Phi for All

All of them, or just the really awesome ones? Humans rely on patterns a LOT, and our memories are geared to take advantage of that. All of them, or just the memorable things? I remember sitting in kindergarten on the floor and the boy next to me showed me he had a pile of pennies under his hands, and he said, "Don't tell my teacher". I can see why that might stick with a four-year old (and why didn't he say "our" teacher?). I think the key is your interests. We all have a much better memory for the topics that grab our attention. I recall lots of girlfriends who had stuffed animals, but I only remember the stuffed dragon this one girl had. I don't remember what color hair she had (I do remember her name), but I remember that cool dragon.

No, because it's not. We have threads on EU if you check back. IIRC, studying comets shows EU to be false. All your ideas seem based on NOT using a model that's been extremely helpful in favor of just another non-mathematical aether fable.

No. That's NOT what happened in that thread. Your approach was compared to other past ideas that were debunked, and then some of the misconceptions around your weird need to invent a unit of measurement were brought up. Not criticized, but pointed out as wrong. So many people come here with ideas based on misconceptions that it's normal to correct those first. If you wanted to build a house, we'd tell you your idea about using wood for the foundation is a poor one, and will likely make all the rest of your work on the house useless. It doesn't matter what the rest of your ideas for the house are if they're based on that bad foundation. Nobody wants your house to fall, so our experience is passed along in hopes that you'll understand why you need to start with the best foundation you can, in carpentry as well as science.

! Moderator Note You don't get to say that here unless you can support it, which you've proven you can't. Try to force this assertion again and you can take some time off on suspension.

You offered waving hands, or pushed long debunked theories like EU without showing new support. Your skepticism is worth nothing. Evidence is the key here.

I will recommend to staff you get your wish, but not here. We won't EVER be a site for wild guesswork. I don't understand why you don't post at a site that welcomes such conclusion-jumping. There are plenty of them, yet you complain that we need to be like them. We don't want that, so why do you insist on posting here?

Our rules don't require you to stay if you don't get anything meaningful from the experience. The rules are there so the rest of us don't have to waste time on ideas that show no merit.

This is why I say you don't understand skepticism. It's not a fence you sit on forever. If you question a part of science, you need to support your counter-claims with the same rigor, dig deep, find the evidence that supports your stance. If you find it, you present it, and you're no longer a skeptic. If you can't find it, you admit it and accept the mainstream explanation as the best current one, and you're no longer a skeptic. Either way, the preponderance of evidence is what should be influencing any assessment of your ideas. Nobody here has simply dismissed you, they've instead given detailed reasoning which you ignore because you think it's dogma. Too bad for you, really.

! Moderator Note Are you done trying to present your idea within the rules? I see a great deal of whinging and very little on-topic discussion. Is it time to close this?

Read the rules again, slowly, and you'll see why your ideas don't pass any of the standards the site owners have set. If you don't think you can support your wild guesswork in this way, there are plenty of other sites that will let you dream all you like. This is a science discussion forum with strict standards (and not even the strictest). It's clear you don't understand what a theory is, how truth is treated, or even how true skepticism works. What you have is an idea you made up that makes perfect sense to you, but only you, and you can't support it scientifically, so now you're claiming we're too hidebound to mainstream ideas and not giving you a chance. You're wrong, read the rules. And this was a poor place for this rant. You should have opened up a thread in Suggestions, Comments, and Support.

Don't just make the claim! Dig back through some of your threads and show where people are judging YOU and not your idea. This is what we mean by supportive evidence, and likely why your ideas don't merit discussion per our rules. People are taking their time to assess the science in your posts, so you need to do more than wave your hands. More rigor, please!

I left SO much of that evolutionary path out for brevity's sake, but I think it was good information. I'm counting on you to keep me accurate. I think requirer is probably wicked smart and had limited resources for asking questions about things they didn't understand. Smart folks who don't get good explanations start piecing together what they think they know, and that approach is seductive since it makes perfect sense, but only to you.

Purism is well-defined as an art movement, but poorly defined as a philosophy. I'm leery these days of broad, subjectively-defined labels that don't serve us as well as we assume they do. I make conservative and liberal choices every day, but resist painting myself as one way or the other. Most purists don't realize how fragile and restrictive their worldview is, and see only the beauty of simplicity. A purist might claim that eating the plant a medicine came from is a better approach than taking the medicine, because the plant is the "pure" source. But in actuality, modern medicine removes the impurities and things you don't need from the plant to produce a more effective medicine (taking ephedrine as an antihistamine is far more effective than chewing on a bunch of ma huang stems). You have a misconception about science, that it's trying to control or take over the natural world. What science does is make sure the conclusions we reach are carefully and reasonably considered, and they ABSOLUTELY MUST agree with observations made in the natural world. In this case, "natural" means no magic, no deities breaking physical laws, only what we observe happening. IOW, science is a bunch of descriptions of nature that we've refined to such a degree that we're able to predict the future based on the present and past. Theory gives us this predictive power. As far as human "nature" is concerned, we're still figuring that out. Cooking our food led to bipedal locomotion, and gave us smaller jaws so we had more room in our heads for brains, and more time to dig around with tools. It led us to armed warfare, but it also put us on a par with better-armed predators and gave us a fighting chance. We didn't have fur to keep us warm and we figured out how to use the fur from animals we ate instead. In fact, we took the disadvantage and turned it around: we could run down an animal with fur because they'd get TOO hot, and eventually drop from heat prostration. Because of the amazing things we can do that other animals can't, humans are often perceived as anti-natural, or outside of nature, but I assure you, we're very much a part of it. In fact, I would go so far as to say viewing humans as "unnatural" is dangerous, and could give some permission to consider us as above the rest of life on the planet.

You're alive, so you're completely capable of coping with life. Our curiosity has nothing to do with instincts, and everything to do with higher intelligence, so it's completely explicable. Our "bitter primitivity" is a default for ALL animals. It's only our higher intelligence that helps us see where our primitive behavior doesn't serve as well in certain situations. It's something a reasoning human has to work with daily, trying to decide if it's better in this situation to compete for resources or cooperate for a better outcome. Our bias towards materialism is born from our superior use of tools, which is another aspect of higher intelligence. Greed for wealth is one thing, but our desire to have "things" is usually because those things are useful, and having more of them is better than having less. I disagree that the whole species is "aimless". I question a need for "complete focus" on our part as well. There are enough of us that we can focus on many different things. And as for humans lacking self-esteem as a whole, I think it misses the mark by quite a bit. We're a species in a unique set of circumstances, where we have animal behavior that has traditionally served us well, but we lack many of the pressures those behaviors were evolved for. We don't hunt and gather anymore, humans are specialized to an astonishing degree, and our communications have global consequences now. We're at war with the notions of what is different/dangerous and what is different/advantageous. Cooperation is thousands of times more beneficial than competition, but competing for resources is a basic trait that's hard to resist. We have plenty of aim, but I would imagine we aren't aimed at what YOU think is important. YOU have chosen to reframe and redefine everything, which makes things seem even more disjointed. I think if you gave mainstream science another try, you'd discover LOTS of studies to interest you, and a lot less pushback from those like you who want to make the world a better place.

! Moderator Note Since this wasn't the OP's violation, I'm unlocking the thread, and instead giving a warning point for soapboxing to VenusPrincess. My bad. If you aren't willing to answer questions about your stance, please don't make it part of your arguments. Thread open again.

Five senses isn't even a thing. No disrespect, but you stopped your attempts after a few requests for clarification and some replies that pointed out discrepancies with observed phenomena, which you either ignored or claimed represented some kind of religious dogma. The martyr card isn't playable at this point in time.

But all I'm using is part of a standard definition of life to state that life requires a reasonably stable environment, and that would NOT be the case if consciousness were divorced from the body. Thought requires chemical transference, which requires water, which requires a mechanism of distribution, which is also not possible absent our bodies. Thought and consciousness don't fit the definition of life, so I question why you think they are "life by their own right". I'd still like a reply to that, or for you to amend your concept to take my reasoned response into consideration. Equally, I'm completely willing to listen to an explanation of why you think your definition of life is more helpful, and why anti-nature is a better way to explain what we observe happening with various phenomena in the natural universe.

! Moderator Note Then your arguments become preaching, by definition, which is against the rules. This is a science DISCUSSION forum. Since you're unwilling to answer questions posed, don't bring this subject up again. Thread closed.

I can't call it debate when we aren't really using the same definitions. I wanted to simply discuss your ideas anyway, to remove the concept of win/lose. I always assume people come to a science discussion forum to get the science perspective. It is, after all, the least biased by definition, the most current, also by definition, and has been tested for accuracy by the world's most rigorous skeptics on a daily basis for hundreds of years. This is the same science that lets us calculate when and how hard to (in essence) throw a dart from Earth in a straight line that will eventually hit a Mars-sized dartboard after all the spacetime curvature had been accounted for. Can we peel this conversation back to where I felt the need to correct? You claimed that thought and consciousness were life in their own right. I told you how that idea violated the standard definitions, and asked you to support it. Instead, you asked me to "prove" something I'd said, which was that we don't know if thought and consciousness can exist outside the body. So, can you support the idea that thought and consciousness have life of their own? QFT.

We definitely disagree on this then. I don't use a toothless definition of hostility where our thinking is merely opposed. To me, hostility is treating someone like an enemy, and wishing them ill will. That is NOT my intent when I try to help someone with an ignorance problem. It's the way I was treated when I first joined here, with respect but no tolerance for guesswork where rigor and research serve us more consistently.

What an odd perspective, given this is a science discussion site with clearly posted rules, and the member came here instead of harmlessbeliefs.com. Personally, I think it's extremely harmful to lend tacit support to WAGs by remaining silent, much less encouraging them to jump to baseless conclusions with reinforcement. Where does integrity and honesty fit into your perspective? I object strongly to the sensitivity setting on your "hostility meter". I think you're being vividly misleading.

By confining their conclusions to a rigorous set of methodologies that yielded observable results. Anyone can make things up, but by using an approach that minimizes human bias and error, we hope to develop best current explanations that are trustworthy. Waaaaaay past the "my own personal definition" phase. Are you trying to knock down a man of straw? You make things up. Why am I not surprised science doesn't sound like science to you? Science has accumulated a great deal of trustworthy knowledge, but most of it isn't "fixed". That's why a theory is the strongest explanation there is, because it's always being updated with the latest information. It may seem rigid to you, but that's mostly because definitions are much more important in science than almost anywhere else. It sounds like you have some misunderstandings about science. Welcome to the forums, I hope you gain something from discussion.

If you don't understand something, you should ask questions instead of making stuff up. Using your own personal definitions is NOT science, and is, quite frankly, ignorant behavior. Why are you choosing "something that makes more sense to me" over "accumulated human knowledge"?

I can provide evidence that thought as we define it currently ceases upon death. I can point to the current definitions of life and show that "thought" and "consciousness" don't qualify. There is no evidence to support that either are separate entities, or have a life independent of their host. I can support the statement with a myriad of sources. There's no mathematical proof, and I wouldn't trust a philosophical one. Proof isn't really a scientific concept. Best current explanation is as good as it gets.

By what definition? They seem more like emergent properties of high intelligence. They can't live independently from the body as far as we know.