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Author Topic: Random thoughts - On the Origins of "I Could Eat A Horse"  (Read 205691 times)

wierd

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #15 on: April 29, 2018, 05:58:08 am »

"Simple tools"

or

Paleolithic/(Neolithic, depending on quality and style) weaponry.


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I wonder if it is actually possible to be unbiased.
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Hanslanda

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #16 on: April 29, 2018, 08:30:44 am »

Dead people are unbiased about everything but being dead, methinks, as they have no ability to form opinions anymore.

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There are underwater rivers and lakes under the oceans. Do fish ever drown in them?

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Why are they killer whales when they're big dolphins? Shouldn't they be whale-killing megadolphins?

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NSFW question
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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The mantle of the earth is molten. Do we just live on an exceptionally cold star? Orbiting a bigger, hotter star?

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If a eusocial animal kills one of its hive, is that murder or semisuicide?
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Well, we could put two and two together and write a book: "The Shit that Hans and Max Did: You Won't Believe This Shit."
He's fucking with us.

KittyTac

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #17 on: April 29, 2018, 08:33:30 am »

"The mantle of the earth is molten. Do we just live on an exceptionally cold star? Orbiting a bigger, hotter star?"

There is no fusion inside of Earth. So no.
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Hanslanda

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #18 on: April 29, 2018, 08:40:15 am »

Good point. I forgot about that tidbit. Not like there's an enormous ball of nuclear incineration hanging in the sky to remind me or anything. 😛

If we created a pure fusion bomb, would it be a short lived star creator?
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Well, we could put two and two together and write a book: "The Shit that Hans and Max Did: You Won't Believe This Shit."
He's fucking with us.

scourge728

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #19 on: April 29, 2018, 08:54:31 am »

Why are they killer whales when they're big dolphins? Shouldn't they be whale-killing megadolphins?
I remember hearing a theory that it was a mistranslation of the name in a different language, that was actually whale-killer, so named because of the said habit of killing whales

Hanslanda

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #20 on: April 29, 2018, 09:04:52 am »

I've read that also, that it was mistranslated from Spanish IIRC.

Also, there are no accurate reports of killer whales predating on humans (I found ONE report of a bite and release) in the wild. I feel like they've definitely eaten people before but they're smart enough to finish the job without witnesses. Also what human stands a chance against 4 to 20 8 ton apex aquatic predators of high intelligence whilst in their environment?
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Well, we could put two and two together and write a book: "The Shit that Hans and Max Did: You Won't Believe This Shit."
He's fucking with us.

scourge728

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #21 on: April 29, 2018, 09:09:36 am »

I've read that also, that it was mistranslated from Spanish IIRC.

Also, there are no accurate reports of killer whales predating on humans (I found ONE report of a bite and release) in the wild. I feel like they've definitely eaten people before but they're smart enough to finish the job without witnesses. Also what human stands a chance against 4 to 20 8 ton apex aquatic predators of high intelligence whilst in their environment?
One with a high power gun, or a ship, or harpoons

ChairmanPoo

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #22 on: April 29, 2018, 10:05:04 am »

I've read that also, that it was mistranslated from Spanish IIRC.


Unlikely as the term is the same
Welp apparently it was. The name comes from Spanish whale killers, which was translated into English as killer whales, and then retranslated into Spanish as killer whales again. Huh.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2018, 10:06:56 am by ChairmanPoo »
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Baffler

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #23 on: April 29, 2018, 11:10:18 am »

Basically linguistic gaslighting. I wonder how that happened?
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Trekkin

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #24 on: April 29, 2018, 01:05:43 pm »

If we created a pure fusion bomb, would it be a short lived star creator?

It'd be the wrong kind of fusion, for one thing, and initiated in the wrong way. If I recall correctly, the formal definition of a star involves proton-proton fusion and gravitational containment.
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Billy

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #25 on: April 29, 2018, 02:05:18 pm »

Its cause you do have a soul. Get over it. Its there in your feet
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Trekkin

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #26 on: April 29, 2018, 02:28:19 pm »

I don't believe in a soul, to start off with. Now, what drives me mad is how is it that a load of electrical signals in a wrinkly grey ball can create a consciousness? We know it's there (excluding any "I know therefore I am" stuff), it's a measurable thing. How does a load of adaptive electrical signals form it, though?

It's meant to drive you mad. Consciousness is great value for woo peddlers and armchair intellectuals alike; it lets them pretend the neurologists know as little as they do because "science can't explain" it, and therefore they can keep trading on that wonder and selling you crystal healing and long diatribes about how interesting everything is (and, more importantly, how smart they are for seeing it) as long as they can keep redefining it away from our actual understanding of the brain.

The truth is that consciousness is simply a set of interconnected structural, chemical, and electrical feedback loops, in roughly that order of mutability; if you think of the chemical signals as memory for the electrical signals and structural changes as memory for the chemicals you'll be in roughly the right ballpark. That's all there is to the great mystery of the brain. There's no point at which a set of neurons "wakes up and becomes a mind", just a multi-dimensional continuum of complexity and degrees of mutability. Nor is there anything lost at death other than the conditions required for those feedback loops to perpetuate. It's informatically complex, sure, but it's not mystical.

EDIT: As an analogy, you could just as easily ask how a bunch of transistors create a computer. They don't, but they do process information, and enough of them together with memory and other bits can process information in ways complex enough to allow for what we readily recognize as computation.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2018, 02:33:23 pm by Trekkin »
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taat

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #27 on: April 29, 2018, 02:44:53 pm »

It's on wikipedia as the "Hard problem of consciousness". The consensus among people who manage to get their opinions published seem to vary between "It's an unsolvable mystery" and "Consciousness isn't in any way a special phenomenon. You simply see yourself and your experience as special because your brain forces you to."
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Enemy post

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #28 on: April 29, 2018, 03:05:21 pm »

I created consciousness as part of a scheme to sell bootleg Simpsons mugs. Sorry if this is a disappointing answer.
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Maximum Spin

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Re: Random thoughts
« Reply #29 on: April 29, 2018, 04:13:33 pm »

We know it's there (excluding any "I know therefore I am" stuff), it's a measurable thing.
Wait, who told you that? We can measure a lot of things that people think are related to consciousness, but we can't actually prove that consciousness, in the cognito ergo sum sense of internal experience, actually exists or is connected to any of those measurable physical features. Even self-reports of consciousness from patients aren't sufficient because we don't know whether consciousness is necessary to make them (nb, if so, many more things are conscious than we normally assume). All that we can measure are things like responsiveness to stimuli, and it's pretty obvious how the brain can produce responsiveness to stimuli, because we have sensory and motor nerves.

I don't think consciousness really exists, anyway.
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