Bay 12 Games Forum

I remember hearing somewhere that 2/3 of Jews do not support the creation of a Jewish state based on what the Torah says (Old Testament).

2/3 sounds like a number that came out of someone's anus, but a lot of religious Jews believe that, yeah. Mostly ultra-orthodox ones tho.

The entire situation reminds me of the time when the US spread West, displacing and massacring Native Americans because of their "divine right" to spread to the Atlantic. They did fight back then, and if you asked anyone back then they would probably say that the fight would continue. Now Native Americans live in peace in the US.

"Peace." They're given little ghettos as a sorry substitute for what used to be their civilization, which we decimated and did our best to stamp out. Incidentally, when I was in the west bank we met a delegation of Native Americans who were coming over there to talk to the Palestinians about how the same kinds of things are going on in the occupied territories now, as America was doing to the Indians back in the day - gradually trying to ghetto them and force them out. Or just kill them if possible. The similarity is striking.

Anyway, you certainly can blame the German people for Hitler. If they'd stood up all together and organized against him, they could have stopped him. You think he had no public support? LOTS of people loved him and that's why he was able to get so powerful.

Same thing in Israel. If all Israelis decided that human rights are more important than Jewish rights and told their government to stop abusing Palestinians, you think the occupation would go on? And as an American, I have a part in the guilt for all the terrible shit America has pulled in the last 20 years, including supporting Israel. Any government ultimately depends on support of the people, if only to enforce its laws and kill other people who disagree, but in a democracy, the people absolutely share in the guilt for whatever the government does.

Any kind of structured communication is a language.

Well if you define language that way then sure

But if they communicate by say, pheromones, it would be nonsense to call it "language" in the sense that we have, which is sound-based and uses symbols (words) and grammar and is also hardwired into our brains (which is why kids acquire language but don't learn how to communicate via pheromones)

And if they were telepathic there would be no need for language; they'd just send ideas straight to each other and cut out the middleman.

Specially if they have abstract concepts, which aren't instinctual.

Abstract concepts can be instinctual

Quote from: Jude on February 17, 2009, 05:08:31 pm

Aliens also probably wouldn't have language

Eh, they could have language, just probably not as we know it.

They could but there's no reason to expect it anymore than to expect them to be bipedal

or to have "peds"

It's not hard to get some in Israel, like I said they're skanks

According to your profile Yanlin, you live in Israel. What is the dating pool like over there?

Israeli chicks are hot. as. shit. Jesus.

They're also all skanks far as I can tell. Plus, you have to watch out, because everyone between 18 and 22 is in the army, so if a girl looks like she's a little young, she's probably jailbait.

Of course, I think 16 is legal there, but that's still fucking gross.

Then you have your Arab girls, but (literally) 99% of them are Muslims and aren't allowed to talk to you, and the Christian ones probably aren't allowed to date you either.

Even if there is life on other planets there's no reason to assume it will be intelligent or even multi-celled

The vast majority of life on earth is little single-celled critters; two of the three domains of life (and much of the one that plants and animals are in) are just bacteria and such, and of all the possible niches to fill, there's no reason to expect the "cognitive niche" to have a species occupying it at any point in the history of life on any given planet.

Steven Pinker used the analogy of elephants with trunks, conducting a program called the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Trunks (SETT). They are assuming that life, when it appears, will at some point naturally produce the trunk or something very like it, that wondrous instrument of manipulation. This appears ridiculous to us humans because we aren't chauvinistic about trunks, but somehow the very same assumptions do come naturally to us when thinking about intelligence/the mind.

and thinks the other OSs can go sit at Starbucks and write their screenplays and try to be eclectic.

lmaooooooooo so true