A rant : Magic (possibly Spirituality to)

[singer]

to be honest I kind of liked this bit:

The monkeys also retreat to laboratories to beat on hollow logs hoping they will yield some way to reliably make the complexities of the universe go away.  Many of the complexities of the universe DO go away.  Many more complexities are revealed.

because it's true. not for proper scientists of course, but from my days in the university I've seen enough "scientists" behave like that. they do want the universe to "behave", and when it doesn't it annoys them to no end and some tend to look the other way.

As long as there is grant money riding on the outcome it's pretty hard to be a  proper scientist.  Not that they don't exist.  They just tend not to be on salary.

Yes, of course.  Apollo 11 reached the moon on pixie dust.  Silly me.

Of course there are examples to the contrary.  But still,  the discovery that chocolate is natures most perfect food coming from an independent testing lab in Hershey Pennsylvania doesn't really have the smell of  untainted research.

So it is your assertion that most scientists are hopelessly corrupt?

I don't believe I would necessarily limit it to scientists 
and
No.  My assertion is that "them what pays the piper calls the tune".  In almost every field of endeavor.  There are lots of scientists who complain that  findings contrary to the expectations of the funding source are discouraged and even buried.  The funding source owns the research so the funding source doesn't have to publish what  they don't particularly want publicized.  Scientists are no more inherently corrupt than any other profession.

[Bu🤠ns]

I'd like to corrupt a scientist...FOR SCIENCE!

[The Johnny]

Bullshit. I, and the other graduate students in my department with research assistantships, are evidence.

But only anecdotal.

Didnt you say before that anecdotes are evidence? Or was it rat?

[Z³]

IMO: Magic is only relevant in the realm of the imaginary.
If you want to have the imaginary be part of your everyday life, that's fine.

[The Johnny]

They can indicate patterns, but how well? All I have to work on is someones word, no physical measurements.

Exploration of patterns shows evidence of patterns, period. It takes INFERENCE (hypothesis) to go beyond that. A cladogram doesn't indicate evolutionary relationships, it only indicates a pattern of homologies, which are all individually hypotheses of sameness. From that, I generate a hypothesis of the reality, but that may not be the reality at all. The point is, you can never really KNOW the causal factors, which means you want the best fucking pattern evidence you can get to derive your inferences. Anecdotes don't cut it.

No. Anecdotes don't cut it.  But they may provide the genesis of pattern recognition.  For that reason alone they may have value.

AND:  Is it true that you can never really know the causal factors? (again, not being a smart-ass, I just found that sentence jarring.)

Nevermind.

[Cain]

So the gist of this thread is, cutting through all the bullshit, some scientists are corrupt, therefore magic is true.  Yes?

[The Johnny]

All the pagan forums made an akelarre during Xmas day, cooked some potions, inchanted some spellz and drew sigils all for the purpose of...

POSSESING PD MEMBERS TO TROLL OURSELVES !1!!!

[Triple Zero]

Bullshit. I, and the other graduate students in my department with research assistantships, are evidence.

But only anecdotal.

That's not anecdotal, that's first hand experience.

Anecdotal is the story about chocolate research you just spun.

If you can't tell the difference, I think 10 pages ago would have been a real fine moment to quit this thread.

[singer]

So the gist of this thread is, cutting through all the bullshit, some scientists are corrupt, therefore magic is true.  Yes?

No.  I don't think that was the gist at all.

[singer]

Bullshit. I, and the other graduate students in my department with research assistantships, are evidence.

But only anecdotal.

That's not anecdotal, that's first hand experience.

Anecdotal is the story about chocolate research you just spun.

If you can't tell the difference, I think 10 pages ago would have been a real fine moment to quit this thread.

And now we have all heard of a poster on an internet board who claims to be a research assistant.  I believe I understand the characteristics of evidentiary offerings well enough for the purposes of this conversation.  The Hershey chocolate story was not evidence of any kind.  I hoped everyone understood that as well.

[Cait M. R.]

I just read through this, and I think it's time for a recap:

Rat and singer are trolling each other, the OP and themselves

Roger is trolling them and may in fact kill a motherfucker

Kai is too pissed for trolling and is definitely gonna kill a motherfucker

LMNO is going to kick his own damn ass for not killing motherfuckers earlier on before it became fashionable

Cain is :lulz:ing it up and probably won't kill any motherfuckers right now

Magic is what happens when you drink coffee and notice that your cat died of starvation, then say "HEY MY COFFEE DRINKING KILLED THE CAT"

OR: This entire fucking thread is what happens when people can't agree on something that's retarded to start with and it ends up flying all over the place like some kind of enormous whale-fall except instead of whales it's hideous, worm-coated poop and instead of being in the ocean it's right in the middle of a forum generally reserved for cool stuff, not titanic bouts of parasitic incontinence with pinworms the size of cars (we prefer titanic bouts of flaming incontinence accompanied by giant spheres of pure RAAAAGE) and the OP should be ashamed for starting this awful mess because it's definitely, unarguably HIS FAULT (but only because I don't know the scapegoat of the moment, damn it!) and one day he's going to Wiccan Hell for this, where he will get to listen to witch-hatted tards blathering about the great Cthulhu rising up and eating fucking skittles for the GOOD OF NATURE

ETA: NONE OF YOU ARE GETTING BIRTHDAY PRESENTS

ETA2: FUCK YOU

[LMNO]

So the gist of this thread is, cutting through all the bullshit, some scientists are corrupt, therefore magic is true.  Yes?

In addition:

Some people who call themselves scientists are not actually practicing science, therefore science cannot be trusted; and fuck you, I'm a wizard.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I just read through this, and I think it's time for a recap:

Rat and singer are trolling each other, the OP and themselves

Roger is trolling them and may in fact kill a motherfucker

Kai is too pissed for trolling and is definitely gonna kill a motherfucker

LMNO is going to kick his own damn ass for not killing motherfuckers earlier on before it became fashionable

Cain is :lulz:ing it up and probably won't kill any motherfuckers right now

Magic is what happens when you drink coffee and notice that your cat died of starvation, then say "HEY MY COFFEE DRINKING KILLED THE CAT"

OR: This entire fucking thread is what happens when people can't agree on something that's retarded to start with and it ends up flying all over the place like some kind of enormous whale-fall except instead of whales it's hideous, worm-coated poop and instead of being in the ocean it's right in the middle of a forum generally reserved for cool stuff, not titanic bouts of parasitic incontinence with pinworms the size of cars (we prefer titanic bouts of flaming incontinence accompanied by giant spheres of pure RAAAAGE) and the OP should be ashamed for starting this awful mess because it's definitely, unarguably HIS FAULT (but only because I don't know the scapegoat of the moment, damn it!) and one day he's going to Wiccan Hell for this, where he will get to listen to witch-hatted tards blathering about the great Cthulhu rising up and eating fucking skittles for the GOOD OF NATURE

ETA: NONE OF YOU ARE GETTING BIRTHDAY PRESENTS

ETA2: FUCK YOU

Whose house?

CAIT'S HOUSE.

[singer]

So the gist of this thread is, cutting through all the bullshit, some scientists are corrupt, therefore magic is true.  Yes?

In addition:

Some people who call themselves scientists are not actually practicing science, therefore science cannot be trusted; and fuck you, I'm a wizard.

Addition addendum: No field of endeavor should be exempt from critical evaluation.  Just because the assertions of any particular endeavor can be found to be imperfect doesn't necessarily mean that all assertions in that particular field of endeavor are suspect.  You are among the greatest of Wizards in all of Oz.

[LMNO]

You weren't asserting that science, a self-correcting discipline, was imperfect.  You were asserting that people who call themselves scientists were corrupt.


One of the main problems in this thread is that you don't actually know where you stand; or if you do, you are having difficulty stating it.