Posts made by Arkandel

@Thenomain said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

@Arkandel said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

What were the results of your decades of research? What were your methods? Show me.

I...

You know, Ark, I know you really like playing Devil's Advocate (to a point where I suspect that you need some psychological help), but this takes the cake. You're all over the place, similar to the people who want to "disprove" global warming. I'd believe this was beneath you, but here you are.

First of all Theno, you are coming off as unusually condescending in this. And that's you, so that's a little bit more than most people.

Concerns about my mental health aside could you please point out where I was playing devil's advocate in this case? And what exactly am I doing that is 'similar' to people wanting to disprove global warming (!) ?

We have methods for this determining what is true and what is not. Scientific Method is not a stick we measure things by. It's a way we discover those measurements. The basis of Scientific Method relies on disproving its discoveries. Without it, it would be a belief system. But it's not. Scientific Method does not have an enemy in the Bible, against Flat Earthers, against ghosts, against magic, against even Intelligent fucking Design.

Er, well, yes. I'm waiting for you to come to the point where you disagree with what I'm saying strongly enough to warrant your initial position. I have the utmost respect in the scientific method and I was advocating it as the universal standard that it is.

And that's where I go from reading this thread with a modicum of interest to enough salt to attract all the deer in Ohio. (hint: there are a lot of deer in Ohio.) "Well, you don't really know-know, therefore what you're doing is belief" is the attack that the Discovery Institute has been doing to sell their snake oil as "science" to indoctrinate school children for the last decade or so.

You don't really know-know until you prove it. You can theorize anything at all and maybe you're right and maybe you are not. That's where the process of peer review after one is done formulating their hpothesis and communicating their findings comes in.

Usually I don't mind and even expect arrogance in your responses but I suppose in this case you managed to push a button. Congratulations!

@Kanye-Qwest said in Good TV:

@Arkandel You could argue Arya's been fighting 'evil', to a degree, but I think her entire arc since she left King's Landing has basically been "Arya gets into wacky criminal hijinks".

I... wasn't arguing, I was making a joke.

You thought I really thought Arya Stark's role in the Game of Thrones was to be a crime-fighter?

@wanderer said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

Then don't. When you call it "beliefs" you're directly insulting me. You're calling my mental faculties deficient and my judgment worthless.

Everything is a 'belief' until proven otherwise. I don't call 'the earth being round' a belief because there is conclusive logical evidence confirmed in multiple independent ways that demonstrates it.

The difference - for some folks - can only be made up by being able to offer conclusive evidence for a belief to be transferable. If someone thinks something is true they must be able to conclusively demonstrate that somehow to others.

Transfer to me the conclusive evidence that man has walked on the Moon. Preferably you will be able to take me there so I can walk myself, or repeat the act where I can witness it.

See, this is where I 'believe' you are willing to read responses and argue like an adult. I have no way of knowing that is to be true but I'll act under the assumption that it is.

For starters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings .

Also we have plenty of evidence that human beings have been in space for a pretty long time, participating in increasingly more elaborate activities there as our technology allows. We have GPS, satellites orbiting the globe providing communication and TV, there are agencies in different - competing - nations all engaged in a race to extend their presence there as well as private businesses attempting to do the same.

Nothing about science demands that you must be taken to a place or watch a thing happen. In fact that's quite irrelevant since we began with the assumption that the human mind can be tricked - the evidence for some of humanity's greatest leaps has been found on the back of envelopes, notepads and plain text digital files. So if you had the expertise (I don't) you could read the documentation of how the Apollo missions were carried out, what the physics and engineering behind the endeavor were, what the plan was and how it was executed, then you could decide if you are satisfied after all.

That's why hard evidence is needed. It's not not because we're sceptics ready to cast down anything that doesn't fit our narrow definitions of the truth but because without a recreatable chain between observation ("...hey, that's weird...") to conclusion ("oh, so THAT's what happened") there must be steps in between someone else can follow from beginning to end and arrive at the same result.

Hard evidence? Ok, bring me a stone from the Moon and prove to me you didn't just pluck that off the side of the road. As with high level mathematics, some types of proof are not accessible to everyone, because they require certain prerequisites. Some of them are physical (getting access to the stone), some are mental (understanding mathematical proof) and some are psychological/evolutionary (developing the senses and abilities to observe supernatural phenomena). This is why I've said that I'm not interested in discussing the subject, and why convincing anyone is completely futile.

Not all of us are scientists. To give you a counter-example I believe in strong cryptography and I use it on a daily basis both at work in the form of RSA keys, to sign my e-mails with GPG, etc - but I am not a cryptologist myself. The extensive source code however is readily available and has been reviewed by those who are independently and now and then someone founds a flaw (see the shellshock exploit, for instance) in which case they aren't vilified, they are celebrated for that discovery.

That's where I was getting at. Having ones 'beliefs' challenged should be something to be thankful for; it's a crucial part of progress. Science doesn't work because a genius has a great idea and then everyone marvels at it and it's there forever afterwards; it works because a bunch of smart, determined people try to poke holes into it and see how it holds up. If it does, great! If it doesn't then it either collapses or becomes refined, the edges are rounded, the exceptions are noted and it moves forward.

Talk to me about being open minded after you've spent over a decade researching this stuff in depth.

No, I am talking to you now. What were the results of your decades of research? What were your methods? Show me.

Or y'know, don't, and just throw fits at anyone who doesn't immediately agree with you.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Good TV:

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

@Cupcake Lyanna and Arya need to get together and fight crime.

I think you're misunderstanding what Arya has been doing...basically since season 2.

Educate me?

@Glitch Well the problem I've found is I don't always want a whole new topic. Like, the Game of Thrones season is over, there's no point making a whole new thread just for it when we're already discussing shows in general in a thread... such a discussion would be dead a week from now and would stay dead for another (...sigh) 44 weeks.

@surreality said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

I think we're both likely to agree: that's not how you science.

The thing though is, science isn't the way to go because it is, well, science. I mean I can see an argument being plausible in that we might be trying to measure things by the wrong metric. For example trying to use IQ tests based on western arithmetics to tribal people who're not even using numbers is useless as such tests are biased enough in their methodology to produce the wrong result, incorrectly showing perfectly intelligent people who think differently to be less intelligent.

The scientific method is simply the best yardstick we happen to have until a better one comes along. It did serve us well by elevating say, medicine from arbitrary observations jumping to conclusions ('he offended the Gods last week so they sent disease upon him!') into structured, peer-reviewed experiments and a constantly refined hypothesis until new practical approaches became available ('take two pills a day and come see me in a week').

What I mean to say is, I don't want to be a non-believer. That's infertile, it's ironically the opposite of what a scientist should do. Sometimes we have to begin with absurd assumptions completely contrary to our method of thinking to challenge an existing paradigm - there should be no holy cows. A good positive mind enters situations with a neutral mind and works things out from as blank a mental slate as possible else it really is no better than what the witch doctors of old ever did. And sometimes ego gets in the way of even brilliant people, insulting and belittling others engaged in the conversation for having different views than the norm.

So let's say - for the sake of argument - a poltergeist isn't part of a reliable phenomenon. Let's say it can only happen under vague circumstances, when specific combinations of factors are in place and not on demand. In that case it's not the same kind of experiment one can reproduce in a clean lab like we could do with more traditional experiments, and so the methodology itself would need to be altered to account for this anomaly; however it must still be subject to some sort of objective criteria anyway so we can eliminate or add parameters to examine how they interact with what's happening, have measurable results and be observable under machinery of some sort - it might be high definition cameras or carbon paper but there must be something to rely on at least at first.

And more than anything? More than anything this process must be subject to scrutiny and refinement. That's not a new thing! Scientists challenge each other constantly, not because they oppose new findings but because that's how we improve them. We attack notions until they hold up and then we celebrate them - and the attacker doesn't 'lose' credibility for playing that part but, rather, their contributions are arguably as important as the initial research.

By which I mean to say; there is no room, zero room in any of this for defensiveness and emotional indignation. If Newton had posted his papers followed by "... and fuck you guys if you don't believe me!" things would be different these days.

@Glitch said in Spoilers:

It's too soon to talk about spoilers! Siteban!

I'M A REBEL.

We don't have spoiler tags on MSB but they're not fool-proof anyways.

What's an acceptable period of time before we can talk about movies and/or TV episodes after their release?

Two guys in their 20s on the subday on Saturday morning around 10 am. One of them was blasting - and I mean blasting as hard as his Android phone's tiny mono speaker could manage - Russian rap while they were trying to talk loudly enough to be overheard over their own music while ignoring the bewildered dirty looks from everyone else.

Then to add insult to injury they started singing along to the Russian rap for a few minutes.

Bro...

@ThatOneDude said in RL Anger:

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@SG said in RL Anger:

My doctor told me the opposite of this, stay barefoot, to keep them as dry as possible and that putting lotion on them insulates the fungus from drying out.

I think your doctor is full of shit. But, that's just me. I've had plenty of cases of the foot, and moisturizing my feet helped out immensely, along with Lotrimin.

Right, WTF would a doctor know about medicine...

A doctor could still be full of shit. Have you never met a professional who sucks at their job?

@Cupcake Lyanna and Arya need to get together and fight crime.

@wanderer said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

It's not about what I believe in, it's about what I know to be true. I had to know for sure, so I got off my ass and found out.

I don't intend to insult or mock your beliefs, and I have no doubt you believe in this but for some people, myself included, knowing something doesn't mean anything. There are many people who absolutely believe in any number of things so it'd be impossible to sift between 'crazy guy in Utah who believes Obama is an alien' and 'guy who saw some shit and looked into it'. But even so both of those people's testimonies must be held up against the same standard if it's to mean anything for anyone other than themselves.

The difference - for some folks - can only be made up by being able to offer conclusive evidence for a belief to be transferable. If someone thinks something is true they must be able to conclusively demonstrate that somehow to others.

Testimonies just aren't good enough. Not because they are false, intentionally or otherwise, but because our minds are simply not reliable witnesses - ask any cop. We think we see things all the time, we reconstruct what we perceive and memories are dynamically assembled together and not retrieved from a stable source.

That's why hard evidence is needed. It's not not because we're sceptics ready to cast down anything that doesn't fit our narrow definitions of the truth but because without a recreatable chain between observation ("...hey, that's weird...") to conclusion ("oh, so THAT's what happened") there must be steps in between someone else can follow from beginning to end and arrive at the same result.

I'd like to think I've an open mind. If someone can demonstrate precognition works by consistently beating, say, statistical expectations outside the margin of error in a double-blind experiment then I will believe the fuck out of it. But even though I can believe someone is telling the truth as they know it by stating they saw a guy predict outcomes in Vegas twenty times in a row it doesn't mean I am prepared to believe the same thing without that chain.

What's a good argument to loosen my requirements?

Game of Thrones does not fuck around.

@tragedyjones Live like The Rock.

@faraday said in [Request] Policy Template:

I think lightweight policies are best.

There's an additional advantage in those, too, in that players are less likely to play rules lawyer with them and try to discover clever (?) loopholes.

"Oh yeah, I did play an underage character but you said 'with a birthdate more recent than' and my PC was actually born a century ago so we're good!"

Keep it simple, short and flexible.

@silentsophia I looked for a Yoda Funko so hard. There's none!

What the hell people!

Game of Thrones auditions. Some, especially the Stark girl actresses, were quite different!

@Collective said in [Request] Policy Template:

I think I have a skewed viewpoint on what constitutes 'too long', which is suddenly worrying me about running a MUSH with an original theme now.

Most people on a MU* don't like to read unfun things. It's a fallacy people like @EmmahSue are raging about when it comes to folks not reading their descriptions, or the rooms' descriptions, or the wiki theme write-ups they took hours/days to painstakingly prepare or anything else you can name. If it's not fun it won't even be glanced at.

I'll give you two guesses about how much fun policy documents are to read.

And yes, original themes tend to not be as popular as well tried ones. That will most likely mean your game will be frequented by fewer people than if you ran a variation on something folks are used to. It's not a detriment for some ( @Coin might have something to say about that) and it is for others, but that's all it does - you might still get great players who love it, just not... as many of them.

But that's got nothing to do with a policy template either way.

@Monogram said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

Are talking specifically ghosts, spirits, demons, vampires, etc? That kind of supernatural?

Or does aliens, UFOs, bigfoot and other such things?

Dunno. If it does to you and you want to talk about it then sure, why not?