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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Feb 19, 2010 - 10:16am PT
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From the Grand Bible (in contrast to the Holy Bible) another favorite-
"Open your eyes: See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments." Epictetus 8:5
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Gobee
Trad climber
Upward Bound Col. 1:19-20 Grace By Faith
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Feb 20, 2010 - 08:01am PT
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1 Chronicles 29:11, Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.
Matthew 21:42, Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
Thru Christ the New Birth, verse by verse, to reverse the curse!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Feb 20, 2010 - 07:23pm PT
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I'm cracking up at all the rants to the tune of "Take it somewhere else." My favorites are Flouride's, like, "And I'd love to hear everyone's stories from those places. But I can't if this thread keeps bumping them off the front page." She apparently has no time to click the "Prior 30 topics" link even once, but there's time to follow this thread and keep posting to it.
Why single this thread out for special condemnation, anyway? I'm looking at the front page this minute. 30 topics there. 12 of them could be (in some cases, generously) construed as threads more or less related to climbing. The others range from mountain lion sightings (outdoors related, I guess, but not climbing), to hot Russian curling chicks (that instantly spun entirely and hilariously out of control, I might add), to "cannot be unseen" (and, really, don't look: mind-searing content there), cute but irrelevant content like "dare you," and the list goes on and on. Several of these entirely irrelevant threads (such as about dead heads) have more posts than this thread.
The idea that this is a "climbing" forum is completely laughable. Maybe it once started out that way. But somebody made the fateful decision to have this be an open forum, which guaranteed that it would not remain a "climbing" forum. Even calling it a "climber's" forum appears to be misconstrued. The current front page reveals that mostly climbers just like to bounce all sorts of things off of each other, which this thread does as validly as any other on the current front page.
So, Flouride et al, don't disingenuously bump this thread back to the front page with your complaints, keep posting to it, and then expect sympathy or the desired reaction because you don't have time to find those precious climbing threads. Click one link, maybe two. Takes less time than posting here. Or, you could spend some time on a rampage on the other 18 threads currently on the front page that are bumping the precious climbing threads down. Maybe you'll win the battle to make that Taco a purely climbing forum.
But I doubt it. [edit: advertising rates being tied to traffic, as they are.]
Love, joy, and sloppy warm fuzzies to all!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Feb 20, 2010 - 07:52pm PT
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"Our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos. (Sagan II, Chapter 3, Verse 23)"
False, and laughably so, on many levels. Our future is fixed. It depends upon nothing about US, particularly not our "understanding." The cosmos is deterministic, according to Sagan himself. Nothing we can do, especially nothing we can KNOW, can affect the outcome. Maximum entropy (or something like it) is the deal-killer to all plans and knowledge. Death comes to all, including to the universe. Blackness... deadness. That is "our future," and no amount of understanding changes that.
Scientists like Sagan try to make the case that they are making the world better for all of us; that's what science does. But "better" is a value-laden term, and it is only carries the load Sagan needs it to carry in his arguments if it refers to an objective (as opposed to subjective) value. But science has no room or place for objective values. Read J.L. Mackie's book on this subject, "Inventing Right and Wrong," which argues for value-skepticism as a good empiricist/scientist should.
From a scientific perspective, your life (as individual) has no value; you are a meaningless blip that didn't even really make the cosmic radar screen. Your little light shines so dimly and briefly that it is literally meaningless except, perhaps, for a bit of genetic information that you might or might not pass along. But whether you pass it along or not, maximum entropy is coming, which makes the question entirely irrelevant.
Oh, don't try to borrow "value" from some subjective likes and dislikes you happen to have. Science isn't serving those! Science is finding the TRUTH; and the truth is (from our pitiful, subjective perspectives) that the universe cares NOTHING for us and didn't, doesn't, and won't have us in mind in what (inevitably) happens.
Our "understanding," (falsely so called) even of the cosmos is utterly, entirely, and completely meaningless. If it gives you a microwave oven or a space shuttle that doesn't blow up most of the time, so what? Sagan is talking in cosmic terms, and such grandiosity is supposed to generate the billions of dollars that scientists need to find the TRUTH. But the TRUTH is that the "truth" scientists find is that nothing matters. Not now, and not later. The fact that things "seem" to matter to you (personally and subjectively) is irrelevant on a cosmic scale. But Sagan and his ilk are not arguing that science will give us a better future al la microwave ovens! And the idea that science will give us a better COSMIC FUTURE is a lie. The future is fixed.
Don't hand me "quantum arguments," because they don't work to solve this problem. The uncertainty principle is a principle concerning epistemology not metaphysics. There are severe limitations on what we can know. "Quantum fluctuations" are simply reflections of the limits of empiricism. Most scientists and almost all philosophers considering the implications of quantum theory agree that at the deepest level, metaphysically speaking, there is not randomness; things just appear that way to us because of our epistemological limitations.
Science has nothing of VALUE to offer us: we get a picture of the cosmos that from a subjective perspective is ugly, short, harsh, uncaring, and dismal. In the short term, we get microwave ovens, though, so that's a good thing.
Love, joy, and sloppy warm fuzzies to all!
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Feb 20, 2010 - 08:44pm PT
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Flouride is just complaining, nothing else to see, move along. She's whining on this thread, she's whining on other threads, she whined at Nomad, just nothign to do but whine. Post some of your own On Topic threads like I did, no one is stopping you. Of course, this requires you to have something to say.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Feb 20, 2010 - 09:01pm PT
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Note: Madbolter1 and MADBOLTER are different.
Madbolter1 wrote-
"False, and laughably so, on many levels."
Entirely depends on perspective and attitude.
Even in your response is a hint to the answer. There are different "levels," different ways, different perspectives and last but not least different attitudes in regard to looking at things, assessing things, valuing things.
Madbolter1- Ever question whether your perspective is too narrow or too singular?
I'll give you this much. Your piece got my attention because it's loaded with fact from the scientific account. But it's also loaded with a narrow perspective and bad attitude.
It's true, the universe is fixed in a deep sense. Life afterall boils down to physics and chemistry (and I hear you when you say quantum mechanics is no escape). But the rest of the truth, the fixity or fixation you speak of-- output-wise-- is very much a function of the functionality that living things exhibit as part of it. Did you get that?
Like Cap'n Algren said in Last Samurai (since you like movie quotes): A man does what he can until his destiny is revealed to him.
Bottom line: If a man's understanding is limited, his can-do (power) is limited.
More food for thought: Freedom, a type of freedom, exists even in a universe that's fixed, in different terms, even in a mechanistic universe. And we have a easy example to draw from. It's climbing.
A 5.13 climber has a "freedom" to climb through a 5.12 sequence that a 5.11 climber doesn't. All the while both climbers (and all living things) are mechanistic organisms. (Engineering calls this degrees of freedom or abilities of freedom.)
You represent, or perhaps better your piece represents (since I don't know you) a personality type drawing from science and engineering that other personality types also drawing from science and engineering (like me) want to / need to smack down.
Not only is the path to higher education (both science education and general life education) hindered by ol'time religious systems and their ancient theist doctrines but, as if that weren't enough, more so by the nihilistic / fatalistic attitudes of the sort you expressed above.
Your response above: Loaded with science and also loaded with narrow perspective and bad attitude.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 20, 2010 - 09:03pm PT
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It's good and damned necessary that Christians are absolutely correct in their beliefs, because if they were wrong they'd be pretty silly wouldn't they?
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Mimi
climber
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Feb 20, 2010 - 09:03pm PT
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Fructose, I'd never call you syrup. LOL!
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Chinchen
climber
Anacortes, wa
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Feb 20, 2010 - 09:07pm PT
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why wont the rapture happen already?!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Feb 20, 2010 - 11:32pm PT
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Science has nothing of VALUE to offer us
Maybe you're right about entropic inevitability. Maybe, in the ultra-long term, there is nothing that science -- or religion, for that matter -- can offer that will change anything.
But oh, madbolter, do you love anyone? Do you have children? A wife? Parents? Maybe a friend? Would you shrug your shoulders when your son or daughter dies of apendicitis? Sure, science has led us to safe surgery, but who really gives a sh#t, right? My daughter would have died eventually anyway, so why bother operating.
Maybe science will help us push back our entropic destiny, maybe it won't. But in the meantime, I'm sort of glad to have a heated house, and electric lights, and vaccinations against disease.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 20, 2010 - 11:55pm PT
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"I'm sort of glad to have a heated house, and electric lights, and vaccinations against disease."
That's because you've become weak.
A weak weak devolved human into an animalistic consciousness without even being aware of that.
We are not advancing at all.
We are worst off than thousands of years ago.
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dustonian
climber
Foresta
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:01am PT
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Madbolter, you gotta be kidding. "Science has nothing of value to offer us"? That's a good one. Without science life expectancy was half what it is now--as little as 2 centuries ago. Prenatal screening, immunizations and cures to thousands of diseases, readily available food supply, clean water, electricity.... the list goes on and on. If the fruits of science have nothing of "VALUE" to offer you, then try living without them! Good luck on that. Sounds like you just don't appreciate what science already does for you and has done for you throughout your life. Just because it's not infused with didactic messages, sentimentality, magic, fairy tales, and supposed mythological meaning of some kind doesn't mean it has no "value"! You too, Werner--turn off the lights, heat, water and stop buying food and seeing the doctor and dentist when you get sick or injured before you mutter some empty gibberish about people being "weak" and reverting to their animal consciousness, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:08am PT
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Modern science is only the advancement of dressing the body and killing the soul.
Men of small minds are dazzled by shiny fancy coats ......
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dustonian
climber
Foresta
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:11am PT
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Blah blah blah. Then stop driving, eating grocery store food, drinking running water, treating disease and injury, or using technology of any kind for that matter. Turn off the computer and stop posting on internet forums every day if it's so soulless! Otherwise you're just spewing hot air.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:16am PT
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No need to.
You are already a dead, walking corpse ......
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:18am PT
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"I'm sort of glad to have a heated house, and electric lights, and vaccinations against disease."
That's because you've become weak.
Well, Werner, maybe I have become weak. Or was always weak. I know you live in a cave with no light and heat, eating only squirrels and raw leaves and drinking water cupped out of the stream with your hands. But I am glad to have a heated house. And hot water on tap.
And if you say you don't, then I call bullsh#t. Tell me you live in a cave and sleep on a pile of leaves, eating only what you dig out of the forest floor and I'll apologize. But until then, well, yeah, I call bullsh#t.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:21am PT
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You are weak
And getting weaker as you post .....
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:23am PT
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You are weak
And getting weaker as you post .....
Whereas you, on the other hand, grow closer to enlightenment with every post. Right? Werner the master. The enlightened one. The Sensai.
Bah. Gomi no sensai.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:26am PT
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You're getting even weaker now.
You've lost your mind ......
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dustonian
climber
Foresta
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Feb 21, 2010 - 12:30am PT
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Now for "Back to the Dark Ages" with your host, enlightened pseudointellectual Werner Braun! I expect you will forgo the science and engineering design behind the Minitraxion next time you go out to toprope some crack you're climbed 19,000 times before? I would hate for you to turn into a "dead, walking corpse" by compromising your rigorous aesthetic and well thought-out guidelines for spiritual purity! Oh yeah, don't forget to walk to the Cookie and climb naked too.
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