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[RAM]

I like to think that we have a low entropy past and a low entropy future, and are currently enjoying an entropy high...

I would go with Aesop's Fables, Aesops' Fables would imply that their name was Aesops or that there was more than one Aesop.

Why would anyone want this barely restrained flame war on their recent replies list???

[MrWiggles]

How do you remove stuff from there?

This is a keeper for me.

But few others things I dont want to watch anymore.

[Osmosis Jones]

Why would anyone want this barely restrained flame war on their recent replies list???

I have a job which involves being alone in a small room with nothing but a machine terminal and an internet connection for 20 odd hours. My laptop struggles with DF. As such, I tend to get bored. This thread is a good way to fend that off.

[LegoLord]

To answer: a lot of things are pretty unlikely.  Consider how often life is known to occur and develop to the point we are at;

Well since we only know of one instance of life in the universe, and only one universe, that'd be one out of one, or always.

What?  You're adding conditions into what I said.  You inserted "in one universe" after "the point we are at."  Always is bullshit.  How do we know, just based on the fact that we exist and don't know of any other universes, that intelligent life would occur?  You say that it would automatically occur just because it happened here?  Here's a crazy twist:  Heard of the multiverse?  It's not guaranteed to exist, but if we assume what you yourself stated, that there are other universes, then it applies to the discussion.  The multiverse is a hypothetical series of alternate universes, as infinite as there are possibilities.  If there is so much as a chance that life might not form, which should be taken for granted given that life did not spawn at the moment of creation, then that means there is a universe in the multiverse in which life has not and will not form.  However, we do not know other universes even exist, so what you said is pointless. 

Aside from that, I did not say, "within one universe" - that does not imply 1:1.  There could be billions of potential earths in the universe, yet how many have we come across that have developed intelligent life?  1 out of billions, that one being our own.  That is not a 1:1 ratio.

[Idiom]

My tenant using my computer stirring up trouble after I warned him to keep it civil this time. Partly my responsibility. Posting some of my opinions without my consent because he's too damned lazy to have his own. Baiting. Insults and his usual mockery. A mute isn't good enough. Most people around here seem to settle after a mute, but his guy never learns. Trust me. I'm blocking the forums on my router.

If anyone sees ¿ around, PM me. I'll take care of it.


No-one seems to be so aggressive anymore. Pats on the back all around. I can deal with this now.

Aesop? Replicators? Occurrence of life?

I do believe religion to be a sort of Aesop's fables. I don't take it word for word or all of it literally. I also believe replicators to not be as rare as people think. I do believe that there must exist replicators on higher planes, dimensions, whatever you want to call them at some point in time. Not "if" but "when". I also believe that on the higher planes/dimensions/etc, an intelligence could be free to move along time, and then it wouldn't matter "when", it just would be. They would find us (matter of "when" not "if", but they being outside of time there wouldn't be a "when"). We would be like retarded pets or toys. I try to distinguish myself from the rest and hope something notices and snatches me from this place when my time comes, but I know I can never know this until the dreaded moment. I don't believe any other power in our little world can save me.

And that's about that.

Atheists I've always disagreed with on the auto-reject. Really, how you respond to the idea of religion is greatly reflective of your character. I've always believed in "eh whatever until proven". I do recall the huge automatic rejection of many things we now accept like evolution or string theory because they were stupid at the time and had no or little evidence. It's not just faeries that get that kind of treatment. With such a vague, abstract, yet simple concept with unexplored workings like God, I can't automatically reject it. I am dubious as to whether we can ever prove it, but it's just one of those ideas you may never prove just because of the kind of idea it is. So I give it special treatment because I think it appropriate to do so.

[Sordid]

To answer: a lot of things are pretty unlikely.  Consider how often life is known to occur and develop to the point we are at;

Well since we only know of one instance of life in the universe, and only one universe, that'd be one out of one, or always.

What?  You're adding conditions into what I said.  You inserted "in one universe" after "the point we are at."  Always is bullshit.  How do we know, just based on the fact that we exist and don't know of any other universes, that intelligent life would occur?

We don't, because we have far too little data to make any kind of estimation. Sample size of one is worthless for any kind of statistical analysis. That was kind of the point, but you seem to have missed it.

Aside from that, I did not say, "within one universe" - that does not imply 1:1.  There could be billions of potential earths in the universe, yet how many have we come across that have developed intelligent life?  1 out of billions, that one being our own.  That is not a 1:1 ratio.

That's the second point I was trying to make, you asked what's the chance of life, but failed to add per what. Per planet? Per star system? Per galaxy? Per universe? Asking for a chance without specifying the condistions is meaningless. About the only thing we can say for certain is that the chance is obviously non-zero.

Atheists I've always disagreed with on the auto-reject. Really, how you respond to the idea of religion is greatly reflective of your character. I've always believed in "eh whatever until proven". I do recall the huge automatic rejection of many things we now accept like evolution or string theory because they were stupid at the time and had no or little evidence. It's not just faeries that get that kind of treatment. With such a vague, abstract, yet simple concept with unexplored workings like God, I can't automatically reject it. I am dubious as to whether we can ever prove it, but it's just one of those ideas you may never prove just because of the kind of idea it is. So I give it special treatment because I think it appropriate to do so.

Well string theory for one isn't exactly accepted, contrary to the popular name it's still just a hypothesis, but that's a minor point.
More importantly, evolution won out in the end precisely because evidence was found for it. For every scientific theory that is accepted there are many that were rejected because evidence couldn't be found. Yes, if you reject a hypothesis outright and never give it a chance for evidence to be found it will fail unfairly, but evolution was proved and accepted in a matter of decades, while relativity (which to me sounds far more ridiculous and outlandish) took only a few years before its first direct confirmation. Religions, on the other hand, have been around for as long as we can remember. I think the god hypothesis has had more than enough time.

[Idiom]

Religions, on the other hand, have been around for as long as we can remember. I think the god hypothesis has had more than enough time.

Evidence for extra-dimensional beings should have been found by now? We're still trying to investigate what happens when you smash two atoms together. I really don't expect any evidence in my lifetime.

[Sordid]

Religions, on the other hand, have been around for as long as we can remember. I think the god hypothesis has had more than enough time.

Evidence for extra-dimensional beings should have been found by now? We're still trying to investigate what happens when you smash two atoms together. I really don't expect any evidence in my lifetime.

I don't know of any religion that claims its gods live in another dimension. Wherever did you get that idea?

[Idiom]

Religions, on the other hand, have been around for as long as we can remember. I think the god hypothesis has had more than enough time.

Evidence for extra-dimensional beings should have been found by now? We're still trying to investigate what happens when you smash two atoms together. I really don't expect any evidence in my lifetime.

I don't know of any religion that claims its gods live in another dimension. Wherever did you get that idea?

I don't think any claim that. They claimed pink unicorns. Instead of going "That's retarded, I reject it entirely" I realized that there was an idea behind the pink unicorn. The more I thought about it, the more I understood it was the pink unicorn that was retarded. So I replaced the pink unicorn with something that actually makes more sense to me.

Flying machines were originally attempted with actual feathers and wings strapped to your back. There was a fairly long period which people thought the whole thing was stupid and inherently that the idea of flying was stupid, when really it was because they were going at the idea nonsensically.

[Sordid]

Well flying machines made of feathers are stupid. And while yes, you could redefine God to move away from the inanity of the currently accepted definitions, I have yet to hear a definition of God that isn't self-contradictory or untintelligible and at the same time couldn't be described more appropriately by another name.
It's very much like the misguided idea of trying to portray alleged miracles as plausible natural events. See, the problem with gods is that they are inherently mysterious and incomprehensible, explaining away the mystery explains away the god. Such as that Moses didn't really part the waters of the Red Sea, it was another nearby snallow body of water that just happened to dry up due to sun, wind, or whatever. Okaaay, but then where's the miracle? The whole point of the story is that it was impossible but God made it happen anyway, by getting rid of the miracle (= mystery) you get rid of the need for God.
In the same way, sure, you could say that God was really an alien from some other universe who created our universe in his version of the Large Hadron Collider or whatever. But then why call such a being God?

Oh, and btw, dimensions only work that way on TV.

[LegoLord]

Extra dimensional referring to being capable of interacting with and seeing things as they would appear when projected in a coordinate plane with more than 3 axis (x, y, and z), not referring to alternate realities.

Hence, being extra dimensional compared to us, God would be beyond our understanding.  We see things in 3 dimensions (again, coordinate planes), not a lot.

You keep accusing me of missing points, but you seem to be missing the point of what Idiom said.

The logic they followed about flying at that time went like this:  What do birds have that allows them to fly?  We're not sure.  What do they have we don't?  Answer: wings, feathers, slightly pointed shape.  Maybe a suit like that will let us fly? 

And when the first try didn't work, they started trying to make variations on it. 

[Sordid]

Extra dimensional referring to being capable of interacting with and seeing things as they would appear when projected in a coordinate plane with more than 3 axis (x, y, and z), not referring to alternate realities.

Hence, being extra dimensional compared to us, God would be beyond our understanding.  We see things in 3 dimensions (again, coordinate planes), not a lot.

Um, no, according to some of the cutting edge theoretical physics our universe might actually have as many as eleven spatial dimensions (plus time), IIRC. So yeah, we can comprehend extra dimensions.
More to the point, this is the classic God of the gaps argument. We don't (or can't) understand this, therefore that's where God is hiding. Nope, not a valid form of reasoning.

And when the first try didn't work, they started trying to make variations on it.

And that right there is where religion fails. Religions also change their ideas, but instead of going where the evidence takes them they go the other direction, adding ever more elaborate justifications in order to keep the core tenets intact.
Another Biblical example, for the full discussion see Bart Ehrman's book God's Problem, referring of course to the problem of evil. The Bible has a whole bunch of answers to this, progressing from the oldest books to the newest. First there was the straightforward view that if you're righteous and worship God and so on and so forth you will be rewarded. Like, right now, in this life. Of course, people noticed pretty quickly that that was not the case, and so an amendment was made: Evil is prevalent in the world right now, but soon God will intervene, punish the evildoers and reward the faithful. This is Jesus and his ilk, apocalyptic prophets foretelling the establishment of the Kingdom of God, which was initially supposed to be an actual physical area here on Earth. And as time passed it became clear that the second coming, well, wasn't, so again a change was made and now you get your reward not in this life at all but in the next.
You see there as it is proven wrong time and again, the hypothesis moves from immediately falsifiable to one that can only be falsified sometime in the future, until finally reaching a completely unfalsifiable final form.

[G-Flex]

Extra dimensional referring to being capable of interacting with and seeing things as they would appear when projected in a coordinate plane with more than 3 axis (x, y, and z), not referring to alternate realities.

Hence, being extra dimensional compared to us, God would be beyond our understanding.  We see things in 3 dimensions (again, coordinate planes), not a lot.

Um, no, according to some of the cutting edge theoretical physics our universe might actually have as many as eleven spatial dimensions (plus time), IIRC. So yeah, we can comprehend extra dimensions.

We can comprehend them mathematically just fine. That doesn't mean we can actually perceive them directly, or not have difficulty imagining them.

[Sordid]

Extra dimensional referring to being capable of interacting with and seeing things as they would appear when projected in a coordinate plane with more than 3 axis (x, y, and z), not referring to alternate realities.

Hence, being extra dimensional compared to us, God would be beyond our understanding.  We see things in 3 dimensions (again, coordinate planes), not a lot.

Um, no, according to some of the cutting edge theoretical physics our universe might actually have as many as eleven spatial dimensions (plus time), IIRC. So yeah, we can comprehend extra dimensions.

We can comprehend them mathematically just fine. That doesn't mean we can actually perceive them directly, or not have difficulty imagining them.

And why would you even want to do that when you can just do the math? That is what you do even in three dimensions if you want to achieve any degree of precision. Imagination and direct visual input is useless for anything other than walking around, for anything else, even such simple tasks as driving a car, you rely on sensors and technology to supplant and augment your senses. You don't turn off your targeting computer and trust in the Force, you do the math. And it works and works very, very well.

[MrWiggles]

Bad Sorid. No cookie for you.

The fact that it can be made conceivable, doesn't mean it exist. This is why math doesn't work alone. Its a great tool, but alone proves nothing. As it stands, extra spatial dimensions exist on as mathematical proofs that hold up well to other mathematicians.

We will need something empirical eventually.