection of a god, there could be evidence of a god right in front of us right now and we would be unable to make sense of it.

You are assuming that this observational limitation is of sufficient magnitude and in a proper direction is actually a thing, and would tend to suggest deliberate manipulation rather than an accident of nature, especially if it is so specific to affect only our detection of god and not anything intersecting with our survival, comfort, and advancement. Only a god that is hell-bent on hiding all signs of his existence would do such a thing, in which case GG, but there's still no good reason to assume such a thing exists. A universe that looks like one without a god is still consistent with a universe that really is without a god.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 08:40:52 PM
This is a semantic argument, and one many wouldn't agree with you on. It's a point that's been credited to Socrates, and desCartes, and acknowledged by even many celebrity atheists: we don't actually know, people just like to think they do.

No. Again, such a definition of knowledge that requires 100% assurance is too stringent to be taken seriously, because it's too stringent to be useful in any way, shape or form. The knowledge we have acquired, even though it is not 100% assured and proven, is nonetheless useful. It helps us survive. It helps us thrive. It helps us become comfortable. It helps us explore the universe without being able to leave our own planet.

TL;DR, science delivers the goods. It works too damn well in that endeavor to believe that be as fundamentally and inexorably flawed as you claim. Even your cited evidence is misleading and doesn't show what you intend to show, so nihilism can take a hike, like most philosophies.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 16, 2018, 09:09:47 PM
Yeah. Really. Notice that, actually, the McGurk effect is consistent. The mishearings don't occur randomly. This is because the brain regularly gathers up data from all sorts of sources, and what you "hear" is actually what you understand what the person has said, which is actually a composite of what the clues your brain has gathered, not a raw input.

That's not really the usual explanation, though. The usual explanation is that you hear what you expect was said, rather than what actually was.

Actually, we can find similar effects in various disciplines. Multiple people with different experiences can see, hear--or think they saw, think they heard--different things. And worse, you can manipulate what they think they see or hear by dropping a single sentence to prime them.

It even works on memories, too.

Consistent? Sure, maybe, for the same person, in the same position, at the same time, you'll always get the same result... and if that same result is always wrong? If human observation is always, consistently incapable of getting reliable data?

How do you bypass that to magically arrive at a correct answer, exactly?

Quotebut there's still no good reason to assume such a thing exists.

I never said there was reason to believe a god exists. I'm an atheist. An agnostic one, who recognises limitations and flaws in human perception, and in human reasoning, which make it impossible to be sure.

QuoteNo. Again, such a definition of knowledge that requires 100% assurance is too stringent to be taken seriously, because it's too stringent to be useful in any way, shape or form.

I think this is a case of the is-ought problem. You think that information ought to be useful. I contend that such a thing as usefulness doesn't exist, because the universe is inherently without purpose.

In fact, to the contrary, I find my scepticism very useful, because it means I am open to more possibilities, and I enjoy that very much. Oh, and evidence also suggests that believing in God is useful, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter to you--perhaps because you're part of the Atheist Tribe and are judging "usefulness" from whether something agrees with said tribe? But that's hardly objective.

QuoteTL;DR, science delivers the goods. It works too damn well in that endeavor to believe that be as fundamentally and inexorably flawed as you claim. Even your cited evidence is misleading and doesn't show what you intend to show, so nihilism can take a hike, like most philosophies.

Science delivers the goods... according to science and its proponents.

Funny. I could say the same about the Bible.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Quite right. In order for us to conclude things we cannot experience may exist, we need to prove that things exist--that is, can be indirectly observed--which cannot be directly observed.
.
.
.

Hakurei Reimu covered a lot of the territory I was going to, so I'll leave that stand as is.  What I have to add is:

Whole lotta stuff there, all of which you're trying to boil down to 'because I can't experience it directly personally, I can't discount it'.

Well, yes I can.

First of all, the extension of my senses by technology doesn't mean those observations don't count because I had to resort to artificial means to make them.

Second, the fact that I don't make a particular observation myself doesn't make the observation invalid.  What makes an observation invalid is when someone makes a contrary observation and that observation is verified.

What you're preaching here is a message of scientific despair -- that without 100% verification, and without personal verification, nothing can be known.

I reject your despair.

The whole point of the scientific method is: repeatability of observations, and the testable predictions and potential falsifiability of theories.  It has nothing to do with faith, or belief, or taking an authority's word for things.  It has everything to do with the fact that every researcher knows that any other researcher in the field needs to be able to duplicate their results.  It has everything to do with the fact that every researcher knows that if they can demonstrate an important observation is incomplete or even wrong in a verifiable and repeatable way, that's the fast track to a Nobel.  It has everything to do with the fact that falsification of results has nowhere to hide in science.

You, however, want perfect knowledge and absolute certainty.

Bad news.  Perfect knowledge doesn't exist, and the lack of perfect knowledge doesn't mean undemonstrated things get a pass.  You make do with the data at hand.


Let me go to a particular problem here.

Quote from: omokuroi
I made the point in the prior post, but it doesn't have to remain undetected forever, only right now and for the foreseeable future. If such a bias or observational limitation were present in sufficient magnitude and in the proper direction to prevent the detection of a god, there could be evidence of a god right in front of us right now and we would be unable to make sense of it.

Two major problems with this.

The first is that you assume we should take into account data which we not only don't currently have, but for which we don't have any reason to suspect even exists.  This is simply ludicrous on the face of it.  You would thus blame Galileo for not taking Relativity into account when he measured the rates at which different masses fell, or Democritus for not putting forth the idea of protons, electrons and neutrons when he first put forth an atomic theory.

The second is that if there is a god for whom data exists, it's a pretty weak-ass god that can't do something to at least drop a clue in front of people.  If you have a god that can make himself known and does not, whose fault is that?  Hint: it's not the humans.


Lastly, if you want to reject the scientific method -- and it seems to me you do, at least in part --why are you even online?  Why do you accept the products and not the process?  That smells of hypocrisy to me.


One final point, specifically about that Ioannidis paper you referenced.  First: this was not a full-bore study, but an essay for PLoS Medicine.

Second: Ioannidis himself did another paper that same year which contraindicated some his own essay, finding that most published findings aren't false -- he himself found rates of 16% contradicted, 16% showing a lesser effect than claimed, 44% replicated and 24% not challenging the results.  Let me help you with the math here: that's 16% falsified, and 44% duplicated.  So we can just flush the word 'most' right now.  The most you can turn that into is 32% contradicted/lesser effect, and that's not more than 44% replicated.

Third: Ioannidis himself is involved in the field of meta-analysis, the whole point of which is to minimize systemic errors across research papers in the same field.  Or did you think that because someone pointed out the possibility of flaws in research in 2005, the entire scientific community just shrugged and has continued doing so for the last 13 years?

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PMScience delivers the goods... according to science and its proponents.

Funny. I could say the same about the Bible.

He says, over the internet.  Unironically.

And the Internet again shows we are demigods.  Rocks can't do this.  At least compared to rocks, we are demigods.  Compared to infinity, we are rocks.  Some prefer to think of themselves as rocks.

I could tell from the OP that you were going to be obnoxious, and every post since then has only confirmed my expectations.

Quote from: Blackleaf on January 17, 2018, 03:41:33 AM
I could tell from the OP that you were going to be obnoxious, and every post since then has only confirmed my expectations.

So "agree with me or I call you names"?

Quote from: Blackleaf on January 17, 2018, 03:41:33 AM
I could tell from the OP that you were going to be obnoxious, and every post since then has only confirmed my expectations.

Nah, not obnoxious.  Just overawed by semiphilosophical doubletalk.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
That's not really the usual explanation, though. The usual explanation is that you hear what you expect was said, rather than what actually was.

So what if that's the usual explanation? It's not right. The McGurk effect happens because the brain is trying to reconstruct the words that are being said, not hear the sounds coming out of the person's mouth per se. It's supplementing the audio data with the visual data of mouth movement and trying to reconcile the two. Usually, it works, which is why lip-reading is a thing, because back before video editing and overdubbing, mouth movements were a good supplementation to the heard phonemes, so you can better reconstruct the words even if some of the phonemes are a little off. The McGurk effect happens when this usually robust form of phoneme recognition is deliberately played with.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
Actually, we can find similar effects in various disciplines. Multiple people with different experiences can see, hear--or think they saw, think they heard--different things. And worse, you can manipulate what they think they see or hear by dropping a single sentence to prime them.

It even works on memories, too.

The reason why that is that people don't sense in a vacuum. Our senses are noisy (and I never claimed they weren't; "consistency" is not synonymous with "100% accurate and precise"), so our brains do a shitload of filtering to try to extract useful information from the mess. Part of that is consistency checking. You're more likely to reject or alter a perception if it is too out of line with what is already known. Dismissing outliers is a fine way of reducing noise in a signal. The system is good enough under real-world conditions to derive accurate answers, because each of the ways of manipulating perceptions and memories require deliberate trickery that are quite difficult to pull off in the moment. You can make a plane's engine disappear in an image quite easily and have no one notice it; it's much more difficult to make that engine disappear in real life.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
Consistent? Sure, maybe, for the same person, in the same position, at the same time, you'll always get the same result... and if that same result is always wrong? If human observation is always, consistently incapable of getting reliable data?

Creatures whose senses are "always, consistently incapable of getting reliable data" in a real environment will find it quite difficult to surivive in it, as they would be prone to have counteradaptive responses to dangers. Ergo, your characterization of human senses as "always, consistently incapable of getting reliable data" is wrong â€" our senses are actually quite good at picking out that reliable data, as it takes deliberate manipulation to reliably create these effects you speak about.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
How do you bypass that to magically arrive at a correct answer, exactly?

It's not magic. Our senses work well enough when they're not being deliberately played with, and as such any errors that occur are more or less random and can be picked out from the useful signal.

Magic would be thinking that there would be a consistent systematic error in all our perceptions to blind us to a particular aspect of it, with no side-effects at all, or otherwise severely impacting our survival prospects, and thinking that would not be weeded out by evolution.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
I never said there was reason to believe a god exists. I'm an atheist. An agnostic one, who recognises limitations and flaws in human perception, and in human reasoning, which make it impossible to be sure.

You know, I never bought the "B-But you can't be suuuuure!" argument when creationists made them, and I'm not going to start now. Ultimately, you are quibbling over only the tiniest, most infinitesimal sliver of doubt about salient facts like we are made of atoms. We are 99.99...9% sure of that fact, where the '...' represents an ungodly number of 9's. By any practical measure, we're absolutely sure of that fact. That fact is not going away, no matter how much you wave that nihilism card of yours.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
I think this is a case of the is-ought problem. You think that information ought to be useful. I contend that such a thing as usefulness doesn't exist, because the universe is inherently without purpose.

Your assertions are invited take a long walk off a short pier. It's not that I think that knowledge ought to be useful, rather it's that my definition of knowledge is useful, whereas your "100% surity" definition is not. Furthermore, your usage is not even conventional â€" the only people who use your form are the dishonest twats that come here to make trouble.

You also might want to brush up on what the "is-ought" problem actually constitutes.

And no, just because you say using some spurious logic that there is no such thing as usefulness doesn't make it true. The universe doesn't need to have an inherent purpose for humans to find particular definitions of words useful. Words are, after all, invented â€" one and all.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
In fact, to the contrary, I find my scepticism very useful, because it means I am open to more possibilities, and I enjoy that very much. Oh, and evidence also suggests that believing in God is useful, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter to you--perhaps because you're part of the Atheist Tribe and are judging "usefulness" from whether something agrees with said tribe? But that's hardly objective.

I like it how you're trying to draw this false equivalence between atheism and theism, like a good little creationist. Sorry, chum, it doesn't wash when creationists do it, and it's not going to start working now. By any conventional definition of "knowledge," we mean a belief with evidentiary and logical support. It has never meant 100% surity to anyone with an honest agenda.

Your definition of "knowledge" leads to a category empty of content: according to you, no belief can qualify as knowledge. You are trying to equivocate your own flawed and empty definition of knowledge with what is conventionally meant by the word, and in any flavor of skepticism, equivocation is a fallacy.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PM
Science delivers the goods... according to science and its proponents.

Funny. I could say the same about the Bible.

(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S3ABmxhMHxY/TqoTPHKJmxI/AAAAAAAACIU/tVi6xjYUloE/s1600/Irony_Meter.gif)
Oh, the irony! You have the gall to say that, even though you are using a product of science to communicate how science is the same as the bible. By "the goods," I mean the quite tangible products of technology that you can see and touch, that you use every day to separate yourself from your caveman ancestors. It's quite disingenuous to use the very goods of science to accuse science of only producing empty promises.

Again, because you have not dismissed it in the slightest:

Science delivers the goods.

Quote from: trdsf on January 16, 2018, 11:09:58 PM
Whole lotta stuff there, all of which you're trying to boil down to 'because I can't experience it directly personally, I can't discount it'.

Well, yes I can.

First of all, the extension of my senses by technology doesn't mean those observations don't count because I had to resort to artificial means to make them.

The number of things you can make technology to perceive is limited by the number of things you can imagine could be perceivable; the extent to which you are capable of using the information provided you by technology is limited by the extent to which the senses which you use to view that data are trustworthy; and last, but certainly not least, the extent to which you can reasonably expect to observe any proposed spiritual or higher realm is about the extent to which you can reasonably expect the characters in a video game to observe you.

QuoteSecond, the fact that I don't make a particular observation myself doesn't make the observation invalid.  What makes an observation invalid is when someone makes a contrary observation and that observation is verified.

Really? I was under the impression science--or more generally, physicalism--holds that truth exists entirely independently of whether you can verify it.

Now you seem to be arguing that truth is subjective, which is, um, not compatible with any version of science I know.

QuoteWhat you're preaching here is a message of scientific despair

I just want to show you the truth. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0J636zLBIA)

QuoteThe whole point of the scientific method is: repeatability of observations, and the testable predictions and potential falsifiability of theories.

The word "potential" here is unnecessary, and the order is wrong. Falsifiability is the very first requirement--if it's not falsifiable, science has nothing to say on the matter and will not, should not try. By the word of any good scientist.

QuoteIt has everything to do with the fact that every researcher knows that if they can demonstrate an important observation is incomplete or even wrong in a verifiable and repeatable way, that's the fast track to a Nobel.

Yeah, I'm sure that giving people incentives to fudge their work in return for potential reward isn't actually anathema to science and the source of a great deal of bias at all.

QuoteYou, however, want perfect knowledge and absolute certainty.

You're projecting. I'm an epistemological solipsist, and I said it in my first post. I am much, much more comfortable with uncertainty than you are. That's why I'm capable of admitting my limits at all, while still freely citing research even on the knowledge it could be wrong.

And it can be wrong. Everything you think you know can be wrong. That is one of the foundational principles of science.

QuoteYou would thus blame Galileo for not taking Relativity into account when he measured the rates at which different masses fell, or Democritus for not putting forth the idea of protons, electrons and neutrons when he first put forth an atomic theory.

What kind of emotional reasoning is this? I don't blame people for being wrong with the best data available. If there's something wrong with the message you don't shoot the messenger... unless you're just a dick.

QuoteThe second is that if there is a god for whom data exists, it's a pretty weak-ass god that can't do something to at least drop a clue in front of people.

In the first place, why would a god have any interest in some hubristic apes on a rock in the middle of nowhere?

QuoteLastly, if you want to reject the scientific method -- and it seems to me you do, at least in part

You're the ones rejecting the scientific method. "There's no way we're wrong"... "If we are wrong the chance is so minute we're not even going to look at it"... "We're not going to double-check our work, ever"...

What kind of science is that?

QuoteIoannidis

Why does it seem like you're attacking literally everything but my actual points? Science isn't perfect. Scientists make mistakes. Scientists have limited understanding.

Few actual scientists are going to contradict any of this, but you vehemently deny any flaws in, well, anything. Maybe that's just what it means to be an adherent to atheism? (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807800/)

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 17, 2018, 09:23:44 AM
So what if that's the usual explanation? It's not right. The McGurk effect happens because the brain is trying to reconstruct the words that are being said, not hear the sounds coming out of the person's mouth per se.

And I'm sure the fact that native Japanese speakers can tell the difference between isolated English R and L sounds, but cannot differentiate them in the context of speech, also has nothing to do with perception being altered according to expectation--in this case, the expectation from experience specific to that language that the general range of the R and L phonemes are functionally equivalent.

QuoteYou're more likely to reject or alter a perception if it is too out of line with what is already known.

What is already known... such as, maybe, "there is no god"?

QuoteDismissing outliers is a fine way of reducing noise in a signal.

And the conscious choice of which outliers to dismiss is commonly known as one of the messier sources of bias in science, yes.

Quotethe ways of manipulating perceptions and memories require deliberate trickery that are quite difficult to pull off in the moment. You can make a plane's engine disappear in an image quite easily and have no one notice it; it's much more difficult to make that engine disappear in real life.

Yeah, so difficult (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0072071).

QuoteCreatures whose senses are "always, consistently incapable of getting reliable data" in a real environment will find it quite difficult to surivive in it, as they would be prone to have counteradaptive responses to dangers.

The opposite. Creatures who need to take the time to gather and analyse accurate data on their environment would die while stuck in a state of reconnaissance and indecision the vast majority of times, instead of making a "good enough" decision enough times to get laid before getting eaten (or whatever else kills them). This is why police officers murder innocent people all the time: because if they weren't reckless idiots, then they'd very often get shot and killed while carefully determining whether they're at risk of, uh, getting shot and killed.

Selection chooses survival. It doesn't choose objectivity or accuracy. If being biased and irrational is 1) easy and 2) keeps you alive for long enough to reproduce, objectivity and rationality are simply unnecessary, if not outright detrimental.

QuoteIt's not magic. Our senses work well enough when they're not being deliberately played with, and as such any errors that occur are more or less random and can be picked out from the useful signal.

"It's all predictable and replicable, therefore it doesn't matter."

"It's all random, therefore it doesn't matter."

Somehow I'm not getting the impression you actually have an argument anymore.

QuoteThat fact is not going away, no matter how much you wave that nihilism card of yours.

Yeah, the same way no other widely-supported scientific knowledge has ever gone away or been replaced.

Ever.

In history.

That's the point of science, after all. To present a divine revelation of the Absolute Truth and never, ever be falsified.

Quote...rather it's that my definition of knowledge is useful...

"Because I fucking say so! You fucking troll! Jump, faggot! Do it!"

Uh. Exactly... why aren't you banned yet? This has crossed the line into flaming and feels scary close to going straight for death threats.

QuoteYou also might want to brush up on what the "is-ought" problem actually constitutes.

Trying to derive what "ought" to be from what actually is, and the impossibility therein. ...I'm saying that what actually is gives you no leg to stand on. You're just spitting emotional assertions at me and asserting that, because you're frustrated, I'm a troll and something something about jumping off a pier.

QuoteAnd no, just because you say using some spurious logic that there is no such thing as usefulness doesn't make it true.

"God doesn't exist because there's no evidence,

but also objective usefulness absolutely 100% exists and whether there's any rational basis for it is irrelevant."

QuoteI like it how you're trying to draw this false equivalence

False equivalence is also a favourite phrase of leftists. "The righties are the biased ones," they say, "how dare you equate us to them, call us irrational," they say.

How dare. (https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/02/09/both-liberals-conservatives-can-have-science-bias/) That's absolutely preposterous (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/new-study-politics-makes-you-innumerate/).

I'm absolutely sure atheists are immune to that bias, though. Because you're an atheist, right? And you couldn't possibly be biased (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias).

QuoteOh, the irony! You have the gall to say that, even though you are using a product of science to communicate how science is the same as the bible.

And how is it different?

You realise that the Bible is considered a legitimate historical document, right? I mean, sometimes it's wrong, but then most of the science from thousands of years ago has been proven wrong too.

QuoteIt's quite disingenuous to use the very goods of science to accuse science of only producing empty promises.

Strawman. I'm accusing you of worshiping science; at no point did I say science is always wrong.

Quote from: Blackleaf on January 17, 2018, 03:41:33 AM
I could tell from the OP that you were going to be obnoxious, and every post since then has only confirmed my expectations.

"You disagree with me, and your points are logically too hard to attack.

Therefore, die heathen."

How properly scientific of you.

Quote from: Baruch on January 17, 2018, 01:43:35 AM
And the Internet again shows we are demigods.  Rocks can't do this.  At least compared to rocks, we are demigods.  Compared to infinity, we are rocks.  Some prefer to think of themselves as rocks.

:yourock:

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 17, 2018, 01:32:34 PM
:yourock:

Being a rockman is better than being a human anyway. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueeTKTCqoUY&list=PLCg0XY32Plh4O3Qfx3rZFacvWP01K7TTD)

Quote from: trdsf on January 17, 2018, 08:49:15 AM
Nah, not obnoxious.  Just overawed by semiphilosophical doubletalk.

Better double talk than being mute?

The alternative is a monologue from the usual sources -8

omokuroi - "And I'm sure the fact that native Japanese speakers can tell the difference between isolated English R and L sounds, but cannot differentiate them in the context of speech, also has nothing to do with perception being altered according to expectation--in this case, the expectation from experience specific to that language that the general range of the R and L phonemes are functionally equivalent."

Studies have shown, that new born infants, can distinguish, and potentially speak, all phonemes ever used in human language (over 150).  But by age of one year, due to exposure to parent's speaking to it, they have drastically reduced the phonemes that they can distinguish or speak (to around 30).  By age 6, their linguistic neural matter has matured, and they now know one or more language fluently, if exposed for six years to fluency.  After that point, true fluency is impossible.  This is verified by sectioning the neural process mass ... for a mono- or poly-lingual native speaker, the neural matter is uniform.  For any neural matter exposed to subsequent foreign language learning, a series of striped areas is observed, corresponding to each foreign language learned, superimposed on the original uniform mass.  Children raised in completely bilingual families, are often unaware until later, than they are speaking two different languages ... it is simply ... how we speak at home.

For a Japanese person, they can intellectually understand that R and L are different, but this is like a man understanding pregnancy vs a woman who has been pregnant.  When learning a foreign language, that stretches my available phonemes, I have to mimic the correct sounds, I cannot produce what I cannot distinguish by ear.

PS - there are over 50 different kinds of synesthesia.  I am not.  And I am too generous to call such variance, an abnormality.  One has to be suspicious that a person like Mozart, might have been able to "see" his music in addition to hearing it.  The visual cortex is a very powerful processing system.

Quote from: Baruch on January 17, 2018, 01:51:43 PM

Better double talk than being mute?

Keh, even my dubious supporters think it's all doubletalk?

No wonder Diogenes needed that torch.

Quote from: Baruch on January 17, 2018, 02:03:03 PM
By age 6, their linguistic neural matter has matured, and they now know one or more language fluently, if exposed for six years to fluency.  After that point, true fluency is impossible.

ちっã€,ç...©ã,,な、人é–"ã€,ã,たしのã"とがそã,"なルールã,'å¾"うつã,,ã,Šã®ãªã,,ã€,

そã,,そã,,「ルールだかã,‰ã€ã¨ã,,ってã,,証が弱ã,, (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209811/)じã,ƒã,"

QuotePS - there are over 50 different kinds of synesthesia.  I am not.  And I am too generous to call such variance, an abnormality.  One has to be suspicious that a person like Mozart, might have been able to "see" his music in addition to hearing it.  The visual cortex is a very powerful processing system.

I have to put up with mirror-touch. For whatever reason, the intensity varies over time. When it's really intense it's just annoying.

See, you are special.  But I can Google Translate with the best of them.  That isn't fluency ... claiming what you don't have, is the broader category of which virtue signaling is all about.  Aka egomania.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
And I'm sure the fact that native Japanese speakers can tell the difference between isolated English R and L sounds, but cannot differentiate them in the context of speech, also has nothing to do with perception being altered according to expectation--in this case, the expectation from experience specific to that language that the general range of the R and L phonemes are functionally equivalent.

Well, when you're listening for understanding rather than for the exact phonemes, you're ignoring the difference between R and L because they're irrelevant to speaking Japanese. Part of the job of that filter I was talking about is ditching irrelevant information, because otherwise there would be too much to deal with. But this filter is context dependent, as you've demonstrated above.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
What is already known... such as, maybe, "there is no god"?

You do realize that many of us went from "there is a god" to "there is no god," right? How does that happen if our perceptions always change to make it seem like our knowledge is always right? You seem to think that these perception filters as perfect, that if I think that there is no god, then there will be no possible evidence that will filter through my perception filters to even give me the suspicion that there is a god. Nope. No human system is that perfect, as demonstrated by the fact that people's minds can be changed by evidence (your milage may vary, of course).

You make contradictory demands on human perception to make your idea work: that human perception is flawed, and that they're all flawed in precisely the same way as to make reality appear a certain way. Genetic variation alone will assure that this is not the case, to say nothing of the variation of upbringing and experience that will bring many different perspectives into play. There's only one way to be right, but when you're wrong, you're wrong in your own unique way.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
And the conscious choice of which outliers to dismiss is commonly known as one of the messier sources of bias in science, yes.

When an outlier occurs many many times, you tend to suspect that it's not an outlier after all.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
Yeah, so difficult (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0072071).

So, you think that such gross changes to reality such as making a plane engine disappear is on the same level as changes in visual preferences? Yeah, that's not a dishonest comparison. /sarcasm

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
The opposite. Creatures who need to take the time to gather and analyse accurate data on their environment would die while stuck in a state of reconnaissance and indecision the vast majority of times, instead of making a "good enough" decision enough times to get laid before getting eaten (or whatever else kills them).

"Good enough" choices made in a timely manner have to at least be somewhat good by some measure. A terrible choice is a terrible choice, even if made quickly.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
This is why police officers murder innocent people all the time: because if they weren't reckless idiots, then they'd very often get shot and killed while carefully determining whether they're at risk of, uh, getting shot and killed.

Wrong. Most of those incidents occur because the police don't use space and time to their advantage, and don't communicate well with the suspects or their fellow officers. They put themselves in positions where being reckless is the only survival option.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
Selection chooses survival. It doesn't choose objectivity or accuracy. If being biased and irrational is 1) easy and 2) keeps you alive for long enough to reproduce, objectivity and rationality are simply unnecessary, if not outright detrimental.

I'd like to see a predator who manages to capture its prey without beng able to objectively or accurately tell where its prey is. Or a herbavore be able to eat plants not poisonous to it without being able to objectively or accurately distinguish between its food and stuff it can't eat. Like it or not, survival and objectivity and accuracy are linked. This thing we call "reality" has rules, and anything running afowl of them doesn't last long.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
"It's all predictable and replicable, therefore it doesn't matter."

"It's all random, therefore it doesn't matter."

Somehow I'm not getting the impression you actually have an argument anymore.

Well, those two statements only seem at odds because you don't understand statistics. Nowhere have I said that being predictable and repeatable is 100% â€" there is always some noise to that. However, the majority of results will hang around the true one. It seems like you're implying that a radio station is worthless because I can't perfectly tune a radio so that there's no static. No matter how many semantics games you play, that's just false.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
Yeah, the same way no other widely-supported scientific knowledge has ever gone away or been replaced.

Ever.

In history.

Name one. But before you get too far, quantum mechanics, general and special relativity, heliocentrism, and the usual examples people like to cite do not qualify. I know how those came about, and they do not reveal about science what you want them to reveal.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
That's the point of science, after all. To present a divine revelation of the Absolute Truth and never, ever be falsified.

Sure, sport. Raise that strawman with that grandstanding attitude.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
"Because I fucking say so! You fucking troll! Jump, faggot! Do it!"

Uh. Exactly... why aren't you banned yet? This has crossed the line into flaming and feels scary close to going straight for death threats.

Oh, please spare me the drama, child. Nothing I have said on this board, let alone to you specifically, constitutes anything approaching a death threat. At worst, I've cussed at you and called you names for your dumb ideas, and I've outlined why I think your ideas are dumb.

Believe it or not, that is allowed on this board. If I think you're being dishonest and disingenuous, then I'm not going to hold myself back and keep it to myself â€" I'm going to call you what I see in you. If you can't take that, then maybe this place isn't for you. Seriously, being scared because I've called you names? That's really childish.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
Trying to derive what "ought" to be from what actually is, and the impossibility therein. ...I'm saying that what actually is gives you no leg to stand on.

No, you're just defining a form of knowledge I do not recognize as legitimate, close to what I (or indeed ANYONE) mean when I say it, or useful in any way. Your form of knowledge is an empty category, and empty catagories are useful only in very restricted circumstances. This is not one of them.

When I say that I'm using knowledge in a particular way, you are NOT allowed to say, "You're wrong because I define knowledge blah-blah-blah." No, fuck you. Nobody uses knowledge the way you use it. When I say that I know there are knives in my kitchen, I do not mean that I am absolutely sure that no knife-burglar had snuck in and stole them all and left no traces of his existence, or that I am absolutely sure that my kitchen knives have not spontaneously ceased existing or other such rot. I mean that I have good reason to expect that if I walk into my kitchen and look for a knife there, I'll easily find it. Nobody means knowledge the way you want me to use it, so I'm not going to be using it that way.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
You're just spitting emotional assertions at me and asserting that, because you're frustrated, I'm a troll and something something about jumping off a pier.

You have a rich fantasy life.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
"God doesn't exist because there's no evidence,

but also objective usefulness absolutely 100% exists and whether there's any rational basis for it is irrelevant."

Again, false equivalence. I am a thinking agent. I make plans. Some things, conditions and procedures are condusive to carrying out these plans, and some are not. The things, conditions and procedures that are condusive to carrying out these plans are "useful." Ergo, "usefulness" is a condition that processes and objects can satisfy; by any sane definition of the word, it exists, regardless of whether the universe has a purpose in and of itself. QED.

You are the only one adding this "objective" qualifier to "usefulness." Dishonest debate tactic: No True Scottsman fallacy.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
False equivalence is also a favourite phrase of leftists. "The righties are the biased ones," they say, "how dare you equate us to them, call us irrational," they say.

How dare. (https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/02/09/both-liberals-conservatives-can-have-science-bias/) That's absolutely preposterous (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/new-study-politics-makes-you-innumerate/).

I'm absolutely sure atheists are immune to that bias, though. Because you're an atheist, right? And you couldn't possibly be biased (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias).

I don't give a shit whether you think I'm biased or not. I'm only interested in what you can substantiate. You have, so far, not substantiated that I am one of this Atheist Tribe who judges only based on emotional appeal, or announces things by divine revelation, whereas I have substantiated the use of my definition of knowledge by the fact that it is what we seem to mean when we use the word.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
And how is it different?

You realise that the Bible is considered a legitimate historical document, right?

By everyone but historians, yeah. I mean the Exodus left no archeological traces, but it totally happened. Nazareth wasn't inhabited in the first century, but it was totally the birthplace of a magical man who performed miracles.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
I mean, sometimes it's wrong, but then most of the science from thousands of years ago has been proven wrong too.

Yes, because geocentrism was totally not a pre-scientific idea that was grandfathered into science without being verified. And Eratosthenes was completely discredited when he got the circumference of the earth to under 1% of its true value. Oh, wait...

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
Strawman. I'm accusing you of worshiping science; at no point did I say science is always wrong.

You have not substantiated that I "worship" science. What sacrifices do I make to the alter of science? What litany do I recite before I go to bed honoring science? What prayers do I offer science to directly intervene with my life?

Do I admire scientists? Yes, there's much to admire about them. Do I admire the process of science? Yes, it seems a reasonable way to approach the world. Do I admire the fact that the knowledge gleaned by science helped us rise up from mere apes to creatures on the cusp of escaping our planet, lengthened our lives, and made those lives more comfortable and fulfilling? Abso-fucking-lutely. Do I notice that every time that creationtards and theists try to argue for their god, that science gives them a metaphorical bitchslap? Oh, hell yes!

I don't know how you call this "worship," however.

Quote from: Mike Cl on January 15, 2018, 09:30:24 PM

BTW, what is a 'gnostic atheist'??

Gnostic atheist is different from the usual agnostic atheist. Most atheists are agnostic atheists. So, when people say "im atheist, the default is agnostic, but there are some that are gnostic. It's under the samed scale as gnostic theists and agnostic theists

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
The number of things you can make technology to perceive is limited by the number of things you can imagine could be perceivable; the extent to which you are capable of using the information provided you by technology is limited by the extent to which the senses which you use to view that data are trustworthy; and last, but certainly not least, the extent to which you can reasonably expect to observe any proposed spiritual or higher realm is about the extent to which you can reasonably expect the characters in a video game to observe you.

You really have no understanding at all of the history of research, do you?  The record is positively rife with discoveries made while looking for something else entirely.  Herschel didn't even have the barest inkling of an idea that such a thing as infrared radiation existed when he discovered it.  Perlmutter et al. were sure that they were going to verify the decelerating expansion of the universe when they instead demonstrated the exact opposite.  Dirac had no idea he was predicting the existence of antimatter when he formulated his equation to explain particle behavior.

In short, unlike what you're alleging here, just because we ain't looking for it doesn't mean we can't or won't find it.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM

Quote from: trdsf
Second, the fact that I don't make a particular observation myself doesn't make the observation invalid.  What makes an observation invalid is when someone makes a contrary observation and that observation is verified.

Really? I was under the impression science--or more generally, physicalism--holds that truth exists entirely independently of whether you can verify it.

I needed to specifically include what I said here because what you said was a complete non sequitur.  An unverified truth may well be true, but we don't know it is, and what does that have to do with the verification of observations.  Again, you expect us to take into account that which we do not know, and that's patently unreasonable.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
Now you seem to be arguing that truth is subjective, which is, um, not compatible with any version of science I know.
I just want to show you the truth. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0J636zLBIA)

I don't know where you pulled that from.  I have repeatedly said knowledge is based on evidence.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
The word "potential" here is unnecessary, and the order is wrong. Falsifiability is the very first requirement--if it's not falsifiable, science has nothing to say on the matter and will not, should not try. By the word of any good scientist.
Yeah, I'm sure that giving people incentives to fudge their work in return for potential reward isn't actually anathema to science and the source of a great deal of bias at all.

The word potential here is important.  String theory -- or M theory, as it is coming to be known -- cannot currently be tested, and it's as yet unclear how it ever will be.  Some physicists regard M theory as more of a viewpoint, but a useful one, but not a theory until some aspect of it can be put to the test.  This does not stop physicists from using M theory to do useful work, albeit always with an eye over their shoulder, awaiting confirmation.

Similar thing in mathematics: for some 40 years, mathematicians built a vast structure on papers that began "Assuming Taniyama-Shimura...".  They knew they didn't have all the foundations in place, but there was work to be done.  Fortunately, Andrew Wiles proved the Taniyama-Shimura-Weil conjecture, which is now known as the modularity theorem.  You, it seems, would have had them lose 40 years of work waiting for Wiles' proof first.

There's nothing wrong with going out on a limb as long as you're aware of it, and prepared for the fall if it gets sawn off.  There were quite a few papers ready proposing Higgs-less models of the Standard Model, in case the search at CERN failed.  Wrong limb, but a prudent approach, because

And your use of 'fudge' here is, quite frankly, very nearly libelous.  Exactly how do you think a deliberately faked observation would pass 'verifiable and repeatable'?

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
You're projecting. I'm an epistemological solipsist, and I said it in my first post. I am much, much more comfortable with uncertainty than you are. That's why I'm capable of admitting my limits at all, while still freely citing research even on the knowledge it could be wrong.

I call bullshit.  You're the one who's said a claim of knowledge cannot ever be made in the absence of certainty, and then disclaimed the scientific method on the spurious grounds of human fallibility -- you want certainty, but you refuse the best known route to it.

I'll quote you yourself here:

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 01:42:33 PM
We have plenty of evidence that humans make countless errors, distort everything they see to fit their biases, and on and on. Yet you accept on faith that the conclusions and hypotheses of certain humans are valid, while summarily dismissing the conclusions and hypotheses of others.

I know as well as you do that one of these groups of humans is rather more trustworthy, if not by their nature then at least by the methods they use to subdue that nature. That does not change that they are humans.

As such, you are making nothing more than an educated guess. The probability that either they or you are correct may be more than a coin toss. It may be more than 80%. It may be more than 95%. It is not 100%.

Claiming knowledge is counting your chickens before they hatch. Nothing more, nothing less.

You are presupposing that all human endeavor must be assumed faulty because humans are fallible.  I accept that humans are fallible, but that doesn't mean we're not capable of figuring things out.

And I don't need to know Russell and Whitehead's full derivation of the logical underpinnings of addition to know that 1+1=2.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
And it can be wrong. Everything you think you know can be wrong. That is one of the foundational principles of science.

No one, least of all me, ever denied that.  That's the self-correcting nature of the scientific method.  Twenty-five years ago, we knew the universe was expanding, and the question was: in what manner is the rate of expansion decelerating?  Now we know that was the wrong question -- but it was a perfectly valid one, and a perfectly valid viewpoint, based on the data available at that time.

Also, there's a vast difference between being wrong, and being incomplete, and you appear determined to conflate the two.  Far more often than not, science is the process of expanding rather than merely correcting: Newtonian gravity is merely a low-energy approximation, but it's enough to get you to the moon and back.  Hardly wrong there.  Einsteinian gravity will give you the necessary math for an accurate GPS system... but Newtonian math is all it takes to put the satellite in orbit.  And we know Einsteinian gravity is incomplete because it isn't quantized.

That's lightyears away from being wrong.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
What kind of emotional reasoning is this? I don't blame people for being wrong with the best data available. If there's something wrong with the message you don't shoot the messenger... unless you're just a dick.

You're the one who says that since we can't tell what future observations might be, we can't discount them today.

Pray, how exactly is one supposed to take into account observations that have not been made and of which one is necessarily unaware?

You're holding knowledge to an obscenely high level of scrutiny.  You want absolute and unassailable knowledge now, whether or not we actually have access to it, and then denying the validity of the scientific method because "humans are fallible".

Sounds awfully religious to me.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
In the first place, why would a god have any interest in some hubristic apes on a rock in the middle of nowhere?

You tell me, you're the one keeping the door open for him.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
You're the ones rejecting the scientific method. "There's no way we're wrong"... "If we are wrong the chance is so minute we're not even going to look at it"... "We're not going to double-check our work, ever"...

This is a deliberate mis-statement of my position.  Verifiable and repeatable.  How is that not checking, re-checking, and double-checking?

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
What kind of science is that?
Why does it seem like you're attacking literally everything but my actual points? Science isn't perfect. Scientists make mistakes. Scientists have limited understanding.

Because you clearly haven't bothered reading exactly what I have written, that's why it seems that way.  Also, judging by your responses, you don't seem to know yourself what your points are.

No one ever said science was perfect.  What it is, is the only reliably self-correcting path we know of to knowledge.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 11:14:13 AM
Few actual scientists are going to contradict any of this, but you vehemently deny any flaws in, well, anything. Maybe that's just what it means to be an adherent to atheism? (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807800/)

I have never denied flaws.  You're setting up an agonizingly obvious strawman here.  Evidently, the only kind of debate you can handle is one in which you make up your opposing position yourself.

I think I'm going to stand by my assessment of "overawed by semiphilosophical doubletalk".

Quote from: Baruch on January 17, 2018, 02:26:42 PM
See, you are special.  But I can Google Translate with the best of them.  That isn't fluency ... claiming what you don't have, is the broader category of which virtue signaling is all about.  Aka egomania.

æ,,å¤–だかã,‰å˜˜ã ã£ã¦ã§ã—ã,‡ã†

まぁ、そã,Œã,,ã,,ã,,な

I hardly need to keep my ego in check when we have a semi-troll running around presumably named after this (formerly) divine bastard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD-_sHrkEHU) though.

Quote from: trdsf on January 17, 2018, 02:49:38 PM
strawman strawman assertion assertion "actually you're right but the fact you're right doesn't matter because i said so" strawman strawman HOLY PROJECTION BATMAN

We agree that there are unknowns, and that God could be one of them. You and the shrine maiden have admitted this. You don't get to just reframe my argument endlessly and pretend I wasn't right.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 15, 2018, 09:25:39 PM
3. Not a dogmatist. Gnostic atheists are little better than gnostic theists, to me--pretending you know more than you really do is always arrogant, even if the side you stick to is more likely to be right. Actually... even if you turned out to be 100% right, and it were absolutely proven, a poor argument that arrives at the correct conclusion is still a poor argument.

In referring to the God as depicted in the Bible, I'm absolutely certain that it does not exist. If that makes me arrogant or some sort of ego-maniac, then so be it. A theistic type of God cannot logically exist, because too many of its characteristics are contradictory (https://infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/incompatible.html). If a thing cannot logically exist, then it does not exist. Negatives can be proven in this fashion. So I'm a gnostic atheist, I guess.

In referring to gods of some other sort, perhaps some vague "something out there" I'd have to be maybe a bit less certain, as long as it isn't logically contradictory, but still pretty sure there's no such thing.

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 17, 2018, 03:19:50 PM
In referring to the God as depicted in the Bible, I'm absolutely certain that it does not exist. If that makes me arrogant or some sort of ego-maniac, then so be it.

The Bible contradicts itself on hard facts multiple times. You don't have to be a genius to understand that, even if a roughly-Christian creator entity did exist, most of the Bible would be lying about what it's actually like.

Ironically, the "Gnostics" had a particularly interesting take on that.

QuoteIn referring to gods of some other sort, perhaps some vague "something out there" I'd have to be maybe a bit less certain, as long as it isn't logically contradictory, but still pretty sure there's no such thing.

So we're agreed, and you're not making suicide-baiting allusions at me. That's refreshing.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 02:59:36 PM
We agree that there are unknowns, and that God could be one of them. You and the shrine maiden have admitted this. You don't get to just reframe my argument endlessly and pretend I wasn't right.

You are right only in the most uninteresting, vacuous way possible. Yes, there is no way to be absolutely 100% certain of anything we assert to know, but this is a long way from saying that we "know nothing" as your nihilist position asserts. Any idiot can come along and say that we don't absolutely know everything or even absolutely know anything; the real trick is to make that case convincingly, and that is the one thing you've failed to do. Our definition of knowledge does not require certainty to work. Our scientific knowledge does give us practical benefits, "the goods." No amount of navel-gazing philosophy can dismiss that. Only by asserting a position approaching solipsism, that the world we see is a complete and utter fabrication, can negate any of that.

How about we do a practical experiment. How much do you want to bet that, say, humans are not made of atoms? Would you wager your life on that? I would wager mine on the opposite, that humans are made of atoms.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 17, 2018, 03:29:08 PM
You are right only in the most uninteresting, vacuous way possible. Yes, there is no way to be absolutely 100% certain of anything we assert to know, but this is a long way from saying that we "know nothing" as your nihilist position asserts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_solipsism

Epistemological nihilism is something different. That is why I specified, in my first post, which I was led to believe you read.

QuoteHow about we do a practical experiment. How much do you want to bet that, say, humans are not made of atoms? Would you wager your life on that? I would wager mine on the opposite, that humans are made of atoms.

Prove that humans exist first.

One advantage to atheism for me was that it eliminated from my thought processes a dumpster full of mutually exclusive ideas, illogical apologies, and inconsistencies that a god directed reality required, and I would venture this is the same for most atheists.  Think about all the useless irrelevant crap you tried to make sense out of in a world of a mystery god.  Those from atheist families might experience this with less difficulty than a person who was brainwashed by his parents to believe in the nonsense.  Eventually, it's overwhelming to live with so much chaos in your brain, and simply not trying to believe lets you deal with the more relevant aspects of reality.  A burden is lifted.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 03:34:41 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_solipsism

Epistemological nihilism is something different. That is why I specified, in my first post, which I was led to believe you read.

Ahem! From your first post:

Quote from: omokuroi on January 15, 2018, 09:25:39 PM
4. Nihilist. Specifically, meta-ethical emotivist, existential nihilist, epistemological solipsist.

You have been consistently characterizing us as not having knowledge because we don't have 100% assurance of it, of hanging your hat on the fact that science can't prove anything to 100% and pretending as if that's a big fat hairy deal. I don't care what you call it. It's still wrong by any conventional sense.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 03:34:41 PM
Prove that humans exist first.

Don't be obtuse. Are you Homo sapiens? Then humans exist.

Quote from: SGOS on January 17, 2018, 03:42:00 PM
One advantage to atheism for me was that it eliminated from my thought processes a dumpster full of mutually exclusive ideas, illogical apologies, and inconsistencies that a god directed reality required, and I would venture this is the same for most atheists.  Think about all the useless irrelevant crap you tried to make sense out of in a world of a mystery god.  Those from atheist families might experience this with less difficulty than a person who was brainwashed by his parents to believe in the nonsense.  Eventually, it's overwhelming to live with so much chaos in your brain, and simply not trying to believe lets to deal with the more relevant aspects of reality.  A burden is lifted.

That's actually a fairly interesting hypothesis.

Though... I was raised by a pretty religious family in the, uh, deep south. I just don't really care about "making sense" of whatever a god may or may not will, whether it exists or not.

Taking it from the Christian view, man was created in God's image, right? So, that means... God is basically just another man, but with more magic sky mojo.

Unless you think might makes right, it doesn't really follow that there's any reason to listen to such a god... Or unless you actually believe it when it says it's omnibenevolent, but then men are liars and it claims... yeah.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 17, 2018, 03:43:42 PM
Ahem!

Hai. Sono toori.

Emotivism is a meta-ethical nihilist position; existential nihilism is, of course, a nihilist position. Epistemological solipsism is actually weaker than the nihilist position on epistemology.

Epistemological nihilist: "We know nothing."

Epistemological solipsist: "Cogito ergo sum... and other than that I'm not sure."

QuoteI don't care what you call it. It's still wrong by any conventional sense.

It's not wrong. That's the problem. It's right, you know it's right, it's actually fairly obviously right, and you make the step of assuming that our best guesses are probably pretty good but don't like to be reminded that that is a step you are taking. It's not proven. It's your best guess.

QuoteAre you Homo sapiens?

No idea.

To continue my last post: (Sorry, I had to tend to an emergency on the kitchen stove).  The above post talks about why I don't worry over absolute knowledge that might cancel out reality as I see it.  I simply reduce the clutter of inconsistency and outright logical incompatibilities, and draw what Gnosticism I can from what doesn't absolutely conflict with reality.  I don't need to know with certainty everything there is to know, I just sort through the stuff that makes sense.  God is not in the set of things that make sense.  I don't claim absolute knowledge, but I do place bets on things that seem most likely, and most of the time it pays.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 02:59:36 PM
strawman strawman assertion assertion "actually you're right but the fact you're right doesn't matter because i said so" strawman strawman HOLY PROJECTION BATMAN

Yeah, it's really easy to declare victory when you're going to deliberately ignore and/or misrepresent the arguments against your position.

Projection? Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Whatever.  Have fun wanking yourself.  Hope you grow up soon.

Quote from: trdsf on January 17, 2018, 04:12:17 PM
Yeah, it's really easy to declare victory when you're going to deliberately ignore and/or misrepresent the arguments against your position.

Projection? Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Whatever.  Have fun wanking yourself.  Hope you grow up soon.

Fuck off.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 03:49:16 PM
Emotivism is a meta-ethical nihilist position; existential nihilism is, of course, a nihilist position. Epistemological solipsism is actually weaker than the nihilist position on epistemology.

Epistemological nihilist: "We know nothing."

Epistemological solipsist: "Cogito ergo sum... and other than that I'm not sure."

Vacuous and uninteresting. Indeed, by the standards of Hinduist philosophy, even "cogito ergo sum" is a dubious position â€" how do you know you yourself are not a dreamed-up simulacrum of another entity? Is that other entity real rather than a dreamed-up simulacrum itself?

Nah, these endless rabbit holes may amuse some people, but I bore of that game rather quickly.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 03:49:16 PM
It's not wrong. That's the problem. It's right, you know it's right, it's actually fairly obviously right, and you make the step of assuming that our best guesses are probably pretty good but don't like to be reminded that that is a step you are taking. It's not proven. It's your best guess.

I said, "wrong by any conventional sense." In any way we would normally use the word "know," scientifically use the word "know," or even the way philosophy defines "know," we do in fact know things to the satisfaction of that definition. Am I sure of the conclusions of science? Yes, by any conventional sense. If I take the conclusions of science as true (not the frontier science of the journals, but the well established science of the textbooks), then there will be no serious challenge to that knowledge, at least without a fair amount of warning. It's beyond a "best guess." It's achieved a status that is close enough to absolute proof to be perfectly serviceable as such for any practical purpose.

You crow victory over that last itty-bitty sliver of uncertainty that is impossible to dispel, but I really don't see the point of that. It's not going to change my life to live with the small error between that and "true proof." Then again, I've studied calculus. It just seems to me that you are howling victory over a stale crumb.

So, yeah, to the extent that your assertions are true, they are vacuous and uninteresting. To an extent that they would be interesting and applicable to the real world, they are not true.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 03:49:16 PM
No idea.

Stop being evasive. Get yourself a taxonomy book and get started.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 03:34:41 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_solipsism

Epistemological nihilism is something different. That is why I specified, in my first post, which I was led to believe you read.

Prove that humans exist first.

The problem isn't do humans exist, some do beings exist, but are they really human?  That is the appropriate question.  There is a lot of contrary evidence.  You can dress up a monkey, but the suit doesn't make the man.

Geeks are all Brights, the rest are Dims.  The terminology, human or homo sapiens, was obsolete once Seri went on-line.  Instead of "my anatomical entity is bigger than yours" it is "my electronic gadget is newer than yours".  The ape men screech and and take up a threatening posture ;-)

Jazzed up monkeys on dope.  Or doped up monkeys on jazz?

Gandhi - "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."  You are on the next to the last step ;-))

If you weren't making an impact, the howlers would have continued to ignore you.  I give you an electronic banana.

I am here as an Internet anthropologist, studying one particular ecosystem.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 17, 2018, 04:16:08 PM
Fuck off.

You would tell Nan Ch'uan holding the cat ... to make your day ;-(

This guy sounds like an apologist who's trying too hard. And no, I don't think you're obnoxious because I disagree with you, and definitely not because your arguments are without flaws. Hakurei has been doing a very good job picking your arguments apart and making you look like a fool. I just find your attitude annoying. You're so smug and you act like you know way more than you obviously do.

I always feel free to ignore idiots.  It is the crazed true believers that cause me grief.