stuff

I wonder when the moment will strike that I will have a sentiment worth conveying. It seems my...

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:36:15 -0500

I wonder when the moment will strike that I will have a sentiment worth conveying. It seems my mentality has gone into autopilot.
All beliefs, logical premises, and pursuits have compacted into abstracts or widdled into narrow tangents. A glacier cracked, whose pieces grow stranded and slowly decaying into the ocean caused by their desolation.
Memories randomly floating around, reaching a conscious surface only to sink again into oblivion. In this soup they avoid bonding into organic compounds, and so they never evolve.

The simultaneous experiences of subjects, privy to witnessing external events on global proportions, but never as a collective. I collects some pieces of their experiences here and there, and become a distorted frame of a select sampling of subjects, a lone processor of their residue.

Right now the sky is red. I just took a sip of water. Music is playing, and my thoughts drift and sway, as they desperately attempt to prevent the decay.

In case anyone caught that, yep I deleted them. Okay, well I need to re-model my tumblr page to...

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 22:05:00 -0500

In case anyone caught that, yep I deleted them.

Okay, well I need to re-model my tumblr page to somehow fit the ideals I currently uphold. This will take some assorting and consideration of what sorts of expressive output I shall filter through this medium. For now you remain updated on potential developments.

She traveled on a rose bush raft, surfing through the clouds as petals fell towards the earth in a...

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 01:23:34 -0400

She traveled on a rose bush raft, surfing through the clouds as petals fell towards the earth in a wind-pressure frenzy.

Reaching the satellite arena, she picked a rose and smelled it, then released it into orbit, laughing as she further escalated into deep space, watching earth become an ever decreasing ball of blue, green and white.

“Water, plants, clouds, how you dominate my planet. You are all that can be known from here.”

All the while roses fell from her raft, making her the flower girl of space. Wedded to the expanding scope of the Universe, showering them with the gift created through the evolution of a small point in space time.

Slowly the entire raft fell apart, bit by bit, through the forces of gravity. But she had hardly noticed until it no longer supported her.

“Oh well, I didn’t really need you anyway,” she smiled, “but I hope you enjoyed your journey with me, and everything else.”

She stretched her arms and legs, no longer able to steer herself, so she simply watched. Planets going around the sun, becoming closer and closer. Earth increasingly feeling the heat of the brilliantly radiating formation of burning hydrogen.

But the life of this celestial neighborhood was running thin. The sun, in sheer desperation, began burning carbon, an oxygen, neon and more, until it finally collapsed and burst. This reaction upset the aggregations of matter which had once been captivated by this central body. The planets, including dear mother Earth disintegrated into new little formations of matter.

And from her view, she watched, tears streaming, and exclaimed, “encore!”

insincereity, logical inconsistencies, and self-babying.

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:24:19 -0400

you know what to say under every context,
in the way you’ve been trained,
executing your sentiments in haphazardly casual manners.
and then whoosh!
the next moment occurs and you experience selective amnesia,
incapable of connecting one thought to the next,
you travel onward,
fully satisfied by your scrambling effort
to uphold your self as is,
and never change.
but the self you uphold make claims of an identity you do not possess.

or maybe you’re incapable of making connections,
or maybe you don’t try.
so that you can be whatever the fuck you want to be,
whenever the fuck you feel like it.
how wonderful you’ve managed to fool yourself,
but you haven’t fooled me.

When you have a society of people who execute false niceties, condescending tonalities, and...

Thu, 17 May 2012 01:00:07 -0400

When you have a society of people who execute false niceties, condescending tonalities, and self-serving behaviors; being a human absent of these qualities proves difficult when attempting to be one who engages and thus responds to these types of prevailing people. For, if you consider the nature of responding, you will realize this is based upon the others’ feedback. Adaptation is adjusting one’s self to the contextual conditions; so how does one appropriately respond the egotistical mentality if not through reciprocation? When one offends you, the natural response is to defend yourself. Defending one’s self often becomes an emotional position when the other continues to offend you. The fact that defending one’s self is required further validates the ego-divided construct of humans within their society. Thus self-defense supports opposition, but so long as there are people who assert offensive positions, defense is a necessity. Personally, I am very upset that I must support the ego divided construct because by doing so I am degrading the quality of society and degrading quality of myself.

*by the way, I am NOT arguing against disagreements, but merely the involvement of the ego within these disagreements.

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:32:08 -0400

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.”

- Carl Jung (via delicatelybruised)

just sum passing thoughts

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:09:00 -0400

People who take themselves too seriously consider themselves more intelligent than they truly are; and as a result tend to neglect challenging themselves, and challenging one’s self is an essential pillar in the development of intellectualism.

——

Ego is designed as a measure of protection of one’s social status. Once a person, utilizing numerous tactics manages a position in the social hierarchy, they then install numerous defense tactics to protect their position and further advance it. These defense tactics root from the ego, a tool that competes with others for the sake of maintaining self worth. Considering the nature in which this self worth is maintained, it can be concluded that one values self worth more than they value self development, for if they cared for that they wouldn’t create a mechanism which blocks the criticisms of others. It is self development which generates self worth, therefore degrading themselves despite their goal. How ironically distorted your behavior is you egotistical fucks.

Edit: Let it be known that I am operating under a certain definition of ego. One that is used more often in culture as opposed to psychology, which sees the ego the self, which is entirely boring because there’s already a word for that. I would prefer the term meta ego, where the self goes beyond what they truly are. And even under this term, the meta ego, I am only identifying one of the symptoms. Mmm, or maybe I am just thinking of defense mechanisms IE the shell. The outer ego, perhaps? Ah, yes, that works.

I apologize for leading you on a twisting trail, dear reader, that is the nature of my mind. Though, editing is like polishing in which the public can best understand, however it displays less of the mind’s inner workings. And while I realize I am doing it yet again, I’ve concluded that letting you observe the natural progression of my mind may be a refreshing demonstration of self expression.

the future of humanity. just wait as the males who love big...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 07:11:00 -0400

the future of humanity.

just wait as the males who love big booty bitches become the most successful humans to breed.

EVOLUTION FUCK YA.

post edit: dat swelling ;)

ejiblabahaba: puddipup: itsrobhere: I have no sympathy for...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:45:07 -0500

ejiblabahaba:

puddipup:

itsrobhere:

I have no sympathy for people that commit suicide. In fact I find it disgusting when people call them heroes or brave or strong. They are weak and they are cowards, they stand for everything I am against. If you do it is the fault of the person that makes the decision to take their life and no one should be blamed but them. They fully understand what they are doing and they shouldn’t be painted as victims, they made the decision and if you cant handle that too fucking bad that is the reality of the situation.

now beyond that, nobody should kill themselves, because once you get to that point you are free. I am envious of you because you can do anything you want to. At the point of suicide you have nothing to lose so you can really do anything, you just need to recognize this and then you become truly free. This is why I have no sympathy, because you have all of the opportunity a person could wish for.

I understand how you feel, but you should try and consider a couple different perspectives to take on the matter. When someone makes a bad decision in life, is it considered their fault? Yes. People are not perfect, they can act irrationally at times based on false presumptions of misrepresentations of reality that can lead to bad decisions. Now consider the decision to commit suicide. In many scenarios, this can be considered a bad decision. A bad decision would be based upon a false sense of their reality and circumstances, that could have been fixed through other choices than that of suicide. It is still their choice, and thus the responsibility for the action is theirs, but why can’t empathy be had for the bad decision that can never be fixed? As much as it is their fault, had they not been so fixated in their deluded state they may have decided otherwise.

Have you never made a bad choice in life that you regretted? Because otherwise I don’t see why you can’t relate, however extreme the circumstance of suicide is.

(By the way, I am not suggesting that suicide is always a bad choice, but in many cases I would claim it is)

In my experience, suicide has been a last, desperate grasp at control, and is exactly the opposite of the portrait you (itsrobhere) have painted.

If I am committing suicide, it’s because I cannot accomplish my dreams, because I am insignificant, because I am biologically reprogrammed by depression or other hormonal factors that take months to change to see no achievable alternatives. I tried, I failed; I’ll try and fail at everything else too, and I don’t have the willpower to do that. Eventually my brain will prevent me from believing it was all my fault, in order to preserve some sense of control, and that leads to a mentality of victimization. After thinking the world is doing this to me for so long, eventually I do the only thing that gives me some control. It’s an alternative to my imaginary learned helplessness, afforded to me by my capacity for self-control.

(As an aside, there are cases of legitimate helplessness, like the Holocaust. I don’t discuss their suicides because in many cases their death at their own hands would be more dignified than death by Nazi.)

Almost always, it’s not as bad as my brain thinks, there are options, etc. But let’s say I DO forfeit myself to this recklessness, this freedom. No self-esteem, no regrets, hell-bent on a mission and I’ll see it through to my death. That is the exact psychological profile of the pilots who hijacked airplanes on 9/11, of the California gunmen who killed six and wounded eleven in 1997, of the Columbine shooters and other school gunmen. When I am desperate, my last thought before leaving the world isn’t to make it a better place, it’s to lash out at the miserable fucks who did this to me. Why would I want to help the world when I’ve come to the conclusion that the world doesn’t want to help me?

By contrast, people who are afflicted by forces out of their control, for instance patients with terminal cancer or birth defects, often command the most inspirational tales of all. Steven Hawking has Lou Gehrig’s, and he’s on the cutting edge of modern science. Louis Braille, born blind, created the linguistic system bearing his name. People who are actually victims are among the most inspirational of us all, whereas people who hide from their failures are the suicidal ones.

I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule. For example, a friend recently mentioned that one study found a suicide rate of 30 times greater than the national average for transgender patients who could not get cosmetic surgery to match their gender. The question of what differentiates these victims (with a similar affliction due to forces out of their control, that is, a body and mind that do not match), although expounded upon at length at present, has a complicated answer. I encourage readers to think about this dichotomy of victimization in particular, and to offer criticisms and improvements to the discussion.

So, recap: People commit suicide because they think they have no control. Occasionally, they’re right, but more often they are trying to escape their own failures. There are no “happy” suicides: suicide stems from depression, misery, and anger. These painful emotional states drive people not to make the world a better place with their death, but to lash out in revenge. Often, people who are victims are inspirational, whereas people who pretend they are victims are suicidal. The question of suicide is complicated, and warrants further discussion.

Can you blame the victim for being irresponsible, immature, etc? Absolutely. Will it change anything? Nope. If you want someone to live life, you have to make them want life in the first place.

How is what you say going against what I’ve said? I have stated that it was the choice they made based upon a false sense of reality. This can be applied directly to what you have said. If one feels as though they have failed, and that the only solution is to kill themself, let us consider how this can be applied to the notion of “making a choice based upon a false sense of reality.” Well, the false sense of reality is that they are at a point of no return, they have failed so bad that there is no other alternate solutions other than suicide. Now let us suppose that the rut they have dug themselves into, or a accumulation of failures leading to depression, have a viable solution other than suicide. Let us suppose that this solution will require both a change in one’s mental and emotional states and behaviors, accompanied by certain actions that demonstrate this changed mental state. This solution may take months to reach recovery, but when contrasted with how many years of life they would have to come, it is a more viable solution than one that would cut off all of these potential good years. To then suppose that their circumstances are so bad that the only viable solution is suicide is delusional, for there are solutions to their problems but their mental state is such that they are not able to see these solutions. They they have lost sense of reality because their mental state has disabled them from seeing better solutions to their problem. And as a result, they make the choice to kill themselves. It was a delusional sense of reality that led to a bad decision.

Also, I don’t see how you can compare those who commit suicide with suicide bombers as though they are committing the same act or have the same intentions. Its not the same act, with the same intentions, and thus their mental states are not comparable.

itsrobhere: I have no sympathy for people that commit suicide....

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:40:30 -0500

itsrobhere:

I have no sympathy for people that commit suicide. In fact I find it disgusting when people call them heroes or brave or strong. They are weak and they are cowards, they stand for everything I am against. If you do it is the fault of the person that makes the decision to take their life and no one should be blamed but them. They fully understand what they are doing and they shouldn’t be painted as victims, they made the decision and if you cant handle that too fucking bad that is the reality of the situation.

now beyond that, nobody should kill themselves, because once you get to that point you are free. I am envious of you because you can do anything you want to. At the point of suicide you have nothing to lose so you can really do anything, you just need to recognize this and then you become truly free. This is why I have no sympathy, because you have all of the opportunity a person could wish for.

I understand how you feel, but you should try and consider a couple different perspectives to take on the matter. When someone makes a bad decision in life, is it considered their fault? Yes. People are not perfect, they can act irrationally at times based on false presumptions of misrepresentations of reality that can lead to bad decisions. Now consider the decision to commit suicide. In many scenarios, this can be considered a bad decision. A bad decision would be based upon a false sense of their reality and circumstances, that could have been fixed through other choices than that of suicide. It is still their choice, and thus the responsibility for the action is theirs, but why can’t empathy be had for the bad decision that can never be fixed? As much as it is their fault, had they not been so fixated in their deluded state they may have decided otherwise.

Have you never made a bad choice in life that you regretted? Because otherwise I don’t see why you can’t relate, however extreme the circumstance of suicide is.

(By the way, I am not suggesting that suicide is always a bad choice, but in many cases I would claim it is)

general complaint

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:46:17 -0500

Please stop blaming language for comprehension deficits. kthanks.

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:25:19 -0500

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion:

ejiblabahaba:

puddipup:

ejiblabahaba:

puddipup:

neonxxninja:

puddipup:

ejiblabahaba:

Seriously, you can cut that shit out. Hipsters rag on religion to be IRONIC. I think we’ve reached the critical point of “hur dur religion broke society,” and it’s high time we ceased the witch hunt and used our reason (the very same reason we profess transcends religion, while diluting its…

To be honest, I think your logic is off in some ways. It is not merely that science asks how and religion asks why. In fact, a lot of science’s supposed “how” can replace religions explanation of “why.” Additionally, the basis for religion’s why is irrational. Considering the origin and evolution of religion, it comes from a rather primitive human frame of mind. Mythical beings which explain the chaos of things like rain, sun, and other aspects of their lives significant to their survival. They used these explanations in place of HOW the sun, rain, and seasons, operated. The reason they used these explanations is because they did not have the ability to figure out the how, which would have been much more useful to them, for it has more truth to it than their why explanations. And in this truth, they can utilize it for their own survival. Instead of chaotic whims of the gods, there is an order. And in this order, they can then use this information to garauntee survival. Figuring out the how helps humanity develop more so then religion’s sense of why. And honestly, they’re both a why question if you actually think about it. Science explains why things work through the means of how.

I had an interesting discussion with a classmate of mine on this very topic. He had wanted to know, if we were to wave our magic wands and eliminate religion from society, would we see that humans continued on as atheists forever after, or would we see an emergence of new, idiosyncratic religions? In other words, is religiousness intrinsic to human nature, or merely a phenomenon that caught on, a fad in the way humans think about the world?

I propose that religiousness is, to a certain extent, intrinsic to human nature. That is, I could see the vast, jumbled, messy construct that we call religion arising from various leftover mechanisms of the human mind and the way we process information.

Take, for example, the component of religion or proto-religion which we might call superstition. Superstition, I believe, arises out of our predilection to associate stimuli. The human brain devotes a lot of processing power to making connections between stimuli, to simulating cause and effect. We learn by inferring cause and effect. Moreover, we tend to infer cause and effect even when it’s not there. Superstition, in it’s most basic form, is simply classical conditioning at work. Two stimuli are associated often enough that you come to believe one predicts the other. Have a rabbit’s foot on hand when good things happen, and pretty soon you’re carrying that rabbit’s foot around everywhere.

Ritual may be a side-effect of our desire to be right. There was some interesting research done on pop music, on of all things—researchers found that participants would make predictions about the way the music would go. When their predictions were confirmed, the participants’ brains produced nice little bursts of dopamine, the chemical which drives the reward circuit. And, let’s face it, the third time you go to Mass on Sunday, it’s almost impossible to not know what’s going to happen next.

Our desire to personify forces may be a result of our hypersensitivity to the states of other humans. Humans are predisposed to see faces in everything, from coffee to chairs to the clouds in the sky. This works for emotions and actions, too. We are so attuned to our social environment that we see a social environment in the absence of anything to suggest a real social environment. We anticipate that things will be done to us, that we evoke responses from our environment. It does not seem to be a great stretch to to me to go from seeing faces in toast to seeing gods in clouds.

And so, this grab bag of mechanisms which we all posses goes to make the individual parts, the ingredients of religion. The idiosyncrasies arise from the unique experiences in the formation and shaping of each religion. The exact nature of the rituals and superstitions, of the gods and the personified forces and the supposed personalities, that will vary, but the portions which are due to human nature will not.

I do not disagree with you. It is within human’s brain to connect patterns. Often these patterns are false. The false result of the patterns we connect is a consequence of the imperfections of the human mind. We cannot always accurately connect the dots of our reality to get the true reality; our perception is limited. So whether religion ever existed or not in our history, I am sure some kind of false pattern connecting would have come about. This does not mean however, that once it is realized or replaced by more accurate measures for connecting patterns and seeing reality, that then we should still continue believing in a primitive lie. The connections we made that led to religion were an ego-centric understanding of the Universe. It suspected that the forces of the Universe were human-like, because humans best understand their own selves, so an attempt to connect them selves with an understanding of the Universe only makes sense. This was a direct pattern; knowing myself, then connecting it with the Universe unknown to me. But it’s been discovered as false as we have advanced and can now more complexly understand patterns.

In summation; yes some form of false pattern making would have come about, but why continue to believe what we now know as false?

For the exact same reason you continue to believe science, even though I promise you that everything about it is patently false. It’s a convenient human analogue to express, and ultimately to control, what we cannot know.

Now I’m a little more awake, so I can break it down better. Primeval man looks around and discovers that things happen, rather than just ‘that things.’ Happenstance constructs the mental patterns necessary to extrapolate cause and effect; from there, we’ve represented the world in incredibly different ways. Our earliest representations were primitive animal gods or anthropomorphic projections of ourselves, our developing emotions, and our sudden, blossoming reason. Under the impression that these gods or other deities were capable of hearing us, we attempted to placate them so that we could produce favorable outcomes. We attributed what we did not understand to something relatable, because we want to feel like we have some control over our environment.

As the ideas of human civilization expanded, its religion couldn’t match a suitable complexity, and so our religion was refined to meet some conditions. Ancient doctors, for instance, developed a model of humours, which they believed to hold some merit with the human body (we now understand this is not the case). Most early medicine would be an embarrassment to modern scientists. Arithmetic in the absence of zero would be an embarrassment to mathematics as a whole, yet we survived without a zero, or the standardized Arabic numeral system, for centuries. No one had yet discovered a cell, or the bacterial nature of illness. The Greeks believed the chemical world to be based upon fire, water, earth and air. And absolutely no one thought the world was flat. That’s just retarded.

My point is that science started as superstitious as religion, and eventually got narrower with centuries of refinement across related fields. We found a compromise; rather than human projection of reality, we settled for human interpretation of reality. These new scientific strides were familiar, if a bit abstract; they acted as proxies, through which we derived symbolic and metaphorical ways of manipulating the outside world.

Eventually, with the development of calculus, we became capable of mathematically expressing the nature of a system that changes with time. These mathematical models proved to be extremely useful in the physical world, for explaining things too abstract to relate with the naked eye. The planets, and their orbits, could at last be explained through forces and fields, which at their core held field equations for mathematical integrals; on the other side of the logarithmic fence, the electromagnetic world began to make sense, leading us to our first forays in electricity. The two would eventually unite to form computer-assisted space travel.

Our biology developed with an understanding of cellular life, which was a discovery made possible through advances in optics. Mendel’s genetic experiments served as the basis for genetic trait control. Doctors learned to fucking wash their hands. Chemical substance count soared, and helped to develop an understanding of radioactivity, biology, nutrition, and the world around us at an atomic level.

Our tools kept getting better, because our assumptions kept becoming more and more abstract. The irony may not be observed yet, but in due time. There are still a few examples to come. Remember, it’s all about control.

In mathematics, we eventually discovered some paradoxical properties of set theory, of infinity, and of completeness. In order:

We cannot assume 1:1 correspondence between things and their essential properties. This alone is mind boggling to consider. We assume it to be true to make sense of reality, but it appears that reality doesn’t assume it to be true at all, and in fact directly contradicts it at several places.

Infinity has multiple magnitudes. What does it mean to say that there are different infinities? Infinity is infinity, man! Yet we can prove it to be mathematically necessary, and it creates insane contradictions to assume otherwise.

There are axioms in mathematics that lie beyond the scope of mathematical proof. Holy shit. You can prove that you can’t prove everything.

These mathematical realities are next to impossible to interpret in an analogous form in our real life. And we’re starting to get the same thing in other forays of science as well. Physics has already jumped the gun here, with its increasingly abstract standard model that calls upon forces too tiny and of too great magnitude to recognize in day-to-day life. Chemistry is well on its way, with Schrodinger wave equations that become impossible to solve above very simple parameters. Biological systems, psychological systems, sociocultural systems, are all vastly more complex than our equations will ever be able to model accurately, and all run into problems of scope and individuality. Most notably, though, our problem has manifested in philosophy as the epistemology paradox. How do we discuss that which logic cannot discuss?

Necessarily, there are things beyond our control. In fact, there are things beyond the scope of human understanding entirely, if reason is our method of interaction with the world.

Well, shit. Religion doesn’t sound so bad, compared to necessarily unobservable nonreality. Here’s the most ironic part of all of science: Science tells us science is not the answer to every question.

The average layman probably doesn’t give a shit about your wiggly W-Z interactions and Riemann sums and Gaussian distributions of observable intelligence and differential field gradient modeling of population control. Nope, he cares about his next paycheck, and how shit’s out of his control. And how, if he just asks some divine entity for help, he’ll get it. Never mind he’s doing all the work. Never mind he’s at the mercy of a completely relentless, uncaring, probably cause-effect uncoupled universe. He thinks he has control.

Science and religion are similar means to entirely different ends. Religion creates certainty; science creates uncertainty.

In a paragraph, I’d like to briefly consider religious organizations as well. They’re all entities interested in their own survival, so they adopt a sensible albeit metaphorically turbocharged documentation and a survival of the fittest attitude. It’s the reason why everyone laughs at the Fox News slogan (we report, you decide): because we know it’s a bunch of crap. The reporting is slanted to inherently favor the entities producing the report. Unsurprisingly, the word “medium” can refer to a religious sermon, seeing as it is something that facilitates the transmission of information from one party to the other. And when a medium becomes self-interested, it’s less of a medium and more of a circlejerk. In conclusion, personal spirituality is the liberal hipster truth, religious organizations are Fox News, and what you just read from my conclusion is why I can’t have nice things.

In actual conclusion, personal spirituality is sometimes guided by religious organizations, but it will eventually diverge; personal spirituality, if guided by science, leads to more questions, some with no answer. This creates existential angst, and is bad, I think. Accepting science is an act of faith, as is religion; whereas science accepts an ambiguous why, and an eventual breakdown of the how, religion accepts an ambiguous how, and a corporate breakdown of the why. I believe what I believe because of exposure and critical thinking, and only one of these is necessary for the majority of mankind. Ultimately, I request you stop ragging on religion. It’s not the problem, your label is too generic, the scientific ultimatums undermine your postulates, and it’s generally disrespectful.

Transcend.

Lol. I do not think I am being disrespectful or generic in my explanations, though I shall attempt to further outline my main points.

First of all, you claim the root of science and religion were the same: by means of superstition. Okay? What’s your point? No one is arguing here that science has never been wrong or off, especially the farther back you go. Things have a messy beginning, with speculations that are often wrong. I wouldn’t call what science does superstition. I would call it faulty logic. It attempted to provide an explanation which turned out false. And yes, religion does that too. But as science has advanced, it has come up with more logical, testable measures for understanding reality with real results to prove it: technology. All of the technological advancements we see in the world now are all thanks to science. They have greatly improved the quality of human life. Has religion done that?

This leads me to your second point, “we want to feel like we have some control over our environment.” Now ask yourself this, which had granted us more control of our environment: science or religion? The answer is obvious, science. And the explanation is pretty much the same as above, through technology. We have utilized earth’s natural resources (environment), and have understood them by means of science, to then create technologies which have improved human life.

Your last point is that science still cannot explain things beyond human understanding. Obviously not, but you must realize BOTH religion and science are human understandings of reality; so anything beyond human understanding is beyond BOTH religion and science. Religion merely explains things in a different manner. A definitive manner at that. And yes, assurance is a nice thing, but in this case, its a rather ignorant thing. For religion has little credentials in its reasoning in opposition to science. And besides, they explain many of the same things. One merely allows for new evidence to overrule previous theories. And considering the our history of development, isn’t that a GOOD thing?

I don’t see what your problem is with uncertainty. Humans aren’t perfect in their logic. If they were certain that would be ignorant to the limits of humanity. It’s a process. Some things we can be more certain about, some things to a lesser extent. The fact that science allows for uncertainty is wonderful, because it is more accurate and allows for change, rather than being completely certain about out-dated views; which is exactly what religion is.

I went back and reread an older post, and I think I was out of line to be mad. The post that sparked my annoyance was something I misread, when I was very tired. You handle religion appropriately, and I disagree with you on practically nothing.

In order:

Religion hasn’t evolved in the same way science has, not by a long shot. But its evolution isn’t designed to happen over long periods of time, with better resources. It’s a bare-bones kit for all the things, an opportunity to build a stable foundation when resources are limited, no matter when or where. With religion, insight is (ideally) freely offered to anyone and everyone who pursues it. With science, insight comes at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and decades of intensive study. One of these is more accessible, and doesn’t restrict your insight to scientifically verifiable evidence. Religion is still around because we as a species don’t start with a silver spoon in our mouths. Clear, concise, and well-explained scientific knowledge is prohibitively expensive, in time and effort and resources, for a majority of the population. I think it always will be.

Second, it’s not a matter of how much control you have. It’s all about how much control you think you have. For most people, thinking you have control and having control are not mutual requirements. For science, they are mutual requirements, and the ratio of time and effort and resources put in to reward earned is often dismally low. It’s an effort/risk analysis we can all perform, and we’ll all yield different results. I like science because it seems to produce a reasonable amount of control for minimal effort. Not so with many of the people I’ve met in my life. It’s a struggle to learn science, and there’s no personal feeling of reward. Everybody believes something, and science is tough to follow sometimes. Religion, organized or otherwise, holds the world together for many. Science is about clarifying convenient illusions, and if you’re not very good at it, what incentive in this world is there to face your mediocrity with a straight face?

But, moving onto your third point, let’s pretend for a moment that there is no belief alternative, and everyone must follow science stringently. I already see a few problems. Science isn’t a magic potion we drink to understand the world; it’s a mindset, a process, to which some minds are better suited than others. Some of the knowledge science has earned us unravels everything we thought we knew about the world. Remember what I mentioned earlier, with all the set theory and infinity and unprovable paradoxes? Few people are mature enough to handle when they’re wrong. A considerably smaller number of people can entertain the notion that their entire mindset disadvantages them in their quest for understanding. The difference between religion and science, in this sense, is that religion never calls itself into question, ensuring that no matter what fucked up logical paradox science digs up, there is always a metaphorical rock to which your rational, ill-suited mind can cling.

I guess the big difference for me has always been that, deep down, I could call religion a steaming pile of shit and it wouldn’t change anything. It’s unshakable, if only because it adheres to nothing, and it affects nothing; it’s fiction. But if there are necessary truths about reality that cannot even be comprehended by the faculties of the human mind, then that’s pretty annoying from the standpoint of progress. I’m okay with an obstacle like achieving a temperature lower than the vacuum of space in my particle accelerator. I’m not okay with an obstacle that is beyond anyone’s faculty of reason, so it must be accepted. That sounds too much like religion to me.

I cannot accept that this awareness is an uncertainty. I don’t know how to doubt doubt.

Mkay, sorry it’s taken a while to respond, just haven’t felt like it.

First point: The study of science may be more prestigious than one’s active involvement in religion. However, science still shares its knowledge with the rest of the world and that information, its history to the most current updates of what important innovations are happening in science are available to anyone through the internet or magazine subscriptions.
Secondly; people who “think” they have control, even when they don’t, feel that this control is actual. It’s based on an illusion. If they knew it was an illusion, I am sure they would no longer believe they have control. And besides, why is it more important to think you have control than it is to be realistic? It is more valuable to be realistic, therefore negating a false sense of control.
Thirdly; yes, science is a little more complicated than religion. There’s a lot of information, some contradictory to each other, much of it theoretical and not proven. It is imperfect and its had a long development comprised of many different thinkers who came to contradictory conclusions. So what is your point, we should settle for religion because its easier to understand? False information is easier to understand, therefore we should believe it? That seems like a cope out for convenience’s sake. And that’s unacceptable. Which, again, is not to say science is perfect, but it’s a superior alternative to religion when it comes to establishing truths and providing proof and basis.

Your last paragraph I am having difficulty understanding how it possibly supports religion, so I feel no need to respond to it unless you can further explain to me how it does.

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:18:00 -0500

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion:

ejiblabahaba:

puddipup:

neonxxninja:

puddipup:

ejiblabahaba:

Seriously, you can cut that shit out. Hipsters rag on religion to be IRONIC. I think we’ve reached the critical point of “hur dur religion broke society,” and it’s high time we ceased the witch hunt and used our reason (the very same reason we profess transcends religion, while diluting its…

To be honest, I think your logic is off in some ways. It is not merely that science asks how and religion asks why. In fact, a lot of science’s supposed “how” can replace religions explanation of “why.” Additionally, the basis for religion’s why is irrational. Considering the origin and evolution of religion, it comes from a rather primitive human frame of mind. Mythical beings which explain the chaos of things like rain, sun, and other aspects of their lives significant to their survival. They used these explanations in place of HOW the sun, rain, and seasons, operated. The reason they used these explanations is because they did not have the ability to figure out the how, which would have been much more useful to them, for it has more truth to it than their why explanations. And in this truth, they can utilize it for their own survival. Instead of chaotic whims of the gods, there is an order. And in this order, they can then use this information to garauntee survival. Figuring out the how helps humanity develop more so then religion’s sense of why. And honestly, they’re both a why question if you actually think about it. Science explains why things work through the means of how.

I had an interesting discussion with a classmate of mine on this very topic. He had wanted to know, if we were to wave our magic wands and eliminate religion from society, would we see that humans continued on as atheists forever after, or would we see an emergence of new, idiosyncratic religions? In other words, is religiousness intrinsic to human nature, or merely a phenomenon that caught on, a fad in the way humans think about the world?

I propose that religiousness is, to a certain extent, intrinsic to human nature. That is, I could see the vast, jumbled, messy construct that we call religion arising from various leftover mechanisms of the human mind and the way we process information.

Take, for example, the component of religion or proto-religion which we might call superstition. Superstition, I believe, arises out of our predilection to associate stimuli. The human brain devotes a lot of processing power to making connections between stimuli, to simulating cause and effect. We learn by inferring cause and effect. Moreover, we tend to infer cause and effect even when it’s not there. Superstition, in it’s most basic form, is simply classical conditioning at work. Two stimuli are associated often enough that you come to believe one predicts the other. Have a rabbit’s foot on hand when good things happen, and pretty soon you’re carrying that rabbit’s foot around everywhere.

Ritual may be a side-effect of our desire to be right. There was some interesting research done on pop music, on of all things—researchers found that participants would make predictions about the way the music would go. When their predictions were confirmed, the participants’ brains produced nice little bursts of dopamine, the chemical which drives the reward circuit. And, let’s face it, the third time you go to Mass on Sunday, it’s almost impossible to not know what’s going to happen next.

Our desire to personify forces may be a result of our hypersensitivity to the states of other humans. Humans are predisposed to see faces in everything, from coffee to chairs to the clouds in the sky. This works for emotions and actions, too. We are so attuned to our social environment that we see a social environment in the absence of anything to suggest a real social environment. We anticipate that things will be done to us, that we evoke responses from our environment. It does not seem to be a great stretch to to me to go from seeing faces in toast to seeing gods in clouds.

And so, this grab bag of mechanisms which we all posses goes to make the individual parts, the ingredients of religion. The idiosyncrasies arise from the unique experiences in the formation and shaping of each religion. The exact nature of the rituals and superstitions, of the gods and the personified forces and the supposed personalities, that will vary, but the portions which are due to human nature will not.

I do not disagree with you. It is within human’s brain to connect patterns. Often these patterns are false. The false result of the patterns we connect is a consequence of the imperfections of the human mind. We cannot always accurately connect the dots of our reality to get the true reality; our perception is limited. So whether religion ever existed or not in our history, I am sure some kind of false pattern connecting would have come about. This does not mean however, that once it is realized or replaced by more accurate measures for connecting patterns and seeing reality, that then we should still continue believing in a primitive lie. The connections we made that led to religion were an ego-centric understanding of the Universe. It suspected that the forces of the Universe were human-like, because humans best understand their own selves, so an attempt to connect them selves with an understanding of the Universe only makes sense. This was a direct pattern; knowing myself, then connecting it with the Universe unknown to me. But it’s been discovered as false as we have advanced and can now more complexly understand patterns.

In summation; yes some form of false pattern making would have come about, but why continue to believe what we now know as false?

For the exact same reason you continue to believe science, even though I promise you that everything about it is patently false. It’s a convenient human analogue to express, and ultimately to control, what we cannot know.

Now I’m a little more awake, so I can break it down better. Primeval man looks around and discovers that things happen, rather than just ‘that things.’ Happenstance constructs the mental patterns necessary to extrapolate cause and effect; from there, we’ve represented the world in incredibly different ways. Our earliest representations were primitive animal gods or anthropomorphic projections of ourselves, our developing emotions, and our sudden, blossoming reason. Under the impression that these gods or other deities were capable of hearing us, we attempted to placate them so that we could produce favorable outcomes. We attributed what we did not understand to something relatable, because we want to feel like we have some control over our environment.

As the ideas of human civilization expanded, its religion couldn’t match a suitable complexity, and so our religion was refined to meet some conditions. Ancient doctors, for instance, developed a model of humours, which they believed to hold some merit with the human body (we now understand this is not the case). Most early medicine would be an embarrassment to modern scientists. Arithmetic in the absence of zero would be an embarrassment to mathematics as a whole, yet we survived without a zero, or the standardized Arabic numeral system, for centuries. No one had yet discovered a cell, or the bacterial nature of illness. The Greeks believed the chemical world to be based upon fire, water, earth and air. And absolutely no one thought the world was flat. That’s just retarded.

My point is that science started as superstitious as religion, and eventually got narrower with centuries of refinement across related fields. We found a compromise; rather than human projection of reality, we settled for human interpretation of reality. These new scientific strides were familiar, if a bit abstract; they acted as proxies, through which we derived symbolic and metaphorical ways of manipulating the outside world.

Eventually, with the development of calculus, we became capable of mathematically expressing the nature of a system that changes with time. These mathematical models proved to be extremely useful in the physical world, for explaining things too abstract to relate with the naked eye. The planets, and their orbits, could at last be explained through forces and fields, which at their core held field equations for mathematical integrals; on the other side of the logarithmic fence, the electromagnetic world began to make sense, leading us to our first forays in electricity. The two would eventually unite to form computer-assisted space travel.

Our biology developed with an understanding of cellular life, which was a discovery made possible through advances in optics. Mendel’s genetic experiments served as the basis for genetic trait control. Doctors learned to fucking wash their hands. Chemical substance count soared, and helped to develop an understanding of radioactivity, biology, nutrition, and the world around us at an atomic level.

Our tools kept getting better, because our assumptions kept becoming more and more abstract. The irony may not be observed yet, but in due time. There are still a few examples to come. Remember, it’s all about control.

In mathematics, we eventually discovered some paradoxical properties of set theory, of infinity, and of completeness. In order:

We cannot assume 1:1 correspondence between things and their essential properties. This alone is mind boggling to consider. We assume it to be true to make sense of reality, but it appears that reality doesn’t assume it to be true at all, and in fact directly contradicts it at several places.

Infinity has multiple magnitudes. What does it mean to say that there are different infinities? Infinity is infinity, man! Yet we can prove it to be mathematically necessary, and it creates insane contradictions to assume otherwise.

There are axioms in mathematics that lie beyond the scope of mathematical proof. Holy shit. You can prove that you can’t prove everything.

These mathematical realities are next to impossible to interpret in an analogous form in our real life. And we’re starting to get the same thing in other forays of science as well. Physics has already jumped the gun here, with its increasingly abstract standard model that calls upon forces too tiny and of too great magnitude to recognize in day-to-day life. Chemistry is well on its way, with Schrodinger wave equations that become impossible to solve above very simple parameters. Biological systems, psychological systems, sociocultural systems, are all vastly more complex than our equations will ever be able to model accurately, and all run into problems of scope and individuality. Most notably, though, our problem has manifested in philosophy as the epistemology paradox. How do we discuss that which logic cannot discuss?

Necessarily, there are things beyond our control. In fact, there are things beyond the scope of human understanding entirely, if reason is our method of interaction with the world.

Well, shit. Religion doesn’t sound so bad, compared to necessarily unobservable nonreality. Here’s the most ironic part of all of science: Science tells us science is not the answer to every question.

The average layman probably doesn’t give a shit about your wiggly W-Z interactions and Riemann sums and Gaussian distributions of observable intelligence and differential field gradient modeling of population control. Nope, he cares about his next paycheck, and how shit’s out of his control. And how, if he just asks some divine entity for help, he’ll get it. Never mind he’s doing all the work. Never mind he’s at the mercy of a completely relentless, uncaring, probably cause-effect uncoupled universe. He thinks he has control.

Science and religion are similar means to entirely different ends. Religion creates certainty; science creates uncertainty.

In a paragraph, I’d like to briefly consider religious organizations as well. They’re all entities interested in their own survival, so they adopt a sensible albeit metaphorically turbocharged documentation and a survival of the fittest attitude. It’s the reason why everyone laughs at the Fox News slogan (we report, you decide): because we know it’s a bunch of crap. The reporting is slanted to inherently favor the entities producing the report. Unsurprisingly, the word “medium” can refer to a religious sermon, seeing as it is something that facilitates the transmission of information from one party to the other. And when a medium becomes self-interested, it’s less of a medium and more of a circlejerk. In conclusion, personal spirituality is the liberal hipster truth, religious organizations are Fox News, and what you just read from my conclusion is why I can’t have nice things.

In actual conclusion, personal spirituality is sometimes guided by religious organizations, but it will eventually diverge; personal spirituality, if guided by science, leads to more questions, some with no answer. This creates existential angst, and is bad, I think. Accepting science is an act of faith, as is religion; whereas science accepts an ambiguous why, and an eventual breakdown of the how, religion accepts an ambiguous how, and a corporate breakdown of the why. I believe what I believe because of exposure and critical thinking, and only one of these is necessary for the majority of mankind. Ultimately, I request you stop ragging on religion. It’s not the problem, your label is too generic, the scientific ultimatums undermine your postulates, and it’s generally disrespectful.

Transcend.

Lol. I do not think I am being disrespectful or generic in my explanations, though I shall attempt to further outline my main points.

First of all, you claim the root of science and religion were the same: by means of superstition. I wouldn’t call what science does superstition. I would call it faulty logic. And either way, no one is arguing here that science has never been wrong or off, especially the farther back you go. Things have a messy beginning, with speculations that are often wrong. attempted to provide an explanation which turned out false. And yes, religion does that too. But as science has advanced, it has come up with more logical, testable measures for understanding reality with real results to prove it: technology. All of the technological advancements we see in the world now are all thanks to science. They have greatly improved the quality of human life. Has religion done that?

This leads me to your second point, “we want to feel like we have some control over our environment.” Now ask yourself this, which had granted us more control of our environment: science or religion? The answer is obvious, science. And the explanation is pretty much the same as above, through technology. We have utilized earth’s natural resources (environment), and have understood them by means of science, to then create technologies which have improved human life.

Your last point is that science still cannot explain things beyond human understanding. Obviously not, but you must realize BOTH religion and science are human understandings of reality; so anything beyond human understanding is beyond BOTH religion and science. Religion merely explains things in a different manner. A definitive manner at that. And yes, assurance is a nice thing, but in this case, its a rather ignorant thing. For religion has little credentials in its reasoning in opposition to science. And besides, they explain many of the same things. One merely allows for new evidence to overrule previous theories. And considering the our history of development, isn’t that a GOOD thing?

I don’t see what your problem is with uncertainty. Humans aren’t perfect in their logic. If they were certain that would be ignorant to the limits of humanity. It’s a process. Some things we can be more certain about, some things to a lesser extent. The fact that science allows for uncertainty is wonderful, because it is more accurate and allows for change, rather than being completely certain about out-dated views; which is exactly what religion is.

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:19:55 -0500

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion:

neonxxninja:

puddipup:

ejiblabahaba:

Seriously, you can cut that shit out. Hipsters rag on religion to be IRONIC. I think we’ve reached the critical point of “hur dur religion broke society,” and it’s high time we ceased the witch hunt and used our reason (the very same reason we profess transcends religion, while diluting its…

To be honest, I think your logic is off in some ways. It is not merely that science asks how and religion asks why. In fact, a lot of science’s supposed “how” can replace religions explanation of “why.” Additionally, the basis for religion’s why is irrational. Considering the origin and evolution of religion, it comes from a rather primitive human frame of mind. Mythical beings which explain the chaos of things like rain, sun, and other aspects of their lives significant to their survival. They used these explanations in place of HOW the sun, rain, and seasons, operated. The reason they used these explanations is because they did not have the ability to figure out the how, which would have been much more useful to them, for it has more truth to it than their why explanations. And in this truth, they can utilize it for their own survival. Instead of chaotic whims of the gods, there is an order. And in this order, they can then use this information to garauntee survival. Figuring out the how helps humanity develop more so then religion’s sense of why. And honestly, they’re both a why question if you actually think about it. Science explains why things work through the means of how.

I had an interesting discussion with a classmate of mine on this very topic. He had wanted to know, if we were to wave our magic wands and eliminate religion from society, would we see that humans continued on as atheists forever after, or would we see an emergence of new, idiosyncratic religions? In other words, is religiousness intrinsic to human nature, or merely a phenomenon that caught on, a fad in the way humans think about the world?

I propose that religiousness is, to a certain extent, intrinsic to human nature. That is, I could see the vast, jumbled, messy construct that we call religion arising from various leftover mechanisms of the human mind and the way we process information.

Take, for example, the component of religion or proto-religion which we might call superstition. Superstition, I believe, arises out of our predilection to associate stimuli. The human brain devotes a lot of processing power to making connections between stimuli, to simulating cause and effect. We learn by inferring cause and effect. Moreover, we tend to infer cause and effect even when it’s not there. Superstition, in it’s most basic form, is simply classical conditioning at work. Two stimuli are associated often enough that you come to believe one predicts the other. Have a rabbit’s foot on hand when good things happen, and pretty soon you’re carrying that rabbit’s foot around everywhere.

Ritual may be a side-effect of our desire to be right. There was some interesting research done on pop music, on of all things—researchers found that participants would make predictions about the way the music would go. When their predictions were confirmed, the participants’ brains produced nice little bursts of dopamine, the chemical which drives the reward circuit. And, let’s face it, the third time you go to Mass on Sunday, it’s almost impossible to not know what’s going to happen next.

Our desire to personify forces may be a result of our hypersensitivity to the states of other humans. Humans are predisposed to see faces in everything, from coffee to chairs to the clouds in the sky. This works for emotions and actions, too. We are so attuned to our social environment that we see a social environment in the absence of anything to suggest a real social environment. We anticipate that things will be done to us, that we evoke responses from our environment. It does not seem to be a great stretch to to me to go from seeing faces in toast to seeing gods in clouds.

And so, this grab bag of mechanisms which we all posses goes to make the individual parts, the ingredients of religion. The idiosyncrasies arise from the unique experiences in the formation and shaping of each religion. The exact nature of the rituals and superstitions, of the gods and the personified forces and the supposed personalities, that will vary, but the portions which are due to human nature will not.

I do not disagree with you. It is within human’s brain to connect patterns. Often these patterns are false. The false result of the patterns we connect is a consequence of the imperfections of the human mind. We cannot always accurately connect the dots of our reality to get the true reality; our perception is limited. So whether religion ever existed or not in our history, I am sure some kind of false pattern connecting would have come about. This does not mean however, that once it is realized or replaced by more accurate measures for connecting patterns and seeing reality, that then we should still continue believing in a primitive lie. The connections we made that led to religion were an ego-centric understanding of the Universe. It suspected that the forces of the Universe were human-like, because humans best understand their own selves, so an attempt to connect them selves with an understanding of the Universe only makes sense. This was a direct pattern; knowing myself, then connecting it with the Universe unknown to me. But it’s been discovered as false as we have advanced and can now more complexly understand patterns.

In summation; yes some form of false pattern making would have come about, but why continue to believe what we now know as false?

Having followed some people on tumblr who identify themselves as genderqueer (a term I myself am new...

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:01:00 -0500

Having followed some people on tumblr who identify themselves as genderqueer (a term I myself am new to), I would like to share some of my own thoughts on gender.
Dressing up as a male on some days, then dressing up as female on others, is odd to me. It is as though you say you are both male and female and then associate stereotypical notions of what it means to be male and female by means of dress. Does it really matter if you hair is long or short, if your wear a dress or pants? Is that your association with what it means to be a male or female?

Why even go through such lengths to make the distinction between male and female? It would seem more advisable to not go through such shallow measures, for in doing so you actually subscribe to there being distinctions between male and female.

Additionally, whether you feel gender roles exist or not, you are born with a sexual identity: male or female. There are distinctive biological differences between male and female. One has a vagina, one has a penis. One grows tits and carries children and produces eggs; the other sperm. One produces more testosterone, the other more estrogen. You can call yourself both male and female all you wish, but the fact of the matter is you biologically are one or the other (unless you are born with both male and female parts).

I understand, however, your fight for the destruction of gender roles. Just because you are biologically born a gender does not mean you should have to be conditioned to play the role of your gender. I don’t think saying you are both or neither gender is the best way of achieving that, nor is alternating your dress by what gender you decide to be. In fact, in doing so you are subscribing to the notion of gender roles, which seems like something you’d be against.

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:52:00 -0500

Bitter Pseudoconformity: slow the fuck down and quit ragging on religion:

ejiblabahaba:

Seriously, you can cut that shit out. Hipsters rag on religion to be IRONIC. I think we’ve reached the critical point of “hur dur religion broke society,” and it’s high time we ceased the witch hunt and used our reason (the very same reason we profess transcends religion, while diluting its…

To be honest, I think your logic is off in some ways. It is not merely that science asks how and religion asks why. In fact, a lot of science’s supposed “how” can replace religions explanation of “why.” Additionally, the basis for religion’s why is irrational. Considering the origin and evolution of religion, it comes from a rather primitive human frame of mind. Mythical beings which explain the chaos of things like rain, sun, and other aspects of their lives significant to their survival. They used these explanations in place of HOW the sun, rain, and seasons, operated. The reason they used these explanations is because they did not have the ability to figure out the how, which would have been much more useful to them, for it has more truth to it than their why explanations. And in this truth, they can utilize it for their own survival. Instead of chaotic whims of the gods, there is an order. And in this order, they can then use this information to garauntee survival. Figuring out the how helps humanity develop more so then religion’s sense of why. And honestly, they’re both a why question if you actually think about it. Science explains why things work through the means of how.

I imagine there must be hundreds of thousands of different alien life forms in our galaxy and...

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:23:00 -0500

I imagine there must be hundreds of thousands of different alien life forms in our galaxy and beyond. What of our neighboring solar systems? And all of those solar systems along the spiraling coast of our galaxy. I imagine life forms far more less intelligent, and life forms far more intelligent. The capabilities of these life forms vastly different, considering the differences of their habitat, and the variety potential of evolvement. What resources and virtues did they make use of and thus advance? What was there genetic makeup, and how did they utilize such genetics? Cell origin? One must consider humanity; its natural resources, its genetics, and all of the progressive events which have shaped and continue to shape us and our capabilities. We, in such a small amount of time (considering the length of time of the Universe), have advanced mathematically, scientifically, artfully, theoretically, through the virtue of communication via language and documentation. We have made use of our planet’s resources, to create devices that would aid us in our understanding and thus advancement in intelligence.
Considering then, our own species terrestrial advancement and all of its factors, how vastly different the evolvement of distant alien life forms would be. Time, the natural enabler for advancement, must be a rather large factor when considering how much more advanced than us they could be. How have they made use of their planet’s resources? How have they made use of their genetic makeup? And over the course of time, how have such life forms progressed from these variants? I do not feel knowledgeable enough to be able to answer such questions with accuracy, though I can imagine. And the more I learn about the Universe around me; its functions, elements, geometry and laws, can I more complexly imagine how such life forms may have developed.
One must all consider its handicaps, for the handicaps of humanity have greatly impacted our development. The handicaps of its resources, and genetics, and possibly ignorant developments which had been instituted to become of greater significance than what in reality it was worth- such as humanity’s religion. Were these handicaps for alien life overcome, or do they continue to suppress the life form’s advancement? Did such handicaps eventually destroy this life form?

the more i learn and reflect upon the vastness of time and space, the less connected i feel my...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:09:47 -0500

the more i learn and reflect upon the vastness of time and space, the less connected i feel my current time and space i am physically imprisoned to occupy.

Photo

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:13:02 -0500

picture of my building

more

Environment

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:10:00 -0400

Environment:

neonxxninja:

puddipup:

Note: I wrote this a while ago, my opinions on the matter have complicated since, this can be considered a mere draft of the idea, to put out there for communication purposes.

The process of life is an intricate process of structuring and detailing. One creates a basic generic structure…

The problem with low-level organisms is their invariance. In bacteria, for example, all behavior, all responses, each and every contingency, has to be…

I do not disagree with what you have said. I wouldn’t argue that the patterns humans perceive are accurate or genuinely exist. I think what I am mostly interrogating is the nature of how these patterns are formed. In fact, I would even argue, given the limitation of our environmental stimuli, that many of these patterns are false:biases based upon incorrect methods of connecting different experiences. To be specific, the limitation of our environment, as well the limitations of our sensory perception of environment, greatly limit our experience of “reality.” Therefore, the patterns create based upon our experiences of reality are distorted due to these limitations. This in turn, distorts reality itself into an incredibly narrowed scope. I wouldn’t say this scope is an illusion necessarily, however it is severely narrow; like a zoomed in camera lens that is very blurred. It still perceives reality, but not nearly to its fullest degree by any stretch.

I also understand that I did not express the value of genetics within this writing. And I will not deny that genetics does not play an important role in how we percieve ,create patterns, behaviors, etc. I can’t be specific about this though, which can be attributed to my lack of knowledge in the matter.