You guys are getting extremely off-topic. Candle and killer, cut out the non-sd quality bullshit. Arguing between each other about blind people and arsenic is completely missing the point. Responses like 'o what about anti gravity' and 'they aren't blind' and 'whatever' and 'only completely deaf people can't hear' do not belong here. Pointing the obvious and ignoring the other person's true point, making weak arguments with no backup reasoning or sources, or even taking the time to laugh off a response of another that you don't think is worthy of a response - all of these things do not belong here.

I'm not going to delete or edit either of your posts, but I'm going to give each of you a minor penalty and give you a warning. If you continue to go off track and play loose with the SD rules then I'll just start deleting your posts.

"for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" well i would go so far to say for everything there is an equal and opposite thing. We have recently discovered anti-matter and not that long ago black holes as well. Give the particle accerator time and we will learn even more in the next 10 years than we have in the past 100. Just because we haven't found it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You guys go into all these specifics such that have all been proven and then you say even if we hadn't discovered 2+2=4 2+2 would still = 4. I guess this doesn't fit the bill but ohwell if you can't accept that i'm fine with it.


wasn't bashing all religion i was bashing crack pot religions. I guess you overlooked that it said religions and not religion. Secondly I see the two concepts as one. Maybe the dictionary definitions differ but in the over all view the impact of your life i believe is much more important than whether you are alive or dead. My view i guess.

well Right now i guess the big rip theory is a favorite that one day the universe will be moving so fast that it will rip to shreds. If this is true then that would be going faster than light. But from what i have read The space between glaxies is expanding therefore the galaxies aren't actually moving away so it just seems like they are. Tachyons are another theoretical way of getting arround this speed. By having negative mass you can go faster than light. Although since they have not been observed they are only theoretical. The final way is much more realistic since speed is realative don't move the ship move space.



You are assuming that we will not have figured out how to convert heat energy back into energy to power himself up again.

I'm sorry you feel that we are discussing nothing of value. I don't know how i'm suppose to respond if my responses weren't good enough. Was going to the original point that there is no absolute truth or one that we can be certain is absolute. Ignoring a post with so many examples imo doesn't work. I guess i needed more quotes to back up what i said. anyhow i will do my best to conform to the rules. This isn't the easiest discussion to have based on the rules of serious discussion since the idea we are talking about is true but most of us pretty much already take it that these are facts based on what we have observed.


eh vrael if i'm a nerd for being on a starcraft map forum because i like to play, make, and read other's maps i guess thats your feeling. I would consider myself more of a game enthusiast. I could even go for game geek. I only pop into serious discussion when i'm bored of just looking at maps and playing starcraft.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 29 2009, 12:59 am by killer_sss.

Killer, more examples doesn't help if the argument is nonsensical and each example is flawed in some way.

Firstly, you display almost absolutely no understanding or comprehension of the laws of physics save anecdotal laws that one could deem to have passed in to the realm of "common knowledge." Particle physics is simply far more complicated than you give it credit for, and until you understand why interactions work, and why gravitons (if they exist) have no antiparticle, you're not going to be able to make that argument, and when you do (if ever) learn the required background knowledge, you won't be wanting to make that argument anyways.

Second, you say that you bash "crack pot" religions, yet you had just made the claim that "just because we haven't discovered it doesn't make it false" which is pretty much committing the same fallacy as someone who invents a random religion would be.

Thirdly, then, the big rip theory isn't really the leading one anymore, from what I know, and particles that travel faster than light also go backwards in time, and even then it's really just theory. That being said, you rather randomly made the assertion that particles within the universe would be moving faster than light relative to eachother, which, to say the least, completely unfounded. Note that since there is no absolute frame of reference when dealing with special relativity, we see that even if as stationary observer saw particles both movign away from eachother at lightspeed, each particle would only have the other moving away at the speed of light. No offense or anything, but if you're trying to prove einstein wrong for whatever preconceived notion you have about the universe, go get a degree in physics.

That is alot of reading and it's getting pretty late, so I'm going to try explain what I think about the "2+2=4" argument. Now, numbers are like a measurement, we use numbers to measure quantities just like you use "feet" or metres to measure length, but they in themselves aren't something. Now if you say had 2 planks of wood each being a foot long, you lay them end on end, how long is the extended plank? they just can't be anything but 2 feet.

Most things that aren't either matter or energy, are a law or measurement. Like even a tree could be a measurement, to tell how far away something is (sorry for lack of analogies). A measurement or law is used to define the truth, and if you learn about and understand all the laws and measurements then by all means you should reach the truth of truths. What is the truth, though? To explain it is everything we see is the truth, a chair is the truth, but anything that does not abide by this is a lie (something that can't be explained by laws or measurements). Your job is to remove all lies from your thinking thus freeing you to understand the truth. A Tip: the truth always abides by certain laws, whereas a lie does not.

I hope this has helped you.

Or, it can be .6096 meters. First off, you haven't made an argument here. You don't have a point to this explanation, and haven't shown how what you "think about the "2+2=4" argument" relates to the larger subject of knowing something absolutely. If something can be either 2 feet or .6096 meters, that is clearly an attribute of a tangible object subjective to the system of measurement itself since the quantity present depends soley on the measurement system used, which is completely separate from the numerical system itself. A quantity in itself is a concept, and hence something. Say we forgot all we knew about math and accepted that numbers are just measurements, how does this relate to absolute knowledge? See what I mean here?

Here, you're confusing concepts again. The length of a tree could be used as a system of measurement to measure other lengths, but a tree is a tree, not a measurement. If I hold up a box of swedish fish, you can't say "that box of swedish fish is .53 trees" because there is no common attribute, but you can say that "that skyscraper is as tall as 138.2 trees stacked on top of one another", because they share the attribute of 1 dimensional spacial length.
Additionally, your definition of "truth" is nonsense. You're completely disregarding hundreds of years of philosophical inquiry into the nature of how we come to know things, and while I am not opposed to new ideas, a decent respect to the work of our predecessors requires that you put more thought into the matter.

Because you are either new to the site or coming back from a long period of slumber, either way I don't know for certain that you are familiar with the atmosphere and standards of SD, so I am going to break my mold of simply deleting low quality posts, and refer you to the SD Rules in general: http://www.staredit.net/topic/6552/
In particular, I would like to draw your attention to rule number 5.
While it does not explicitly state so, it does imply that an active level of brain activity is required for good posting in SD topics, and I advise you to do a great deal more thinking (and perhaps reading, Googling, posting elsewhere), before you make your next post in SD.

One reason we can't tell if there's absolute truth is that there is no way to determine if different people's definitions of something are the same. When I see white, it might actually be what you'd define as white. My blue might be your green. When I say "green," how can we be sure we're thinking of the same color? We could actually speak different languages, but what I'm writing makes sense in both, even though the meanings are different. However, there is absolute truth in math. If you take two apples, then take two more, you will always have four total. Now, it's just a matter of if you can actually tell if you have two pairs of two apples each. If you actually have four apples, you have four, two pairs of two, no getting around it.

When I say 'green' I am thinking of light in between the wavelength of 520nm and 570nm. If you aren't, you're wrong. That is the absolute definition of the colour green.

Except, math isn't immune to the issue of the way we perceive. Just as we cannot be sure what each being defines as "Green" or "Blue" we also cannot be sure if everyone defines numbers in the same way. For example, If you haven't been taught the standard counting system (1,2,3), then you might believe that when I say that there are two apples that there are actually twice as many apples as I have told to you.

I'm going to tell an example.

"I have a Pool Table in my basement."

I will also say that for this example, the following things are truths:

•A pool table is a table in which people are able to play pool on.
•We both define pool to be the same game.
•You have no reason to believe that I wouldn't have a pool table. You actually know that I am a skilled pool player, so a pool table is a reasonable thing for me to own.

Now- If someone asks you tomorrow, "Does Norm have a pool table in his basement?"

What is the answer?
You have been taught that the pool table exists, and it is located in my basement, just like how you have been taught the definitions of each color. To you, the following information is truth: "Norm has a pool table in his basement"

So when asked that, you would probably say "Yes, he does" or "I believe he does"
Not a big deal right? Well, let's say that I don't have a pool table. If the same person were to ask me if I had a pool table in my basement I'd say no. Well here's the tricky part.

"Yes, Norm has a pool table in his basement" "No, Norm does not have a pool table in his basement"

Both of these pieces of information are both true and false depending on where they are placed. In my mind, the second piece of information is truth. To you, the first piece of information is truth. If a stranger went up to you and let's say you have no reason to believe them. They tell you that I in fact do not have a pool table in my basement. Did they just lie to you? If not, did they lie to you in your perception? He both lied and didn't lie to you depending on who's to judge.

My point is that there is that absolute truth cannot exist as long as more than one being is able to process information. For some giggles, try replacing the pool table in my basement to something more serious like the existence of a religious being to see how serious this can get =)

Norm, your example has little to do with absolute truth (unless I'm really missing something big here). All it illustrates is that some things have a liklihood of being true while others do not.

Syphon, first off with respect to the general trend of your posts in SD; while appearing to contain factual information, your "facts" are uncited, and secondly, nothing entitles you to be the be-all-and-end-all. I am not going to tolerate any more posts of this type from you, unless they adhere to the rules (namely, including citations, and being reasonable). If you have a problem with this, don't respond in the topic, PM me (or Dapper I suppose).

Secondly, your definition is inherently contradictory, because it includes a spectrum of green colors and not a single green, while attempting to define a single green. 520nm light is closer to blue and 570nm light is closer to yellow on the light spectrum (http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/Wavelengths_for_Colors.html), and are therefore not the same color. Under your definition both of these colors would be the same "green" while simultaneously having different properties.

You must not have read it correctly or something because it specifically states that (absolute) truth cannot exist because different pieces of information are learned to be truth by different beings. This applies to all information including the flow of time, philosophy, religion, scientific data and everything else you can think of.

In other words, we cannot perceive actual reality because in order to do so, one would have to be omniscient in terms of all possible realities in all possible time lines from the perspective of every being capable of processing information. (Which by the way, is impossible).

This is a "Non-Sequitur" specifically, affirming the consequent: