|
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
 Posted - 08/03/2003 : 20:53:50 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by wonkavision
If a Peta member were involved in a motorcycle accident, do you think they may wish they had chosen leather over cotten, or would they bear their painful and scarring wounds with stoicism? Perhaps Peta members shouldn't ride motorcycles.
Huh?
Who says they ride motorcycles? Why are you changing the subject?
Anyone who does anything dangerous or otherwise should know the consequences of their actions.
http://www.uga.edu/~vegsoc/c-free.html |
 |
|
|
wonkavision
New Member
USA
16 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2003 : 01:49:27 [Permalink]
|
| Just levity. It was meant to be a non-sequitor. I am in full agreement on supporting cruelty free products. Although I believe it is natural and healthy to eat meat, and I do support the use of animals for medical research, just about everything else, trophy hunting, testing for the express purpose of consumerism, cock and dog fighting etc are unecessary and needless cruelty. I'll finish with another non-sequitor- I like the dog in your avatar, cute. |
So shy a good deed in such a weary world... |
|
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2003 : 18:18:00 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by wonkavision
I like the dog in your avatar, cute.
Woody is our 'little love'. The 1st Cocker Spaniel I've ever come in contact with, all my other dogs have been bigger.* But damn they are smart and I can't wait to get another when we are finanicaly able.
If you insist, I can send you tons more pictures of him.
CuriousCreations.com
Thank you.
*don't ever tell a Cocker person their dog is small, I made that mistake on the Cocker e-group I joined when we got him, they kind of got a bit mifted at that remark. Now 5 years later I know too how loving and wonderful they are. I also have websites and names of Cocker rescue people.
|
|
|
|
Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 09/22/2003 : 10:58:24 [Permalink]
|
Having just skated out onto the very "thin ice" of reincarnation in the Phar Lap / Seabiscuit thread,this seemed like a good time to post to this thread too.
I've mentioned that I'm a statistician, both by training and inclination. While most users of statistics are interested in the central portions of a population (the "normal" regions), statisticians are interested in the outer portions of a population. (They reject a hypothesis rather than accept it; rather than "accept", they tend to say "I see no reason to reject".)
What I am about to write is an anecdote about one of these "outlying" data points------one of the strangest experiences of my life.
In late 1967, I was working in a rock-quarry located just north of the coastal mountains called Vung Ro, a little south of the city of Tuy Hoa in Vietnam. We were digging 10-15' granite boulders out of a laterite mound, blasting ("mud-capping") them into a couple feet diameter chunks and grinding them into usable aggregate (3/4" clean) and road base course (3" minus).
The mound was a couple of hundred yards from the S.China Sea. Even though our mound was a good 50 yards wide, sooner or later we would run out of rock and so I started scouting around for the next rock-source.
Near the Sea there was a spit of land cut off by a couple of yards of deep, rushng water---something not fordable, nor swimable. Nonetheless, there seemed to be a pile of big rocks (20 feet+ in diameter) near the end of the spit and so during an especially low tide, I made the mad dash (--did not, not, not want to get caught by rising tide!--) to the rocks to investigate.
Things were as they seemed----even more so. It was the most bizzare rock formation I had ever seen, for real or in photos. Almost as if a kid had carefully piled up a large bunch of marbles. (This formation was fairly easily explained: Likely the terminus of some very ancient river which had washed the rocks out of the dirt 100 miles or so away and scrubbed them nearly spherical as with polishing small stones for decoration.)
Things were "arranged" (--as they often are in armies when the orders given by higher HQ seem a little 'nuts'--) so that the rock-pile was made accessible both by the higher up "mucky-mucks" for viewing and by trucks for carrying the blasted-apart boulders to the crushing equipment.
Time went on. I transfered to another unit; my new unit transfered 100 miles northward. The original boulder-imbedded laterite mound ran out of boulders and, Lo!, bureaucratic complaints notwithstanding, the quarry operations transfered with the greatest of ease to the absolutely-clean, standing-on-the-bare-sand, begging to be turned into gravel, boulder-pile.
The really STRANGE part of this story is that when, several months later, I found out that the boulder-pile was being quarried, was being reduced to rubble, I felt as if I had set into motion a horrible mass-murder; as if these weird boulders were, in some way, sentient, intelligent; as if they, themselves, held me guilty of their murder/execution.
No drugs of any kind; no booze either----ice tea was the strongest stuff I took. Even stranger: this feeling of my having instigated a mass murder (admittedly of a different species----big rocks!! of all things) has stuck with me for over 30 years. BIG TIME guilt.
Strangest of all is that about 2-3 years ago when I finally directly faced this horrible act of slaughter I had started (--perhaps due to something Dr. Phil had said on TV--), I changed my mind 180 degrees. From feeling the guilt of a mass-murder, I now felt that I had accomplished a GREAT DEED; that these giant rocks, while perhaps being sentient and even intelligent, posed some ill-defined threat (--May I use the word evil?--) to humanity-----and perhaps even to Earth itself.
A couple of years have gone by but I still feel that the U.S. Army's getting rid of that boulder-pile might have been more important than the all of our government's economic and/or political objectives in Vietnam.
All very, VERY strange but I'm glad after 30+ years to have set the story down, particularly in the midst of (self-proclaimed) skeptics. |
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
|
|
|
furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 09/22/2003 : 11:32:59 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Strangest of all is that about 2-3 years ago when I finally directly faced this horrible act of slaughter I had started (--perhaps due to something Dr. Phil had said on TV--), I changed my mind 180 degrees. From feeling the guilt of a mass-murder, I now felt that I had accomplished a GREAT DEED; that these giant rocks, while perhaps being sentient and even intelligent, posed some ill-defined threat (--May I use the word evil?--) to humanity-----and perhaps even to Earth itself.
After reading your post I guess, umm, that, I uhhh, well I, think, that umm,...
That was a swell post. I also believe that rocks are evil. One time in Hawaii a bunch of rocks melted themselves in a volcano and then destroyed a bunch of houses. So you have a very valid point.
Rocks can be good too though. Remember that rock that David threw and killed Goliath. And that time that Luke Skywalker "found" that rock at his feet and threw it against the door button and killed that big monster deal in RETURN OF THE JEDI.
So your point is well taken.
If anything I have ever said to you made you mad, please don't come to my house and murder me. If I ever implied that you must be a raving lunatic it was simply a misunderstanding.
|
If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
|
|
|
Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 09/22/2003 : 12:03:02 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by furshur
quote:
Originally posted by the engenious but somewhat odd Computer Org:
Strangest of all is that about 2-3 years ago when I finally directly faced this horrible act of slaughter I had started (--perhaps due to something Dr. Phil had said on TV--), I changed my mind 180 degrees. From feeling the guilt of a mass-murder, I now felt that I had accomplished a GREAT DEED; that these giant rocks, while perhaps being sentient and even intelligent, posed some ill-defined threat (--May I use the word evil?--) to humanity-----and perhaps even to Earth itself.
After reading your post I guess, umm, that, I uhhh, well I, think, that umm,...
That was a swell post.
<snip>
So your point is well taken.
<snip>
Why, thank you, furshore.
A few comments are, maybe, in order.
Firstly: A lot of people wear various things around their neck. As a kid I wore a sterling silver cross; and an itchy, scratchy, blessed scapular. Many humans wear gaudy chunks of shiny metal or glittery chunks of one of the forms of Carbon. I wear an inch-diameter stone.
The sandy ground of my homestead is covered with beach rocks to stabilize the sand.
I like rocks.
Secondly: What a great thread, BoronX!! Alas, I have been very short on time and only got to read its title. (I was shocked to read, an hour ago!!, that it was based on a comment I had made with regard to Atheism.) The title led me to post as above. Before wading back into all the questions you posed, Boron10, would like to see the reaction, if any, to my strange experience (--the only such that I've ever had with respect to rocks--) and as to the greater question of the possible life and/or awareness of inanimate objects. |
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 09/23/2003 : 09:08:27 [Permalink]
|
While I know that we use some minerals to season our food with, and trace amounts of some minerals are essential for a healthy body and a few animals eat rocks to aid in digestion, it's too bad we can't eat rocks. As I see it, as stewards of the earth, we were cheated in the rock department. Almost everything ells we tend is edible.
And variety? Forget it! So many rocks, so little time. We would have to figure out what wine goes with what rock. A dry red might be good with igneous rocks. Chardonnay with metamorphic rocks and coffee liqueur with a sedimentary flan.
It would be just a matter of time before some group would spring up to "Save the Rocks." Oh well.
Rocks, it's what's for dinner.... |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
|
walt fristoe
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 09/23/2003 : 10:22:43 [Permalink]
|
I can go along with the idea that the Earth is alive, since I happen to think that there is only one living organism on this planet. As to it being self-aware, I think it is slowly becoming so, as we become more widespread (not just in numbers, but in influence). The universe is another matter, however. While it could, in some sense, be considered to be alive, since it engendered the life it contains (us, and maybe others), I think it can only be considered truly alive when we (and/or others) come to inhabit every habitable portion of it, which may or may not ever happen. It certainly is not now self-aware, but may become so, like the Earth, when our (or others) influence expands maximally. |
"If God chose George Bus of all the people in the world, how good could God be?"
Bill Maher |
|
|
|
furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 09/23/2003 : 13:01:27 [Permalink]
|
quote:
I can go along with the idea that the Earth is alive, since I happen to think that there is only one living organism on this planet
The Earth is ALIVE!! Excuse me, but that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard - with the possible exception of the post about saving humanity from the evil pile of rocks by turning the rocks into a roadbed.
Just to bring in a different thread - based on many of the recent posts, I think I have somehow been transported to one of those 'alternate universes', like maybe Bizzaro Universe. Either that or I have accidentaly, started posting on the 'Psychotic friends network'.
Great Googally Moogally! Get a FREAKING GRIP PEOPLE!! |
If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
|
|
|
Mahaad_Mana
New Member
29 Posts |
|
|
Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2003 : 07:21:05 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by furshur
quote:
Originally posted by walt fristoe
I can go along with the idea that the Earth is alive, since I happen to think that there is only one living organism on this planet
The Earth is ALIVE!! Excuse me, but that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard - with the possible exception of the post about saving humanity from the evil pile of rocks by turning the rocks into a roadbed.
<snip>
The real issue here is whether or not it is possible for a rock to be 'sentient'.
'Sentient' seems to require electrical activity and that criterion is met in any mineral formation [read: "rock"].
Is it even remotely possible for an ancient, ancient rock to be sentient?
|
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
|
|
|
furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2003 : 09:14:44 [Permalink]
|
quote:
The real issue here is whether or not it is possible for a rock to be 'sentient'.
'Sentient' seems to require electrical activity and that criterion is met in any mineral formation [read: "rock"].
Is it even remotely possible for an ancient, ancient rock to be sentient?
Your logic is again flawed.
Sentient animals have electrical activity, therefore electrical activity implies sentience.
A radio has electrical activity therefore a radio is sentient, as is my watch or a toaster.
Based on your logic... Birds are warm blooded and they fly, therefore warm blooded whales fly.
Is it even remotely possible that a rock is sentient? How remote would you like? According to quantum physics it is remotely possible for you to drive your car THROUGH a brick wall without damaging your car or the wall. This is remotely possible and yet it is impossible. This is remotely possible based on the observance of individual subatomic particle interations. But for any mass larger than an individual electron the possibility of noninteraction is absurdly small.
So to answer your question... NO.
|
If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
|
|
|
Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2003 : 10:08:51 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by furshur:
quote:
Originally posted by the logically-trained Computer Org:
The real issue here is whether or not it is possible for a rock to be 'sentient'.
'Sentient' seems to require electrical activity and that criterion is met in any mineral formation [read: "rock"].
Is it even remotely possible for an ancient, ancient rock to be sentient?
Your logic is again flawed.
Sentient animals have electrical activity, therefore electrical activity implies sentience.
I suggest that it is your logic that is flawed, furshur. Electrical activity seems to be a requirement for sentience. The implication is one-way: "Sentience implies electrical activity." You are saying that I was making the opposite-directioned implication. Nonsense!!quote:
More hot-air from furshur:
<snip>
Is it even remotely possible that a rock is sentient? How remote would you like? According to quantum physics it is remotely possible for you to drive your car THROUGH a brick wall without damaging your car or the wall. This is remotely possible and yet it is impossible. This is remotely possible based on the observance of individual subatomic particle interations. But for any mass larger than an individual electron the possibility of noninteraction is absurdly small.
So to answer your question... NO.
I was thinking more of 'sentience' being, at the very least, coordinated electrical activity. We humans learn to coordinate our electrical activity when we are young via experience. A rock would have to do that without ever moving-----something that would likely take a very long time.
My question, IMO, remains unanswered. |
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
|
|
|
furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2003 : 10:30:19 [Permalink]
|
quote:
I suggest that it is your logic that is flawed, furshur. Electrical activity seems to be a requirement for sentience. The implication is one-way: "Sentience implies electrical activity." You are saying that I was making the opposite-directioned implication. Nonsense!!
Your logic is still flawed.
Based on your logic:
Water seems to be a requirement for Sentience. Sentience implys water.
All 'normal' matter contains electrons and protons (ie electrical 'activity') does this mean all matter is sentient? Maybe you are just not making yourself clear.
This whole "rocks are sentient line" just seems so completely silly it is very hard to follow seriously.
|
If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
|
|
|
Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2003 : 10:52:52 [Permalink]
|
furshur: "Water seems to be a requirement for Sentience." I'm not shur that this statement is true. Maybe I don't know enough about neural pathways but . . . .  
furshur: "All 'normal' matter contains electrons and protons (ie electrical 'activity') does this mean all matter is sentient?" No. No. No. Did you forget to read "I was thinking more of 'sentience' being, at the very least, coordinated electrical activity."? Surely it is the coordination of electrical activity into 'meaningful' patterns which indicates 'sentience' or 'intelligence'.  |
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
