i think i would be pretty ignorant to think that in such a large expanse that is our universe there would be no life else where.
therefore i would say aliens are real whether they visit here is another question.
Ghosts, Alien life, Bigfoot type 'mythic' creatures.
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kornkidcrazy
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Thats happens to me too. Like I have dreams and usually something bad happens. I wake up and forget all about it until later when that situations arrives. I think to myself that I've seen what is going on in a dream before and I get Deja Vu. So I can avoid bad situations sometimes. As for aliens, I believe there is intelligent life somewhere, but i'm not 100% due to the lack of evidence. When I see some aliens, I'll believe 100%.Blarg-Blarg-Blarg! wrote:I believe ghosts are real, cuz B4, my granny had a dream that she was hit by a car for a week. In real life, the same position, she pulled over, and a speeding car went passed where she was.
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kornkidcrazy
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You do understand the nature of the human mind, correct? What your eyes see and what your brain sees are not always the same, and what you "know" is entirely dictated by what your brain interpreted, which can be inaccurate. You certainly do believe it, I have no doubt, but the kind of people who claim they are sure that what their mind saw and what their eyes saw are identical are ignorant. You cannot make that claim, because you cannot know without multiple instances of occurrence from multiple sources. That is the nature of evidence, that it can be examined, put to tests for authenticity, and so on. The nature of science as a whole rests upon these principles, and, objectively speaking, you are not capable of claiming what was there. You may have seen it, or thought you saw it, rather, but that does not mean it was there. The brain dictates everything we see, hear, do, and everything else. You are subject to your brain's power. It is what you are, and it can be wrong.
Have a while?
Have a while?
tl;dr: No, you don't know what you saw. You believe what you saw.Richard Dawkins wrote: The human brain runs first-class simulation software. Our eyes don't present to our brains a faithful photograph of what is out there, or an accurate movie of what is going on through time. Our brains construct a continuously updated model: updated by coded pulses chattering along the optic nerve, but constructed nevertheless. Optical illusions are vivid reminders of this. A major class of illusions, of which the Necker Cube is an example, arise because the sense data that the brain receives are compatible with two alternative models of reality. The brain, having no basis for choosing between them, alternates, and we experience a series of flips from one internal model to the other. The picture we are looking at appears, almost literally, to flip over and become something else.
The simulation software in the brain is especially adept at constructing faces and voices. I have on my windowsill a plastic mask of Einstein. When seen from the front, it looks like a solid face, not surprisingly. What is surprising is that, when seen from behind - the hollow side - it also looks like a solid face, and our perception of it is very odd indeed. As the viewer moves around, the face seems to follow - and not in the weak, unconvincing sense that the Mona Lisa's eyes are said to follow you. The hollow mask really really looks as though it is moving. People who haven't previously seen the illusion gasp with amazement. Even stranger, if the mask is mounted on a slowly rotating turntable, it appears to turn in the correct direction when you are looking at the solid side, but in the opposite direction when the hollow side comes into view. The result is that, when you watch the transition from one side to the other, the coming side appears to 'eat' the going side. It is a stunning illusion, well worth going to some trouble to see. Sometimes you can get surprisingly close to the hollow face and still not see that it is 'really' hollow. When you do see it, again there is a sudden flip, which may be reversible.
Why does it happen? There is no trick in the construction of the mask. Any hollow mask will do it. The trickery is all in the brain of the beholder. The internal simulating software receives data indicating the presence of a face, perhaps nothing more than a pair of eyes, a nose and a mouth in approximately the right places. Having received these sketchy clues, the brain does the rest. The face simulation software kicks into action and it constructs a fully solid model of a face, even though the reality presented to the eyes is a hollow mask. The illusion of rotation in the wrong direction comes about because (it's quite hard, but if you think it through carefully you will confirm it) reverse rotation is the only way to make sense of the optical data when a hollow mask rotates while being perceived to be a solid mask.48 It is like the illusion of a rotating radar dish that you sometimes see at airports. Until the brain flips to the correct model of the radar dish, an incorrect model is seen rotating in the wrong direction but in a weirdly cockeyed way.
I say all this just to demonstrate the formidable power of the brain's simulation software. It is well capable of constructing 'visions' and 'visitations' of the utmost veridical power. To simulate a ghost or an angel or a Virgin Mary would be child's play to software of this sophistication. And the same thing works for hearing. When we hear a sound, it is not faithfully transported up the auditory nerve and relayed to the brain as if by a high-fidelity Bang and Olufsen. As with vision, the brain constructs a sound model, based upon continuously updated auditory nerve data. That is why we hear a trumpet blast as a single note, rather than as the composite of pure-tone harmonics that gives it its brassy snarl. A clarinet playing the same note sounds 'woody', and an oboe sounds 'reedy', because of different balances of harmonics. If you carefully manipulate a sound synthesizer to bring in the separate harmonics one by one, the brain hears them as a combination of pure tones for a short while, until its simulation software 'gets it', and from then on we experience only a single note of pure trumpet or oboe or whatever it is. The vowels and consonants of speech are constructed in the brain in the same kind of way, and so, at another level, are higher-order phonemes and words.
Once, as a child, I heard a ghost: a male voice murmuring, as if in recitation or prayer. I could almost, but not quite, make out the words, which seemed to have a serious, solemn timbre. I had been told stories of priest holes in ancient houses, and I was a little frightened. But I got out of bed and crept up on the source of the sound. As I got closer, it grew louder, and then suddenly it 'flipped' inside my head. I was now close enough to discern what it really was. The wind, gusting through the keyhole, was creating sounds which the simulation software in my brain had used to construct a model of male speech, solemnly intoned. Had I been a more impressionable child, it is possible that I would have 'heard' not just unintelligible speech but particular words and even sentences. And had I been both impressionable and religiously brought up, I wonder what words the wind might have spoken.
On another occasion, when I was about the same age, I saw a giant round face gazing, with unspeakable malevolence, out through the window of an otherwise ordinary house in a seaside village. In trepidation, I approached until I was close enough to see what it really was: just a vaguely face-like pattern created by the chance fall of the curtains. The face itself, and its evil mien, had been constructed in my fearful child's brain. On 11 September 2001, pious people thought they saw the face of Satan in the smoke rising from the Twin Towers: a superstition backed by a photograph which was published on the Internet and widely circulated.
Constructing models is something the human brain is very good at. When we are asleep it is called dreaming; when we are awake we call it imagination or, when it is exceptionally vivid, hallucination. As Chapter 10 will show, children who have 'imaginary friends' sometimes see them clearly, exactly as if they were real. If we are gullible, we don't recognize hallucination or lucid dreaming for what it is and we claim to have seen or heard a ghost; or an angel; or God; or - especially if we happen to be young, female and Catholic - the Virgin Mary. Such visions and manifestations are certainly not good grounds for believing that ghosts or angels, gods or virgins, are actually there.
Indeed. Even if you assumed we had a one-in-a-billion chance at life, statistically there would be another billion planets with the capability to support life. The key is bridging the three gaps to getting intelligent life, which our planet was able to do.
Go read The God Delusion, if not for religious reasons, for scientific and evolutionary reasons.
Go read The God Delusion, if not for religious reasons, for scientific and evolutionary reasons.
Agreed. that proved many good points in this arguement.Tural wrote:Indeed. Even if you assumed we had a one-in-a-billion chance at life, statistically there would be another billion planets with the capability to support life. The key is bridging the three gaps to getting intelligent life, which our planet was able to do.
Go read The God Delusion, if not for religious reasons, for scientific and evolutionary reasons.
I find myself agreeing fully.