Big Brother

It's really not fair to make me choose between Fear and Loathing and American History X. 1998 was a damn good year for movies.

Rank me, good sir!

In the near future, people with nukes will find that their nuclear stockpiles will decrease whether they like it or not. Players have already begun to take things into their own hands. A treaty would never be ratified by everyone, but pressure will be applied on nuclear nations and there will be less nukes on Orbis, one way or another.

19 hours ago, Patrick MacFarlane said:

ottomans, because if the middle east had never been held under one banner then the Europeans may never have ran in there so damn hard, craved up tribal and natural ethnic groups, and left us with the post-Sykes-Picot Agreement bullshit we have today. So, ottomans, because they put a target on their backs (for the French and British to shoot at)

You could attribute that to the British and/or French though and not the Ottomans. All the Ottoman Empire did was exist, hardly something they can be blamed for doing, it was the British and French that targeted it and brought about the result from Sykes-Picot. If the Middle East hadn't been under the unified rule of the Ottomans, I think the Middle East would simply present itself as an easier and equally juicy target. The resources wouldn't go anywhere and if the Middle East was split into smaller nations they'd just be easier to dominate for European colonial powers.

On 24.8.2016 at 10:43 AM, Zaxon said:

I voted Gryffindor because I figure you have to be pretty brave to be the first woman President of the United States. I'm not a fan or anything but she does have balls, so to speak.

Oh, they'd most definitely get enough votes in a new independence referendum now. I don't think there's a lack of will among the Scottish people to make independence happen, but I don't know how accommodating the EU will actually be if they were to "win" such a vote. The Spanish government has already spoken out against the possibility of Scotland remaining in the EU if they gain their independence, which everyone can obviously see is because they're afraid that if they let the Scottish leave the UK and stay in the EU, the Catalans or maybe even the Basque could do the same. Basically that means that if they get independence, they'll be kicked out of the EU and will have to negotiate their way back in, which could take a long time. There are a lot of separatist movements in Europe and I think a lot of European governments are worried that they'll open the floodgates for them by allowing even one separatist movement to succeed.

Here's a map of active separatist movements in Europe today, as you can see there's quite a few (though their popularity varies):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_movements_in_Europe

12 hours ago, Milord said:

I know I was preaty pissed off and made grammar errors

But Idk if u understood anything of what I said but its the truth

I understood it, but it's nowhere close to the truth. I posted that image because that's just a silly viewpoint and I wasn't sure if you were actually being serious or just trolling. You cannot tell me you honestly believe the hundreds of middle aged 40-50+ year old people that make up the vast majority of Europe's politicians are actually anarchists and hippies? I mean, they're the people who want to crack down on anarchists and hippies. Older people are generally more conservative and older people are who are mostly involved in politics. I mean I'm sorry, but it's kind of a ridiculous statement to call them anarchists and hippies. They obviously come from a multitude of parties with all kinds of ideological tenets, there's no point in denying that unless you're intentionally trying to not make any sense.

And I gotta say, when the EU experiences problems of whatever sort, they don't sit around doing nothing about it. I'm no fan of the EU but there's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that when they have a problem, they get the best people they can possibly get to work on it. The difficulty the EU has with getting things done is more of an issue with the fact that the EU and what it does is subject to the self-interest of many different nations and they just don't always agree on what should be done, it's not that they're not competent or don't know what to do. As for the idea of a united Europe, it's certainly not a stupid idea, the continent would probably benefit but the thing is that Europeans don't like each other and are often particularly nationalistic, at least when push comes to shove. The EU isn't centralized enough either, it doesn't have the authority it needs to erase the borders of Europe, which is why they've tried to do it by having open borders, free trade agreements and such. It will take more time before people stop thinking of themselves as Italians and Germans before thinking of themselves as Europeans.

5 hours ago, Piratemonkey said:

 

First of all: science does not prove anything. There is no "proof". There is no certainty in this universe. If you want to pretend you are certain of something, go ahead. But science is only capable of vaguely pointing you towards the truth, and will never be able to give you the truth. But this is delving into philosophy, of which I am very well educated thanks to my Jesuit university roots.

Of course science proves things. It's almost ridiculous to say that it doesn't, every scientific inquiry and experiment with conclusive and verifiable evidence proves something. Sure, this may all be some dream or a very advanced simulation, but we have no choice but to accept it for what it is and science is the tool we have to build certain knowledge of the world around us. It's the only truth we have.
 

Quote

 

Second of all: dark matter has not been directly observed, and your numbers are way off, dark matter makes up far more than just that percentage of matter in the universe. We don't even know what dark matter is. We have never even observed it, ever. EVER. We know that something has to exist to fill in the gap in our knowledge, but we just made up the term dark matter for the moment.

 

And why does it matter if it has been directly observed? Many things that we know exist and that are part of the observable universe (which includes everything that in principle can be observed from Earth) cannot be directly observed by human beings. This doesn't mean that such phenomena cannot be observed indirectly through other means and conduits. As for my numbers, I got them from NASA and I trust them to know the numbers more than I trust you to know them. Here:

"The newly estimated expansion rate of the universe, known as Hubble's constant, is 67.15 plus or minus 1.2 kilometers/second/megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years. This is less than prior estimates derived from space telescopes, such as NASA's Spitzer and Hubble, using a different technique. The new estimate of dark matter content in the universe is 26.8 percent, up from 24 percent, while dark energy falls to 68.3 percent, down from 71.4 percent. Normal matter now is 4.9 percent, up from 4.6 percent."

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/planck/news/planck20130321.html#.V6CI2aKK-ck

As for free will, the only evidence I need to believe in its existence is the proof my own psyche provides by exercising free will in practice. We are responsible for our own actions.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, you still haven't shown me anything that disproves my line of reasoning and it's more or less a futile effort at this point.

I don't put faith in science, faith and science is something I don't like to mix. Science is knowledge, science is what we know. You don't need faith to believe it what has been proven to be real and true. There are many unknowns, but there are many "knowns" as well and as far as I'm concerned, we have no choice but to accept what we know now to be certain because not doing so would be akin to choosing insanity. Without the accumulated knowledge we have today, certainties built on certainties, we would still be banging rocks together and sucking marrow out of bones.

1 hour ago, Milord said:

EU is a bunch of anarchist hippies who, like to drink tea while their house is one fire ,there shouldered be frontier regulations.

And the thought of a " united Europe " its just stupid

6 hours ago, Rin said:

A few hundred years ago UK was too busy colonizing and taxing the entire world to care about what silly trade agreements they could get with Europeans

I wasn't trying to use trade agreements as a specific example, I was talking about the nation's population being almost split in half on any major issue that would have monumental consequences for the future of the nation as a whole. In such a cases, as history has shown time and time again, the outcome could very well be civil war. Or at least that used to be the case, most people in most of Europe seem to be less prone to open violence against the state nowadays.

46 minutes ago, Milord said:

Something made UK leave the EU they didn't wake up one day and said let's leave the EU just cuz.

UK leaving EU=EU's fault

I doubt that, I'm pretty sure people being frightened into voting a certain way, the pitfalls of capitalism (which immigrants are blamed for, naturally) and the vote itself is what "made the UK leave the EU", though leaving is a long process. If anyone is to be blamed, it's the people who voted to leave and the people who convinced them to do so. If the EU was really that awful, there wouldn't be any will between its member states to uphold it but obviously such will exists, so that tells me that most of the nations currently in EU see benefits from staying in it. Not saying the EU doesn't have faults but states follow their own self-interest and if EU member states didn't believe it's in their own best interests to be a part of the EU despite its flaws, they wouldn't be a part of it.

Entirely with Mr. MacFarlane on this, the margin required for the vote to succeed was almost ridiculously low. You might say that having a second referendum and changing the margin of votes it requires to pass may cause more instability, but I very much doubt it would cause more chaos than a nation split in half over the future of their country. Literally half the country didn't want to leave and you can be pretty damn sure they won't go quietly into the night. Had this been a few hundred years ago, it would probably have meant civil war.

It actually looks like the EU might benefit from the UK leaving, partially because the UK had a tendency to be one of those nations that wasn't very cooperative within the EU framework. Now, the UK still depends on access to EU markets while they have lost their right to have a say in the EUs undertakings and directives. It's pretty dumb really. Britain left because of fear mongering, hate and prejudice and it'll bite them in the ass. What's truly unfortunate is that all the people who voted to remain will have to suffer because of the ill-conceived actions of others, but I guess that's the price of democracy.

21 hours ago, Ernsters said:

 

He chooses to care about messages, because he is an independent, intelligent, thinking being with free will.  

But why? Surely you don't consider that sufficient reasoning, that's only half an answer. Why does his thoughts, his independence, intelligence and free will make him care about the messages? I suppose it's probably not something you can answer.

13 hours ago, Piratemonkey said:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, ever. That is illogical. Straight up.

 

It's your opinion that ghosts don't exist. I still think it's very much a belief, considering there is no evidence for or against ghosts and, you are already saying they do not exist. I do understand you. You are saying that there is no reason for you to believe in ghosts because you never experienced a ghost, or there is no evidence. To you they may not exist, but that is not necessarily indicative of reality itself.

 

You seem to see things as either existing or not existing but fail to recognize that a majority of the stuff that exists isn't observable. The reality is that the existence of ghosts is an untestable hypothesis currently and therefore a matter of belief much like God.

I'm sorry but you're wrong and we're really just going to have to agree to disagree. I maintain that absence of evidence is evidence of absence until proven otherwise. Because there is no evidence of ghosts in the real world, there are no ghosts. Until proven otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to make such a statement while maintaining factuality. For all intensive purposes, what has not been proven does not exist.

You're also wrong about the majority of stuff that exists isn't observable, modern science has made us able to observe far more than what we would be able to without it, only using our meager senses. Even dark matter and dark energy is observable, dark matter making up around 27% of the mass and energy in the observable universe and dark energy making up 68% of the energy in the observable universe. Every scientific certainty we have, and thus every solid fact our race possesses is a result of observation and confirmation of our observations through experimentation. God does not exist either, there is no evidence that god exists and thus no reason to deny the fact that as far anyone knows, as far as our scientific understanding of the universe has taken us, god does not exist. It seems you would have us live in a world tempered by the uncertainty of endless possibilities, but I prefer certainties, no matter how temporary they are. What we know for sure, what has been and can be proven, is the foundation of our understanding of the world around us and we have no choice but to accept the reality which is proven to us as it is in this very moment.

1 hour ago, Piratemonkey said:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance#Absence_of_evidence

 

Appeal to ignorance: the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa. (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore, UFOs exist, and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.^[3]

 

"If a proposition has not been disproved, then it cannot be considered false and must therefore be considered true.

If a proposition has not been proved, then it cannot be considered true and must therefore be considered false."

 

I believe you are displaying a logical fallacy.

 

Reality exists as it is, independent of whether you provide evidence for its existence. You can choose to only believe in things if you have evidence for their existence. But where things go wrong with your logic is, if an experiment is never made to determine the existence of "ghosts" then you cannot possibly know that they don't exist. You can choose to believe they do not exist, but you cannot say that they don't.

 

Your belief that ghosts do not exist is just that, a belief.

 

According to your logic, if you have no evidence that a certain plant does not provide some medicinal properties, and there was no experiment to provide evidence of absence, then you can "rule it out". Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I believe in reality as it is, as we experience it and that what is real is what can be proven to be real. To me, absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence, until there's no absence of evidence. Reality does exist as it is, independent and objective, you are right about that. But I'm not sure you understand me, you say that because no experiment to prove the existence of ghosts has been performed, we cannot know for sure that ghosts don't exist. I say that until someone performs such an experiment, there's no reason ascribe possibilities actual reality, there's no reason to deny ourselves certain certainties. We must believe in reality as it is, anything else is insanity. Sure, ghosts could exist but there's no proof of this so as far as we know, ghosts do not exist. And as far as we know is all that matters, all we can know for sure. Everything else is ambiguous, and we cannot guide our lives based on ambiguous possibilities, only on what is certain in this moment of time even if what is certain now may not be certain in the future.

I don't rule out possibilities, a certain plant could definitely have certain medical properties. But I rule out these possibilities existing as facts until they have been proven. Ghosts might exist, shoggoths might be lurking under my bed, a meteor could fall on my head the second I exit my building, all of these are possibilities, but I cannot live my life as if they were facts until they have been proven to be so. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence until evidence is not absent. So, as far as I'm concerned, ghosts do not exist. If someone performs an experiment proving me wrong and still I stick to my opinion, my opinion will have become a belief. Until then, as far as anyone knows, it is a fact.

12 hours ago, Patrick MacFarlane said:

Basically, I believe that Heavenly and Demonic beings come to us in human forms so that we can understand their messages and that by understanding the message or the effects of the message help us to understand which kind of existence we have been exposed to. 

 

And please, by all means, if anyone has thoughts or comments about what I said please roast away!

Why do you care about their messages? What does it matter what these ethereal beings have to say about our existence? We should not seek affirmation or validation of our existence outside ourselves. We are independent, intelligent, thinking beings with free will. Why do we need any answers other than those we can provide for ourselves through the means that we possess?

3 hours ago, Piratemonkey said:

I don't think we have enough knowledge of the universe so rule out different dimensions and energy states of the universe so idk, I wouldn't say ghost aren't real. Whether I believe they exist is a different story and I'm just going to say yes out of wishful thinking, albeit I can't say for sure

If we do not possess evidence for something, we are well within our rights to rule it out. Until conclusive and definite proof is discovered pertaining to the existence of ghosts, it's perfectly reasonable to say that ghosts do not exist, even if there might be a possibility of someone discovering that they actually do. When such a discovery is made and adequate proof is provided, ghosts exist, but no sooner.

Does Subway count as a restaurant? Because I really like Subway.

Favorite:

Close second:

Noah Wyle.