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Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 11:31 am
by Interbane
Why? What is the scientific explanation?
As opposed to the non-scientific explanation? Science doesn't need to be referenced, but you may if you wish. There are a million possible natural causes to the state of your thoughts in that moment. You cannot know what the cause was, and neither can I.

The question is, why do you think it was magic?

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:31 pm
by stahrwe
Interbane wrote:
Why? What is the scientific explanation?
As opposed to the non-scientific explanation? Science doesn't need to be referenced, but you may if you wish. There are a million possible natural causes to the state of your thoughts in that moment. You cannot know what the cause was, and neither can I.

The question is, why do you think it was magic?
I don't think it was magic. This is a site devoted to scientific explanations. So... EXPLAIN.

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 2:27 pm
by Interbane
I don't think it was magic. This is a site devoted to scientific explanations. So... EXPLAIN.
What happens if the memory remains forever unexplained to you? I can tell you that I can't explain it now, and will likely never be able to explain it. Perhaps no one on Earth can explain what happened. Perhaps no one on Earth could have explained what happened if they were there in the room with every instrument available to science.

And if all those perhaps' are true, if we are utterly unable to explain what happened, then we are still agnostic towards it. The same place we started from. The same place we'll remain forever. The same position we hold for most of the things we hear and see in our lives. There is still a great deal of justified knowledge and justified dismissal, but for most things we hear we simply don't have the time to critically examine them.

My definition of magic is anything that claims to be supernatural. The reasoning is based on how the terms are resolved. What I mean is, I could say that "my definition of magic is anything which isn't natural". But the problem is that the position defended when worded that way is the "disbeliever" position, rather than the agnostic position. Which would be dishonest and incorrect. There is a slightly narrower category of supernatural claims which are ruled out by affirmation of the opposite(there is justified knowledge that directly contradicts it).

But if you claim something is "supernatural", you have just unknowingly committed the argument from ignorance fallacy. Because the explanation "supernatural" is no explanation at all. It is a placeholder term for "I don't know how it happened, but it can't be explained". To say that it's "god's will" does not change the underlying assumptions. Namely that whatever subjective experiences qualify as evidence for you are not transferrable, thus not able to be corroborated.

For quite a few decades, a precedent has been built. It's that formerly mysterious experiential phenomenon(sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, hallucination, synesthesia, pareidolia, color blindness, etc) all have brain activity which corresponds precisely to the phenomenon in a way that explains it naturally. In synesthesia for examples, the degree of miswiring observed in the fusiform gyrus directly corresponds to the degree of synesthesia.

If you look at the overall picture, you see a pattern. An ambiguous soup of mental phenomenon are individually illuminated one by one, and have been for a long time. There is much which has become understood, and much which we have yet to understand. The precedent(using inductive reasoning) is that mysterious mental phenomenon will be explained in the future. That is not an absolute precedent, of course, because we only have induction to work with. But it is quite a bit more than baseline. Baseline meaning the agnostic stance.
For those who think that nothing beyond the natural world ever happens I submit the following:
The context of everything I wrote above is necessary to understand what I'm about to say. Your anecdote is a claim that something supernatural happened. But you've provided nothing to actually substantiate the claim. You expect the claim to speak for itself, as though our inability to understand it means that is must be supernatural by default. That is fallacious thinking. Your "experience" falls directly in line with the category of unexplained experiential phenomenon that is losing ground to the advances of modern science. As I've explained before, every claim within that category already has support in favor of it being explained naturally. This support is mentioned above. This was fun to write, but please actually read it in an attempt to understand it. I do the same with your posts, as you can often tell by the details I regurgitate.

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 4:41 pm
by johnson1010
It's pretty simple, Stahrwe.

it's happened to me too, and it is going to happen again. There's no supernatural element to it. You spend a lot of time with a person, you get to know that person.

My wife and i do this kind of thing all the time. Not only are we spending a great deal of time together, our interests also share a great deal of overlap.

It is actually pretty likely that we will be thinking of the same thing in a given couple of hours. especially if we have recently observed that thing together, or seperately, but at the same time (tv show. different buildings), or read the same articles online, as we both frequent similar sites.

all of these things, coupled with our desire to talk with one another about our interests lead inevitably to bringing up the same topic at the same time. or just answering the question we know our partner will ask. Or picking up the phone and hearing the voice of the person you were JUST about to call.

That happens all the time. And none of it is magic.

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 10:16 am
by EndlessLaymon
Pretty cool video, isn't science a wonderful thing.

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2011 8:27 am
by johnson1010
Two things.

What's the aurora borealis?

http://www.wimp.com/borealisaurora/


and this mechanical calculator is awesome.

http://www.wimp.com/curtacalculator/


Thanks, Science!

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:18 am
by johnson1010
Math is for more than counting beans.

http://www.wimp.com/fibonaccisequence/

http://www.wimp.com/algorithmsworld/

Thanks, Science!

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 10:39 am
by johnson1010
What chu got, a battery and some wire?

Boom. Engine.

http://www.wimp.com/simplestmotor/

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 10:44 am
by johnson1010
Neodymium,

Y U NO obey gravity?!

http://www.wimp.com/magnetspipe/

Re: Thanks, Science!

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:19 pm
by johnson1010
budget cuts on the horizon.

What's that mean for science in america?


http://io9.com/5834462/what-is-public-s ... ou-need-it