h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I apologize for the topic drift earlier.
If suicides are doomed to live their lives over, then where are they?
I haven't seen "Screaming" Lord Sutch around...
Or do you mean that they are born again as a baby, but then how can they live their same life again?
They'd have different parents/siblings/schoolfriends for a start.
And how would the celestial councel draw the line at say...
Suicide by self-harm {i.e. jumping off the roof of a very tall building or an airplane with no parachute, yes, I'd say that was intentional.
But what about the people who walk in front of trains? It was the train that killed them...
The mountaineer who falls to his death, surely the climb itself seems suicidal.
The diver who swims with sharks for the sheer thrill, then gets torn to pieces...suicide? Or shark victim?
St.Peter would have a difficult job...

Science isn't really equipped to deal with this kind of issue: so far science can barely discern consciousness and we know that exists anyway. If mathematics were similarly advanced we'd only have two numbers: not very much and a bit more.

As for the 'wait and see' policy (where have I heard that before?), it's the one I'm going for, but it's not necessarily the most rational choice: unless you're absolutely convinced there's no after-life, then you're looking at the possibility of an infinite existence, and making some effort to improve your long-term prospects is a mathematically sound proposition, as effort divided by infinity isn't a whole lot .

JWF: that vapour thing was just far out. But you´re partially correct that reality is just what we agree on. We can also only trust our senses 99% of the time, but enough to make sense of the world.

But the "Reality is something we agree on" only goes if there are someone to agree with. Which you actually can´t know, because as you said it all might be an illusion.

Science works best with things that are clearly defined, and I haven´t heard any good defintitions of consciousness yet. But in the same way we haven´t really got a clue what gravity is, but that doesn´t mean we can´t play badminton.

But what happens if the shuttlecocks find out we're bluffing our way through. Would they make a racket, tell us to flock off. Safer than tennis or bowling I suspect when the lid comes off the awful truth that we're just guessing our way along this path called liff and all our toys call our bluff.

I guess I'm just a little upset that 'aromatherapy' is as close to a rational science about how smells and pheromones affect our consciousness as we've got. And legitimate Science won't even go there.
An electro-chemical consciousness ought to be at least as aware of the cause and effects of chemistry on our minds as of laws of physics on our bodies. No I don't mean 'doing drugs' I mean the world of vapours we live in. The societal effects of petrochemicals and plastics are enormous but no one is paying any attention to it. They look for causes elsewhere.
When most people start to 'think', their noses fill up with the remembered aromas of textbooks and classrooms and all the associated order of linear charts and diagrams... that's rote and rational, not thinking.

You guys are getting way too philosophical now! I canna tel you about the theory of odours or whether associating aromas with intellectual processes is irrational or not, but I can tell you that science does not understand consciousness yet, and that if it does, we will be able to use our consciousnesses in a few different ways from the way we're using them now! You may be able to play badminton without knowing what gravity is, but if you know a few things *about* gravity (which is not the same as knowing what it is) you can (potentially) do things like send a rocket to the moon and back.

Absolutely - how do objects know that they are in a gravity field? Indeed, what is a field ?

...and as a supplementary question, what is the medium through which gravity acts, and how fast does gravitational information move through this medium?

And to think it was only a few hundred short years ago that Leonardo da Vinci was dropping stuff off the tower of Pisa - amazed at how well iron cannon balls understood gravity and how slow feathers were to pick up on the idea.
Is this why birds use feathers instead of iron filings?
Is this why pillows use feathers?
Will the first true anti-grav devices be electro-magnetic or is there a deeper force at work - at a molecular level?

or as previously discussed, will cats, sellotape and hot buttered toast figure largely instead?

Is it not truly amazing how often the subject always drifts around to gravity and the odds of toast landing butter side up!

It's as if this one central theme was the one thing we all know from experience and we know everyone else will understand ..somehow.

I dunno about you guys ..but I'm starting to believe!
In gravity. It seems eternal. Universal. We all seem to share an unspoken awareness and understanding of its basic principles, and yet we can't explain it, define it or defy it. Sounds a lot like god to me.

The subject might drift towards gravity a little less often if you sobered up and invested in a decent set of toast clamps to avert breakfast-related mishaps.

I beg to differ. Consider the possibility that the toast always lands the right way up, but that you have consistenly buttered the wrong side!

I'm old and slow but couldn't let this drift by...
The Unmentionable Marauding Pillowcase Mark Two (sXe) (Sign Freedom Petition A544943 ) wrote:
"You guys are getting way too philosophical now!"

Sorry Mark2 but in my experience you cannot have too much philosophical discussion. It's just another way of brainstorming which is an excellent tool to open up whole new vistas of whatever it is we're talking about...
Well that's mho.
Anyone want to send some flak my way? Can anyone make anything remotely resembling *sense* of our existence, the *reason* for the universe, and just why does a wheel have to be round...
I suppose really I should end it all but do I really want to do all this again? And you never know what's round the corner do you?
Up the Philosophers!!! (in a supporting sort of way as opposed to actually sticking something UP them).
I'll desist before I get myself moderated out of existence...

I'm a philosopher. Thanks babel

Up...er...Me!

(erm..so to speak )

er, quite!!!

I will never say "Up yours" in quite the same tone again

I´s say a wheel has to be round, basically because that´s what the dictionary has to say about a wheel. "Wheel/s, m, Big round thingy" or something like that.

Apparently, the only way to know you´re in a gravitational field is to look at the bending of light rays. And the medium a gravitational field moves through is reality. Well, space time anyway. And it can apparently only move with light speed.

Up thy´s!

Speaking of wheel, did you know that even though the Mayans never used the wheel for making carts or such, they made toys that had wheels. Apparently they just weren´t able to put those two things together. Makes you wonder if the archeologists will also find toy computers, areoplanes and space shuttles.

It's not that the Mayan's didn't figure out that wheels could be used on actual carts rather than only om the toy variety, more that the terrain didn't allow for it. Bear in mind that Machu Pichu (one of their largest cities) is at the top of a bloody big mountain. Ravines and gorges aren't the natural circumstances in which to employ anything that doesn't have the ability to stop at will.

That's why llamas come with ABS as standard.

"That's why llamas come with ABS as standard."
It's observations like that....that keep me saneand believe me these past four weeks have been the rockiest of my life (with the possible exception of April - June, 1980 [yes, I know that's more than 4 weeks!] - details on request.
Sometimes I feel likeeveryone I've ever met on h2g2. Awwww...!