http://methodicalmusings.com One man's martyr is another man's asshole. Which are you? Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:51:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://www.gravatar.com/blavatar/ab731d9fe7ed35b63112aa308092df00?s=96&d=http://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.png http://methodicalmusings.com http://methodicalmusings.com/2010/06/27/i-have-seen-it-done/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2010/06/27/i-have-seen-it-done/#comments Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:07:41 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=752 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2010/06/27/i-have-seen-it-done/feed/ 4 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/12/24/snowflake/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/12/24/snowflake/#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:27:56 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=674 Discovering that it actually makes logical sense for the universe to basically come from what our minds would consider 'nothing' has been quite a mental trip for me. Despite the fact that I feel confident that I can lay out the psychological reasons why it is difficult for me to accept I still find myself repulsed by the idea. I know that repulsion to an idea does not make the idea impossible and that is where I felt I just needed to resign myself to the conflict. However, a recent thought popped into my head that gave me a completely new and beautiful perspective - and I thought I would share it. There seems to be a connection between the theists perception of rarity and their confident assertion the universe and particularly human beings were designed. Let's try to ignore the fact that if life was common in the universe they would argue that it is common because obviously God designed the universe for life and yet when faced with how rare life is they get all goosebumpy and argue this is evidence that it could not have just happened. To be quite honest, I grant them that life does not just 'happen'. We never see things that just 'happen' because there is always a process of nature or some unknown force or intelligent being behind every event. However, it is a categorical mistake to assert that a being and not a process is behind something we know little about. Consider the vastness of the universe... infinite stretches of space. Trillions of stars and planets and comets and black holes and galaxies and endless combinations of all the above. Now consider something else. What precise conditions are required to produce a single snowflake? You have to have an atmosphere the right temperature and with the exact right humidity. There has to be a planet with water and a star at just the right distance to produce air currents. The atmosphere has to have just the right sized dust particles so that water can condense into tiny frozen particles. There must be a clash of cold air with warm air to produce the storm. The list could go on. The point is simple: in our universe a single snowflake is a miracle. For all we know, ours is the only planet that has just the right conditions to produce a snowflake. But when snowflakes happen... they happen millions at a time! Now consider: the snowflake is generated by completely natural processes which can all be identified and even reproduced. Then it clicked. Life is like a snowflake. With just the right conditions, why could nature not produce a life generator just as it can produce a snowflake generator? Just consider all the possibilities that nature may hold: the combinations of conditions we cannot even grasp or imagine yet. The right mixtures of temperatures, elements, atmospheres, lakes, genetic material, proteins... and on and on. And now it makes sense to me. All those scientists slaving away in their labs trying to find the right conditions to produce life. They aren't stupid, they are like the first scientists who were trying to analyze the right conditions to produce a snowflake. Imagine that a million years from now a civilization finds records of our stories of snowflakes, but the atmosphere can no longer produce them for some reason. Imagine how hard it would be for their scientists to create a snowflake generator without being able to watch snowflake generation happening naturally. That is similar to what scientists are trying to do in the lab to produce the right conditions to generate life. We don't even know what the simplest life form possibility is, but for all we know at some point in the past natural conditions were reached so precise and so rare that a life generator was born, spewing out little living creatures en mass like snowflakes - probably one of the rarest events in the universe. And shoot... the universe itself may be like a snowflake... perhaps with just the right conditions of "nothingness" entire universe systems can be spewed out en mass by a universe generating cloud of nothingness. So it happened, in that one moment walking down the sidewalk - watching that rare and beautiful phenomena we call snow that I often take for granted - that I was filled with awe at just how precious and rare life is. - Josh]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/12/24/snowflake/feed/ 6 Josh Snowflake Lets go Exploring http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/11/25/gut-reason-scams-and-intelligence/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/11/25/gut-reason-scams-and-intelligence/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:51:44 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=655 Contradiction? So a couple weeks ago Lucian pointed out a contradiction (of sorts) in my thinking where in one case I pointed out that you can't trust your gut because the truth can easily go against our intuition. However, in another post I pointed out that we should trust our gut. I've mulled this over quite a bit and the wine is almost ready to serve. Here are my thoughts. Gut is for taking Action - not for determining Truth If we want to determine truth we must use a set of tools designed to keep our hunches / gut from biasing the conclusion. Experience teaches us that our current hunches are untrustworthy for determining truth because they could be built on information that is inaccurate. In many ways, I think this is why many people fall in love with detective stories. Good detectives are individuals who gather information and try not to act at all until all the information is in. In other words, though their initial hunches may be guiding their gathering of the information, they recognize that a hunch is not truth and discipline their minds to distinguish between the two. Our gut is a good guide if the information we currently have is accurate. However, our gut is a horrible guide in determining truth and for that we must use reason. Gut and reason work together. Our gut informs us and drives us toward acting out on the information we have. Our reason calms us to gather more information and critically analyze it. In this way, our gut and reason are twins in the same system and both must be employed. Scams Leverage the Gut against Reason Scams work by shortening the time you have to make a decision and increasing the risk if you choose wrong. At that point your gut screams at you to accept the offer being made because the risk of rejecting it so that you can determine the truthfulness of what is being said is too high for comfort. By increasing the threat if you choose wrong, scams make you afraid to take the time to determine truth. During the interim your gut may be screaming at you to accept the offer. Is your gut right? Probably - if what is being said is true! Religion has employed this system effectively in the past be threatening imminent social isolation, hell, wrath of God, plagues, disasters, conquering by an enemy nation, etc. if you do not either believe X or do Y. By saying the doom is imminent, the speaker is indicating that there is not enough time to determine the truthfulness of what is being said. As such, only the most courageous individuals will question it because they are the ones willing to take the risk to determine truth. A Definition of Intelligence The cool thing about this is that it gives a good way to rate a person's intelligence. An intelligent person is someone who is faster than his peers at determining the truth. As such, this person's gut and actions will be more accurate sooner than his or her peers because the information he or she possesses will be more accurate sooner. The other cool thing is that this means intelligence can be learned by practice. By working your mind to be faster at determining the truth you can increase your ability to spot scams. At the same time you will decrease your anxiety in life because you will not easily fall victim to inaccurate threats. And that's how it works! - Josh]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/11/25/gut-reason-scams-and-intelligence/feed/ 4 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/20/no-god-on-twitter/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/20/no-god-on-twitter/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:33:48 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=599 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/20/no-god-on-twitter/feed/ 4 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/19/bible-hermeneutics-a-critique-of-the-concept-itself/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/19/bible-hermeneutics-a-critique-of-the-concept-itself/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:42:08 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=592 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/19/bible-hermeneutics-a-critique-of-the-concept-itself/feed/ 15 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/18/gods-word-a-critique-of-the-concept-itself/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/18/gods-word-a-critique-of-the-concept-itself/#comments Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:23:40 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=571 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/18/gods-word-a-critique-of-the-concept-itself/feed/ 17 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/my-new-journey/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/my-new-journey/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:56:14 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=560 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/my-new-journey/feed/ 3 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/i-solved-life/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/i-solved-life/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:13:33 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=556 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/i-solved-life/feed/ 2 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/why-we-dont-like-to-admit-we-are-wrong/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/why-we-dont-like-to-admit-we-are-wrong/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:36:12 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=553 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/12/why-we-dont-like-to-admit-we-are-wrong/feed/ 4 Josh http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/06/i-dont-like-thinking-about-this-shit-anymore/ http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/06/i-dont-like-thinking-about-this-shit-anymore/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:26:53 +0000 Joshua http://methodicalmusings.com/?p=536 ]]> http://methodicalmusings.com/2009/10/06/i-dont-like-thinking-about-this-shit-anymore/feed/ 8 Josh