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

football? what, you decide the winner by going out and asking people who'd the best?

Well, I was thinking of a generell (somehow, that word doesn't look spelled right..) agreement on the rules, but your idea was better! And in these days of reality TV whith everyone being voted out of the games, I have a spanking new idea for football: Double the numbver of players, and have the audience vote every ten minutes or so, on what player who should leave the field. Brings the public back into the sports, doesn't it?

To be the 'best' in
footbal means you have
performed the tasks
that most people agree
are footbal skill most
acuratly.
There is nothing bad about
picking up a ball with
your hands but if most
people (represented by the football
asosation) agree that
it is bad then it becomes
'bad'.In America there
is a different consensous
and picking up the ball is
'good'.
There is no obsolute goodness
or badness in picking up
the ball.

Lucinda, thanks for your timely interpretation of my comment on Saul Bellow. It accurately reflects my meaning.
I think that being a scientist better equips one to appreciate art. Understanding the wonderful intricacy of living systems or the physics of sound transmission, of the relationship between frequency, wavelength, and the combined effect of these on pitch and tone, can make enjoyment of the representational or aural arts more intense.

Cosensous truth is the opinoin of the masses

Concensus truth is the opinion of the masses... the unwashed masses. They voted for Gore and Bush... do we really want them making any IMPORTANT decisions?

In the past, concensus truth has given us all kinds of hogwash, like a flat earth, an earth-centric universe, creation theory, divine right of kings, and so on. In certain scholarly fields of soft sciences, concensus truth has some merit, especially in areas where the whole truth cannot be wholly known. Take religion, for example. The chronology of the writing of the Gospels is a concensus truth, with Mark, Luke, Matt, then John. However, there are some outside the concensus which place them in slightly different order. I agree with the concensus there because I can see a definite progression in the evolution of the Jesus myth in certain episodes. But, since the truth can never be wholly known, we cannot absolutely say that we are correct.

Outside of the soft sciences, concensus truths are to be ignored. And inside of the soft sciences, they must be taken with a grain of salt. As I said before, facts are not to be decided upon democratically. And here we have the problem of juries... but then the alternative is to lean on the opinion of a single person, which can only be worse. It's bad enough Judge Judy gets to make decisions on her own, but at least it's only petty property disputes.

To think god is no longer a possibility, [dead]. Is perhaps ; leaving possibility out of life.


if you like to camp or, go on camping trips. Why not try camping in the land of imagin that/

nah - there are plenty of possibilities in my life that don't involve God. It's possible that I might say exactly what I think of people who can't spell, for example... (but unlikely... )

Hi, Colonel Sellers! Nice to see you here. I just want to say one thing about consensus truth: the theory of the earth being in the centre of the universe was scientifically determined by the Greeks. It was absolutely the best theory that they were able to come up with given their abilities. They used the principle currently known as "Occam's razor": do not posit a complicated explanation when a simple one will do. They observed every heavenly object going around the Earth and so the simplest theory was that the Earth was in the centre.

It is only when the scientific method improved to the extent that astronomers could see the anomalous movements of the planets that they started to re-think the earth-centred approach. The resistance that Copernicus and Gallileo experienced was as much a scientifically-dogmatic resistance as a religious one.

The scientific truths we have now are still of the same kind. They are based on the best observations we can make, but they may need to be replaced by different ones when we can make better observations. And at the moment there is also a large amount of scientific dogmatism that resists new theories - theories that may turn out to be the truth after all. We still don't know just what the truth really is.

Humans are inclined to be rational and irrational. You will rarely find somebody who is either purely rational or irrational. I say that people should develop their rational faculties fully - learn about inductive and deductive reasoning, about logic. But you need irrationality as well, because your logic needs material to work with. I see irrationality as being spontaneously creative. So if people can find a productive balance between rationality and irrationality they will function at an optimal level. Percy, you must realise that most human beings are "insane" to a greater or lesser extent. The best thing would be if you tried to understand their particular kinds of insanity. Maybe you will find that there is sense to it. I know that this strategy works well for me. I can listen to almost any person or read almost any author and understand and identify with the points he/she makes.

The thing is, truths don't have to be absolute. So when Glider criticizes rationality and the Enlightenment there is no need to see that as an absolute criticism. It is not hypocritical to make statements that have paradoxical contents or contexts. You may not realise it but you are also doing it. And I'm doing it. My intent is not to teach people absolute truths, it is to try and coax them into recognising the paradoxical nature of themselves and of the things they say. Life is made of paradoxes and uncertainties. To me religion is an attitude towards the paradoxes and uncertainties of our own existence. There can be "wrong" religions - destructive attitudes - and "right" religions - constructive attitudes.

I am all for science, and I think I know more about science than the average person. Science enhances understanding and appreciation. But so does religion - I mean religion of the constructive kind. What is more, "good" science and "good" religion don't conflict - they enhance each other. To many of you here this will seem a strange statement, but take my word for it, you will see similar statements more and more. Also you will hear phrases such as
"everything is interconnected" and "self-transcendence" and "universal consciousness" and "the whole is more than the sum of the parts" more and more. And you will hear these phrases from people that might be considered "realists" and/or "hard-headed scientists". There is a conceptual revolution happening - don't be caught off guard by it, and don't fear it either! Rather, try and understand just what it is all about.

About paradoxes: here are people attacking the idea of God and of self-transcendence on the Internet. But the Internet is a form of self-transcendence! I mean you are attacking, not my real self, but my online-self. My online-self is a bit of my self that exists external to my body. But I am wise enough to realise that my real self is not my online self, and so I don't take any of these attacks personally. This is what self-transcendence means! In fact, the Internet is the realm of God. It does not exist physically, it exists conceptually. It is a realm of ideas, of information. This place where we're having this discussion is not a "place" It does not exist physically. It has a real-world interface in the form of computers and modems, but above all it is an idea, it exists in our minds - not in any individual mind, but in many overlapping minds put together. It is spiritual. You'll understand it soon.

Jk, many people believe that they have minds confined to their bodies, separate from the minds of other people, separate from the outside world. They believe they were born at a specific time and will die at a specific time. They have a sense of "I" that is
restricted to this perspective. But this is an illusion. For instance consider split personalities. There you have one body, one brain, but many different "I's" that inhabit it. Every one of those personalities believes that it is distinct from the others, just as people believe that they are distinct from other people. And indeed they are distinct. Each personality only knows PERSONALLY about its own experiences - not about those of the others. But a person with multiple personalities can be taught to integrate the different personalities into a whole where there will be a single personality that encompasses aspects of all the different subpersonalities.

In exactly the same way different individual humans can integrate their personalities and develop a consciousness that goes above and beyond their individual consciousnesses and co-ordinate them. This will in fact happen on a large scale soon through the internet.
Groups of people will be communicating and working together so closely that they will in fact have a single mind, a single personality, a single consciousness, a single sense of self. This
is a concrete form of self-transcendence, but there are more subtle ones. It has to do with the nature of the human mind. Here is my OPINION: the human mind is merely a restricted reflection of the universal mind, the mind of God. We are all in a very real sense the same person, the same individual - we are merely different perspectives, different reflections in time and space, of a single mind. And believe it or not there is at the moment a lot
of evidence coming from scientific investigations that strongly suggest that this is the truth.

Well Pillowcase I know that you´re studying physics, so I kind of had expected more from you. The last two things you´ve said in this debate seems to be very much romantic ideas quite far away from any science. You´re too caught up in the new-age stuff. You really ought to forget your beliefs and then take a new look at science. Then see if you will reach the same conclusion as you have now.

There is no God, so how can he be dead?

*ponders stealing UMP's post as an example of a very large message with very low information content*

sheesh - didn't your mother ever teach you to summarize!?

No, in fact she did not! Feel free to use my post as a demonstration of low info content, though! I won't mind a bit.

Xanatic, I don't really have any fixed beliefs. At the moment I have a number of different views of Life, the World and Everything, and I switch between them. I am romantically inclined, I admit it. Things are important to me. I cannot be neutral towards the things I study or the things I say. And my interests go well beyond physics - I try and find out everything I can about every subject possible. I want to understand literally everything and how one subject relates to another. I want to understand all the different human cultures and belief systems. So for my purposes I cannot leave out religion. And because I want to find SIMILARITIES and CONNECTIONS between religions I tend towards the aspects that can be called "new-age". But I try not to be blinded by them, ok!

Pillowcase, I´m also interested in knowing everything. Therefore I also study the different religions, and some of them do say all souls are interconnected and that stuff. But you shouldn´t try and fit scientific results to those beliefs, how nice they may seem. I have nothing against if you simply said you like the idea of everybody being a part of God, but don´t try and state it as if it was a fact. If you become a physicist you will have a certain authority as a scientist, don´t abuse that authority.

They believe in God because they don't know the teachings of Wonko The Sane

Is there more, or is the lack of a full stop an oversight?
A revelation.
The missing full stop is a subconscious self-transcending message that the writer cannot contemplate death, hated his pet Gerbil and is likely to wear fluffy slippers.

Isn't eevryone likely to wear fluffy slippers? Must have accessory...

>Humans are inclined to be rational and irrational
humans are inclined to do lots of crap
>...irrationality [is] being spontaneously creative.
that is nonsence. It is commanly spoted by artist who
dislike scientific formality and think that all
rationality is formall (a misconseption). Any true
art is rational as it carries a message but it is
oftern informal wich makes it butifull but it
is rational if it was not it would be non sensical
just random images convaing nothing.
>the Internet is a form of self-transcendence
What are you on about !
>not my real self, but my online-self. My online-self is a bit of my >self that exists external to my body.
A word I write on a page is a creation of my mind that exists external to my body but it is not part of 'me', a partical of
air that I push is by our def. part of me!

>the Internet is the realm of God. It does not exist physically, it >exists conceptually. It is a realm of ideas, of information...It is >spiritual.
1.You have changed the def. of God from the comman one a
word is only usefull if we are all meaning the same when
we say it.
2.The internet is not spritual it is in a kind of non pysical
relm but this is the relm of information.(like our genes which
only make sence when in bio-contexts).Information is about the
interation of pysical things it is not a metaphysical relm.

OUR OPINION:human mind a restricted reflection of the universal mind, the mind of God.BLaa blaa blaa We are all in a very real sense the same person,same individual - different perspectives, different reflections in time and space, of a single mind.Blaa blaa
YOu are full of your self
and your opioins are Jack.
Stop being so patronising
If you really think that any of your
bull s**t is really universal truth
then try and convice me !
JK the unwise

Are we 2 lament the death of this conversation?