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10th November 2015, 09:37 PM | #561 |
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I want a bear too, preferably a Panda cause Pandas are cool!
So here's my unsubstantiated ghost story: When I was a kid (9ish) My family moved and in the interim we were put up in an apartment by my father's employer. My grandmother lived with us at the time. One night, my grandmother swore that while she was alone in the living room area, she observed a pillow on the couch suddenly begin to jump up and down like a bouncing ball. She thought there must be some sort of animal inside of it or something, but when she investigated, there was just a pillow. Much later, I did some research and discovered that the apartment we were living in was a converted army barrack. Some more research determined that it quite possibly was the same group of buildings (if not the very building) that my grandfather, who had passed away before i was born, was stationed at before being sent oversees, where he later was shot and mustard-gassed in WWI (injuries that would eventually lead to his demise... Could the two things be related? Well, it's more of a poltergeist story, but still fun. I'd like a lime with my Panda... |
10th November 2015, 09:39 PM | #562 |
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Link to the post where I expressed it in those terms.
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10th November 2015, 09:48 PM | #563 |
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Not at all. An appropriate education is attainable. You can either achieve it and appreciate how it benefits you, or you can eschew it and continue resenting what others have that you don't. It's factual, not hubristic. Nothing I've done or said prevents you from learning what you seek to know.
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11th November 2015, 04:37 AM | #564 |
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11th November 2015, 05:39 AM | #565 |
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Yes, I paraphrased your presentation of that science as "weird stuff." You're smart enough to know the difference and gamey enough to try spinning it.
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
When you do it, you pretend you are not. That's how it's gaming.
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
Also to the point: Koch was in direction opposition to Song yet you posted both as if they support your position; that cannot be true. And Koch is in opposition to your idea because he posits consciousness as material while your idea relies on it not being so.
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
I could as easily say that Tegmark's math works therefore I have leprechauns in my desk drawer. It is as valid a conclusion as yours. You keep ignoring this. It's like the intelligent design trial in which the witness was forced to admit under oath that accepting his evidence for intelligent design would require loosening the standards of evidence to the point that one would also have to accept astrology.
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
Originally Posted by Jodie
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11th November 2015, 10:04 AM | #566 |
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You were already provided with that information.
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11th November 2015, 05:32 PM | #567 |
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I've been pondering how to do this. The only thing I could come up with as far as an application for consciousness is concerned would be to develop algorithms similar to what we use in obstetrics when delineating all possible emergencies.
If you could apply something like that to consciousness that could take into account the processes for how the brain works as it perceives something that would include different levels of consciousness that might be a start. From there, you would need to convert it into some kind of algebraic equation or set of equations. Take the mathematics that indicates dimensions higher than ours, develop a simulation, run the equations for consciousness in that simulation and then see what happens.......that's all I got. Could it be done? |
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11th November 2015, 05:40 PM | #568 |
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11th November 2015, 06:31 PM | #569 |
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It's not enough.
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12th November 2015, 02:11 AM | #570 |
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I posted a link showing how speculation ahead of the evidence is rarely, if ever, borne out by history. You respond by saying that it doesn't apply to your ideas because they're only speculation. You have repeatedly said that you expect the evidence to catch up one day with your speculation.
Were I to be unkind, I might surmise that you had either not read the article, or that you had but you had totally missed the point. Would you care to correct this assumption? |
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12th November 2015, 02:14 AM | #571 |
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Jodie, you have also ignored all of this:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com...3#post10966303 Care to comment? |
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12th November 2015, 02:29 AM | #572 |
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18th November 2015, 05:03 PM | #573 |
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Bump for Jodie. She's complaining here and elsewhere that she's not being properly addressed. Specifically that people are simply telling her she's wrong without explaining how she is wrong. And since she's clearly referring back to this thread, it seems we should resurrect it.
Previously in this thread, thoughtful (and often lengthy) explanations were provided to expound Jodie's various misconceptions and simplifications. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.) Jodie dismissed much of what her critics said as a "posting tantrum." As she did in this thread, so in the above-referenced thread she has continued to dismiss criticism as somehow compromised by the alleged emotional immaturity of the critics. Clearly Jodie disagrees with her critics regarding what constitutes a meaningful response. This raises a legitimate question. When proposals are simply ignorant of the relevant sciences, to what extent and to what depth is a detailed, expostulatory rebuttal merited? If someone walks into a concert hall who has never played a note of music and tells the conductor he's doing it wrong for various naive reasons, is that person entitled to a full expounding of musicology from the conductor? If someone walks into a fourth-year medical school classroom bragging about how all diseases can be cured by dietary supplements, is the only viable rebuttal a replay of the entire medical education the audience has obtained? Fringe claimants often seem to have this inflated sense of entitlement. Despite often admitted shortcomings in their own knowledge and experience, they seem to presume their claims "somehow" still have enough merit to warrant careful consideration and (if necessary) a detailed rebuttal. And when they don't get it, they complain that they're being "ignored." Well, in a certain sense they have been -- and rightly so. There are gatekeeper criteria to serious consideration, and in meeting them a claimant must demonstrate to a sufficient degree that he understands the fundamentals on which the claim is predicated. In short, a claimant doesn't get to presume that his uninformed, speculative claim is not patently dismissable. But amid the harshness of the real world, Jodie has had the luxury of serious consideration and thoughtful rebuttal, even though her claims don't meet the gatekeeper criteria. All except her latest proposal, which has been correctly dismissed as caricature. So let's look at your latest offering, Jodie. I've highlighted and labeled each of the instances of vague handwaving. By the numbers, then: 1. Application vs. model. Applications are commercial products, generally trivial ones to solve well-phrased problems and having a certain degree of reliability. You may think this doesn't matter for your proposal. But instead of an "application," what you should be looking for is a model. You're purporting to do science, not bake cookies or plan treatment for obstetrics patients. That's not to say the latter is easy. But it's a deterministic problem with well-studied procedures and decision points. Hence it can have an "application."2. Suitability is not a given. Here you just assume that similarity is appropriate. Expert systems for medical diagnosis and treatment are elementary implementations of the rete algorithm or some other production-rule system. Now these can be arbitrarily large and arbitrarily complex. But one thing they must be is deterministic. One thing they cannot be is probabilistic in the sense required by the only formal model of consciousness you cite: Tegmark.3. Quantum mechanics is not discrete. This is your fatal flaw. The paradox of quantum mechanics is that while it deals with discrete quanta, the values in the model are not -- and cannot be -- discretes. Because of uncertainty, they can only be expressed as probability distributions. Wrapping one's head around this dichotomy is the difficulty of understanding quantum mechanics at any useful level. Any model that purports to compute a quantum state of matter as a set of enumerable, delineated values is simply wrong from the start.4. Suitability is not a given, redux. "Something like that" incorporates things that cannot be part of any workable quantum-state model, and explicitly excludes the essence of such a model. It is handwaving at its most evident. This is common in fringe thinking. You know about X, so you assume that if a problem Y bears some superficial resemblance to X, you can transfer all your knowledge of X to Y and this will be palatable to experts in Y. There is no kind way to say this: the world is not obligated to dumb itself down to fit your understanding.5. Define consciousness. Because of the problems I outline above, you can't apply a deterministic methodology (i.e., pattern-matching, product-rule) if you plan to invoke the "multidimensional" aspects of quantum field theory. Not only is there no agreement what consciousness consists of, there is absolutely no justification for limiting any eventual definition to discrete, deterministic systems. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.6. Neurological process is not algorithmic. One of the most important distinctions between neuroscience and artificial intelligence is that they are not nearly as congruent as one might think. Because computers can be made to mimic some kinds of behavior that we associate with intelligence, it is tempting to believe that all aspects of intelligence (including perhaps consciousness) can be attained simply be scaling up existing algorithmic methods. I discussed this already at length. There is no such belief in computer science, although it is a common lay belief and an equally common science-fiction meme.7. Perception can be meaninglessly algorithmic. Artificial automata perceive. That is, they take in sensory input, apply transformative processes (even paramaterized from stored memories), and evaluate them according to a set of rules. The outcomes of those rules affect behavior. That's classically defined perception, and the algorithms are well-defined after 30 years or so of practical research.8. What is the model for 'levels' of consciousness? The neurological model of levels of consciousness consider only phenomenology. They don't consider either mechanism or causation. Below you require just such a constitutive model (not a descriptive one), but not only does science not yet have one, the descriptive one ends at our known reality and doesn't consider whatever you might imagine by "higher" levels of consciousness such as those that would let you commune with the dead, permeate the threshold of death, travel through time, or any other fringe claim you're trying to support with this model.9. Modeling revisited. I covered this at length previously. We can certainly model the observable behavior of systems as we observe them. The motion of the planets as seen from Earth, for example, can be modeled to a very high degree of accuracy using systems of harmonic equations, up to 300 terms each. But that's not the math that governs their motion. That's qualitatively Kepler and quantitatively Newton. And that's still not the mathematics that describes the mechanism for what makes planets move. We're still working on that, some hundreds of years after Kepler and Newton.10. 'Higher' dimensions are not a thing. This just restates your biggest misconception, one which I covered at length here for your benefit. In the vector formulations for quantum mechanics, one dimension is not "higher" than another in any way. Values in quantum behavior are simply represented as vector quantities, expressing magnitudes along each of the conceptual dimensions. No one coordinate or dimension is "higher" than another. They don't describe separate realms of time and space that we can't see. In the context of four spatial dimensions and one temporal dimensions that we perceive, the remaining 7 dimensions (Einstein) or 19 dimensions (some multiverse formulations) are not "higher" in any way -- they're just the rest of the data for that particular space-time expression. They're no more conceptually "higher" or "lower" than each other than the numbers in your locker combination. They're just sets of values meant to be taken collectively.11. Define the simulation model. "Develop a simulation" is simply an appeal to magic. There's no kind way to say it. The mathematics from which you infer your multiple dimensions is not translatable to discrete simulation, if the goal is to predict the next state from some instant state. Many have tried, including some of the best people in the business (e.g., U.S. Dept. of Energy). Guess whose company built and programmed the computers they used to try? There's a klunky approximation. I think it's up to partially modeling some two dozen particles -- say, a handful of fluorine atoms. But it's not promising.12. Formulation. You haven't the faintest idea what "equations for consciousness" are, or even what they could be. In your attempt to fog up the lens of science that's examining your vague attempts at formulation, you've proposed a hodge-podge of incompatible alternatives. You are entitled to no more elaborate explanation of your error than to note where it contradicts itself.13. Constitutive relationships. For any linear system to convolve with any other linear system, there must be a set of constitutive relationships between them. There must also be constitutive relationships among elements in the simulation domain. A simulation won't work at all unless the model and the inputs share some elemental constitution. Since you don't have a formulation for either the model or the environment, you have no clue whether such constitutive relationships are possible. It's never a given that they are.The number of fatal flaws in your proposal is staggering. Any one of them dooms it, no matter how strong the remainder. Four or five of them, explained here at length, should satisfy your desire for a complete refutation. |
19th November 2015, 12:34 AM | #574 |
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I have to say I admire your tenacity, JayUtah. Beautifully explained. Just a shame it will fall, as always, on wilfully deaf ears.
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19th November 2015, 01:57 AM | #575 |
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Probably, but the next time (and there almost certainly will be a next time) that Jodie claims that no-one has addressed or refuted her arguments, we can link to this post. Think of it as an investment for the future.
And thank you, JayUtah, for taking the time to do this. |
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19th November 2015, 08:45 AM | #576 |
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I agree.
JayUtah, this very impressive. I certainly hope that the effort will prove worthwhile. |
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19th November 2015, 11:42 AM | #577 |
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20th November 2015, 10:14 PM | #578 |
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I'm not certain how I'm supposed to read your words any other way than what the words actually mean.
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Consciousness, as far as what it is, and how it might exist in these theoretical other dimensions is strictly my belief with no evidence to back it up.
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20th November 2015, 10:29 PM | #579 |
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20th November 2015, 10:30 PM | #580 |
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Asked and answered. "The mathematics" contains nothing to support other dimensions as you use the term. And as you've admitted (in a different thread) you have little understanding of higher mathematics, I don't think you're in a position to say it does.
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20th November 2015, 11:32 PM | #581 |
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No they haven't. I've stated that my theory is speculative since the discussion started.
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[qoute]Nice try. I asked you this:[/quote]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici..._Islamic_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrodora http://sri.sagepub.com/content/19/3/337.extract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...early_cultures |
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21st November 2015, 12:11 AM | #582 |
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Then where did the theories come from, handwaving by select physicists?
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21st November 2015, 12:23 AM | #583 |
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Bingo! I'm the lucky winner who gets to do this first!
http://www.internationalskeptics.com...7#post10985977 Asking whether there is a precedent for the kind of scientific revolution you are proposing is in no way off-topic or irrelevant. For your speculation to have any substance or possibility of reality, it would need to overturn decades of research and experiment, a point I have (I think) clearly made many times. If this hasn't ever happened, and is unlikely ever to happen, then what is the point of your speculations? Especially, as has been repeatedly pointed out, you constantly attempt to cite science as support for your ideas. With regard to your point about the Dark Ages, this is a term that specifically applies to Europe, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the early Middle Ages. Linking to information about science in Classical Greece, the Middle East or the Far East is irrelevant. It also undermines your earlier point, which you appear to have forgotten. You brought this up as an example of how modern science has overturned previous beliefs. If we go with your own, unique, definition of the Dark Ages, you have just argued against yourself. Anything discovered by using the earlier attempts at the scientific method is still, more or less, valid now: Eratosthenes' measurement of the circumference of the earth, for example. Not 100% accurate, but close enough. Nothing founded in the scientific methods utilised in the cultures cited in your articles has been completely overturned by modern science.So either we use your definition of the Dark Ages, in which case there is no precedent for the kind of revolution of proven fact you are arguing for, or we use the conventional definition, in which case there was no use of the scientific method, or a use that had almost no effect on learned opinion at the time, in which case your example is irrelevant. |
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21st November 2015, 01:25 AM | #584 |
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You and a select few others were having emotional tantrums without explanation at the time that was said.
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This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It's not testable.
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This is true and why I've stated that this is speculative from the start and not likely to be tested.
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Ten why did you ask me to do it?
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21st November 2015, 01:38 AM | #585 |
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Dimensions. Not higher, just other. For lol's sake...
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21st November 2015, 02:10 AM | #586 |
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21st November 2015, 02:13 AM | #587 |
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21st November 2015, 09:06 AM | #588 |
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No. Your critics are not hopelessly "emotional."
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As for testability, there are two issues at stake. The first is the testability of your theory of other dimensions. We have already discussed that at length in the posts linked above. The second is your belief that artificial intelligence can be made to model the phenomena you conjecture.
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21st November 2015, 09:12 AM | #589 |
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That's fine, I can withdraw the "higher" charge. However the relationships between dimensions in a vector formulation is still not as Jodie as explained. While three of the dimension in the standard and multiverse models relate to three spatial dimensions and are orthogonal, and while the fourth relates to a concept for which one can have an intuitive understanding (but not orthogonal to the first three), the rest are not simply extensions or variations on that theme. That's why I took such pains to explain the idea of a conceptual problem space. Quantum field theory is just such a space. "Those other dimensions" simply aren't in any way, shape, or form what Jodie envisions them as.
She said she never got to the point of studying trigonometry. That means her formal education (following USDE curricula) in mathematics ended somewhere no later than second-year algebra. She will not have studied linear algebra or calculus, both of which are absolutely essential to understanding QFE and QM. LE and calculus are both transformative subjects. Just as algebra transforms a mathematical understanding based on arithmetic by introducing symbolic manipulation, so too do those others. One simply has no prayer of understanding the vector formulations in higher physics without them. |
21st November 2015, 09:51 AM | #590 |
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Handwaving by people desiring to use the general opacity of higher physics as a veneer of credibility over their completely unscientific beliefs
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Since your hypothesis is your affirmative claim, your inability to test it (for whatever reason) means your affirmative claim fails. That's not the same as asserting it is false. But it fails as any sort of proposition that lay claim to a scientific basis.
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Your dream story is identical to a well-understood prosaic phenomenon. Parsimony demands we consider that phenomenon the likely explanation. But in order to throw a stick in the spokes of parsimony, you introduce an inexplicable element -- the prophecy. Since what is seen in a dream generally cannot be proven or rebutted, you think you have the lynchpin in your claim. And the record shows your argument relies heavily on the "But you can't prove me wrong!" rhetoric. This whole foray into higher physics is just a red herring. You seem to think your critics are stuck trying to explain away your ghost story because it's untestable. You say you can't provide evidence so you won't, just as a good lawyer keeps from calling his guilty client to the stand, where he would be undone upon cross-examination. But as one of your critics points out, you've shied away from every single form of affirmative argumentation you could make. And you've reminded us over and over that your claim can't be tested, from which you insinuate it can't be refuted. Wrong. You're perhaps hunting for an affirmative rebuttal. But your critics are not so limited. In lieu of any affirmative argument, they're free to explain the "prophecy" as a false memory or as something you just made up in order to get attention or perhaps to enable a mainstream-bashing tirade. I'm sure your critics made their minds up long ago. And I'm sure your habit of personalizing the argument and attributing to your critics all manner of intellectual and emotional infirmity has swayed their choice. To sum up. Your ghost story fails because it is not substantiated. Your irrelevant physics claims fail because you don't know what you're talking about. This is a skeptics forum. This is the kind of discussion you're going to get here, and these are the kinds of conclusions that will be drawn here. Begging it to be different will not avail you. |
21st November 2015, 02:31 PM | #591 |
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Time is limited for me lately, and the ever-expanding point-by-point responses can wear after a while, and as far as logical and scientific validity (or their lack) in your arguments, JayUtah is speaking far better to the points than I can, so I will defer to him.
So I will limit this post to some short comments. Reference the first part I highlighted, your point rings hollow when you do not hold your own words to the same standard, asking us alternately to accept your claims as speculation, to accept them as founded in science, to accept them as something in between, or whatever suits your mood. Reference the second part I highlighted, there is no issue as far as you have stated it here. Speculation is speculation, and it can be both enjoyable and worthwhile to discuss it. Where you go astray is your separate assertions that the speculation is backed up by math unrelated to it. Reference the third part I highlighted, it was the dream that you began by asserting as fact, and the reason you did so was primarily that we could not positively prove it untrue, despite never once posting any details. Regardless, you may want to look at the fact that the apparent verification occurred so long after the apparent prophecy. It would be interesting to know by what manner and at what time you recorded the details of the dream, how your kept it preserved and uncontaminated over time, and by what standards you judged it so specific a match to a decades-later event that you reached the conclusion that prophetic dream was the most parsimonious explanation. |
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21st November 2015, 02:37 PM | #592 |
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The bit I highlighted here is, I think, a perfect demonstration of the central weakness of your position. Argument from Incredulity, perhaps. It makes no sense to you for it to be otherwise, therefore you assume it true, and perhaps without realizing it, paint all your research with the color of supporting your assumption.
It is not necessary to go further than that to demonstrate the weakness, but I will go one step more anyway: It doesn't make sense that it DOES exist in those other dimensions. It does not perceive them, and the other aspects of me do not seem to exist in them. When I reach to grasp my coffee cup my arm and hand do not twist and contort into some imperceptible and physicalized equation. I require no commune with another dimension to accomplish the task. Why is that less parsimonious than your formulation of what makes sense? |
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21st November 2015, 06:34 PM | #593 |
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"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest "The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David "Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze |
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21st November 2015, 08:30 PM | #594 |
Quixoticist
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: ON Canada
Posts: 5,480
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"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." - Oscar Wilde |
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