Happy Face

Aye, like Parky says, the roots of skepticism can be traced back to the early 5th Century BC. Zeno of Elea, (c. 490 BC ) put forward three paradoxes concerning the nature of motion, and questioning the reality of what we see around us. Plato, (c. 428-348 BC) in the seventh book of The Republic relates the Allegory of the cave Descartes (1596–1650) employs a version of methodological skepticism, the first precept of which he states is "never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such". Hume (1711–1776) argued for two kinds of reasoning: probable and demonstrative (Hume's fork), and applied these to the skeptical argument that reality is but an illusion. Kant (1724–1804) was an advocate of Transcendental Idealism, that there are limits on what can be understood, and what we see as reality is merely how things appear to us, not how those things are in and of themselves. Hegel (1770–1831) proposed a conception of knowledge, mind and reality in which the mind itself creates external forms and objects that stand outside of it or opposed to it. Husserl (1859–1938) proposed a way of looking at objects by examining how we "constitute" them as (seemingly) real objects, rather than simply figments of our imagination. In this Phenomenological standpoint, the object ceases to be "external", with mere indicators about its nature, its essence arising from the relationship between the object and the perceiver. Heidegger (1889–1976) in Being and Time questions of the meaning of Being, and distinguishes it from any specific thing "'Being' is not something like a being". According to Heidegger, this sense of being precedes any notions of which beings exist, as it is a primary construct. The Matrix (1999) an American science fiction action film in which a computer programmer "Neo" is drawn into a rebellion against the machines that simulate existence, involving other people who have been freed from the "dream world" and into reality.

I've graphed it for you

19 of the 23 games we took the lead in delivered a win (83%) also... 4 of the 65 points earned in total were from a losing position (6%) 11 of the 46 points dropped in total were from a leading position (24%)

"bell whiff"

"look"? "too"? "there"? CT being following city?

Yes that's what I meant when I said "inevitable demise".

Well that's the same if you get shot in the back of the head by Chris Partlow tomorrow. Our entire existence is meaningless whether it's a reality or not.

Makes extinction all the more of a burning issue. We generally look at natural phenomena like asteroids, climate change, disease, the sun dying etc. as causing our inevitable demise, but we've been fine for hundreds of thousands of years on those criteria, so chances are we will be for a while. Man made impacts like weaponry and worsening climate change increase our chances of a faster demise. But being a simulation would make our odds much worse. The owner might decide they need the server space for porn.....or have a power cut. Could happen tomorrow. There's much more at the link in the OP than what I quoted.

Points earned from Behind... 1 Villa (a) 1 Spurs (h) 1 Man U (a) 1 Mackems (h) Points dropped from a lead... 3 Liverpool (a) 3 Fulham (a) 2 Wolves (h) 3 Arsenal (a) Much prefer to hold onto leads than pull back deficits.

This is from an Oxford professor by the way...not one of your ex-Coventry goalkeepers trying to make a few bob that Parky likes.

Interesting notion though. We can't be (relatively) far off producing fully conscious simulations can we? Another hundred years developing World of Warcraft and Artificial intelligence and processing power....you'd have to be close to pressing start on the game and watching a world grow out of it. Either any civilisation geting close to that becomes extinct first.....or we're one of the simulations that's been created....and some snotty 13 year old will switch us off to go for his tea soon.

Pulled this out of the terrorism thread cos it's a subject of it's own.

Bostrom: The simulation argument addresses whether we are in fact living in a simulation as opposed to some basement level physical reality. It tries to show that at least one of three propositions is true, but it doesn't tell us which one. Those three are: 1) Almost all civilizations like ours go extinct before reaching technological maturity. 2) Almost all technologically mature civilizations lose interest in creating ancestor simulations: computer simulations detailed enough that the simulated minds within them would be conscious. 3) We're almost certainly living in a computer simulation. The full argument requires sophisticated probabilistic reasoning, but the basic argument is fairly easy to grasp without resorting to mathematics. Suppose that the first proposition is false, which would mean that some significant portion of civilizations at our stage eventually reach technological maturity. Suppose that the second proposition is also false, which would mean that some significant fraction of those (technologically mature) civilizations retain an interest in using some non-negligible fraction of their resources for the purpose of creating these ancestor simulations. You can then show that it would be possible for a technologically mature civilization to create astronomical numbers of these simulations. So if this significant fraction of civilizations made it through to this stage where they decided to use their capabilities to create these ancestor simulations, then there would be many more simulations created than there are original histories, meaning that almost all observers with our types of experiences would be living in simulations. Going back to the observation selection effect, if almost all kinds of observers with our kinds of experiences are living in simulations, then we should think that we are living in a simulation, that we are one of the typical observers, rather than one of the rare, exceptional basic level reality observers. The connection to existential risk is twofold. First, the first of those three possibilities, that almost all civilizations like ours go extinct before reaching technological maturity obviously bears directly on how much existential risk we face. If proposition 1 is true then the obvious implication is that we will succumb to an existential catastrophe before reaching technological maturity. The other relationship with existential risk has to do with proposition 3: if we are living in a computer simulation then there are certain exotic ways in which we might experience an existential catastrophe which we wouldn't fear if we are living in basement level physical reality. The simulation could be shut off, for instance. Or there might be other kinds of interventions in our simulated reality. Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction

Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success. In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro. Then, the FBI yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives. None of these cases entail the FBI’s learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it. They all involve the FBI’s purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them.

The Wikileaks video Parky posted should be ingrained on the public conscience....like the Zapruder footage, the tiananmen square protester or the Phan Thi Kim Phuc photo.

4:30 to the end is my favorite 1 minute or so of music this year. Those two separate 1 second piano clashes make me smile a great deal more than something so small should.

Might replace the Real Time with Bill Maher podcast on my rotation if it's that good. That's been utter gash this year. Nothing but Republican primaries shite.

"Please continue to stand by, you will hear some silence while you wait" Do you hear silence?

Daft innit, I was looking for a Bayern Munich top (just in case) and they were about that. Think I'll go for a track top instead..

Not a workable solution. No use at all to the people on the ground when the plane comes down on top of them.

No but I like John Oliver so I'll have to give it a go. Cheers for the heads up.

"When do i get to rubber-dinghy rapids?"

It's funny to watch Obama run on his tough on terrorism, drone dropping, US children killing, Osama shooting record...when that's exactly the opposite of what he ran on when Bush was in power. Funnier still to see Dems cheer him on when they hammered Bush for far less.

Can't remember who provided this link, but it was someone on here and I appreciated it.... http://www.saveyoutube.com/

Haven't started one of these for a while..... Seems to be that as there's little threat from any external groups, the CIA/FBI have taken a firm grip on the terrorism plot business inside and out of the US, planning their own schemes which they can then scupper and claim as a great victory in the anti-terror fight, and vindicator of the surveilence state. The news today that the latest underpants bomber was actually a CIA operative is another in a long line highlighted by the New York Times a few weeks back... http://www.nytimes.c...&pagewanted=all Valid counter-terrorism or dodgy propaganda generation?