Web Stats
Web Stats 2.20.09 – Now and Then
A glorious ascent from obscurity to slightly less obscurity.
You did it, guys! I’m so proud of you.
Rare photo of the ‘end’ of the rainbow – Sciencedude
Readers swoon at “end of the rainbow” photos (Video Montage)
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Johann Hari: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. –Aesop (~550 BC)
Video Corner
The Twilight Zone Video: A World Of Difference
Half-Life Fans: Escape from City 17
Kittens Inspired By Kittens
Nobody is smarter than you are
http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/9/
Don’t forget I’ve always got the VLog full of fresh youtube vids.
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The Matrix Page #1 <- The “I’m slow and want to be spoon fed slowly” link.
(I suggest starting here, then getting fed up and saying fuck it, and then coming back to me for link #12.)
The Matrix Page #12 <- Hey buddy, just cut to the chase and show me the end/repercussions!
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Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
Supposing we live in a simulation, what are the implications for us humans? The foregoing remarks notwithstanding, the implications are not all that radical. Our best guide to how our posthuman creators have chosen to set up our world is the standard empirical study of the universe we see. The revisions to most parts of our belief networks would be rather slight and subtle – in proportion to our lack of confidence in our ability to understand the ways of posthumans. Properly understood, therefore, the truth of (3) should have no tendency to make us “go crazy” or to prevent us from going about our business and making plans and predictions for tomorrow.
Alien Artifact? World’s Weirdest Book? // Brainsturbator
(thanks steven!)
read more if you aren’t afraid of severed dog heads and philosophical musings
steven sent me this article and it really made me re-examine some things I didn’t expect:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17039_9-real-life-mad-scientists.html
I don’t have much time.
It’s 2:08 2:25 2:34 3:16 3:23 AM (so far) and I’m leaving for vacation early tomorrow morning.
I wish I could write this out properly, #2 was kind of world-shaking for me:
I wrote the following to Steven:
I’m looking at a tuning fork. It makes the note C#. I clone it and make another exactly like it and that one also makes the note C#.
Wait! Says I. How did I clone the SOUL of Tuning Fork 1?
And of course I didn’t. The nature of the instrument resonates a different frequency and as we have never built two exactly similar instruments (of human) we’ve never channeled the same frequency of consciousness.
Interesting.
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(Unfun fact unless you are Steven or I: Our posted conversation about squidward is the most hit older link on the forum. Perhaps from kids googling for sponge bob’s neighbor. Possibly from google images links to that giant squid. It is either blowing some child minds or those kids are saying, “Oh fishsticks!” and hitting the back button immediately.)
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See the implications?
If I built a you exactly like you with the same past experiences and memories (this is why I said atom by atom replication, we are not talking about traditional cloning) then there’s another you! No need for a *soul or a channel of life from god to an individual entity.
As valid as any one of Einstein’s thought experiments and we base physics theorems on that crazy shit.
Would the replicated man drop dead immediately for lack of a soul or would he bow and wave? I think he’d bow and wave! Without question. He’d be perfectly alive. We could make new ones forever and they’d all be alive and they’d all seemingly have a ‘soul’ and I assume they would all have an individualized DE (death experience, rather than a NEAR one) and go into the light like anyone else.
I haven’t finished thinking this all out, but I think pro-lifers can chill the fuck out now. Your god is probably smarter than you and probably doesn’t need you to prevent wasted soul-injections at birth. There seems to be some other kind of process going on here that pays no attention to human ignorance, behaviors, or strange hybridization experiments.
I thought the tuning fork idea was pretty good, but now I can debunk myself in my head.
That always means bedtime.
* And I’m really leaning materialist lately, I’m only talking about the ‘soul’ because people who die claim to have NDE experiences where they rise up out of their bodies and float, and sometimes talk to a being, maybe see some light, then come back home. They often find it very profound and life changing. I have no reason to doubt every single one of them (it would be illogical to do so) so I am accepting that a process happens after death or that physical death is an illusion, something much stranger is going on here, and that what we refer to as LIFE is just a range of frequencies like everything else.
Love you.
I’m going on vacation.
Bye.
