tom sarbeck

I’ll remember next time Unseen you ask for evidence or sources, I will post some youtube video made by some guy talking about stuff. Of course I didn’t watch the video…why would I waste my precious time hearing some guy blab his opinions about shit when the very opening 30 seconds has all the markings of sensationalism, half-put together…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Anyone know whether natural immunity plus vaccine is better than either standing alone?

An excerpt from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/vaccine-induced-immunity.html

Substantial immunologic evidence and a growing body of epidemiologic evidence indicate that vaccination after infection…

[Read more]

Unseen…a youtube video, unless it cites scholarly, academic or properly analysed is not a source. I don’t understand how you can talk about evidentiary value with a comedian making internet video.

Absolute free speech is a total fantasy. It is impossible and virtually nobody would support it when you realise how many laws that actually curb free speech exist which are utterly uncontroversial. If you are against libel, copyright infringement, causing a panic or speech that incites a crime but are against laws which curb the most vile of hate…[Read more]

Belle, anyone can reshape a word to suit their narrative. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as it is clear what they mean by that word, that their definition doesn’t cause pointless confusion (or confusion on purpose) and that the audience is given a convincing reason to take this definition seriously.

When someone tries to use a term,…[Read more]

Pope…that is fine. Could you then define these two kinds of spiritual then please?

@davis – whatever definitions I could give, are never going to encompass all the things that people mean by the word.

Simon, unless you are dealing wit poetry…why would you use a term that is this elusive? How can you achieve much (if anything) if people are talking about something different (or at least vaguely overlapping) when you can use so…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Because gaps in knowledge always matter, do they not? Maybe when the gap is filled, it’s trivial, but maybe it changes everything.

Sure, all the gaps matter, to different degrees, and the W-boson mass discrepancy seems to indicate further research could uncover something pretty significant.

I could be relatively out of touch with p…[Read more]

It’s important to me to differentiate intellectualizations vs feelings of spirituality. In the former, yeah, there’s a lot of bullshit and over-intellectualization about it. In fact writings and discourse about religion are largely bs and over-intellectualizations. Full of fluffy words and virtue signals, too.

But feelings are different. It’s…[Read more]

So…you want to use “spiritual” without defining it?

So then your definition is deficient and needs some refining.

To be clear here Simon, you are claiming that most people playing in a volleyball league would call their membership “spiritual”?

Jake I remember a story like that… didn’t look into it but am looking forward to further talk about it.

Related to causation of everything, JWST will probably provide a treasure trove of insight. For example, finding galaxies and other objects that serve as gravitational lenses that magnify and make visible objects even farther away than the…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Pope i am not certain i know the answer but my hunch is that without knowing what causation is we can never understand the cosmos. Nothing fundamental will be understood only shadows of the flickering fire on the walls of the cave.

I can agree with that. Maybe we’ll have to stick with (e.g.) “quantum mechanics works in…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
we have not penetrated causation

So why does that really matter? We’re assuming we’ll never be able to predict quantum behaviors in other than probabilistic terms, but we’ll still keep working at understanding the ramifications of quantum dynamics.

First off, we’re not omniscient, so we cannot immediately explain every cause or causation. Every explanation is necessarily limited by its context, among contexts we define. E.g. classical and quantum physics explain causation in different contexts, in spite of our inability to merge the two realms of experimentation and explanation into one,…[Read more]

I’m talking about being an active functioning member of an interdependent cooperative group or team of some kind, whose members are all working towards the same goal.  If my goals are identified with those of my group, then it makes me feel better in all kinds of ways.

How is that different than a volleyball team, a knitting group making a big bl…[Read more]

I am with Unseen on this Simon. I know you have been struggling for some time to come up with a meaningful definition of spiritual in a secular sense (as have many people including Sam Harris). I am yet to really hear a coherent definition that makes it worth holding onto all the baggage of spiritual when alternatives are far better (even the…[Read more]