Marvin Minsky: Health, population and the human mind

Very interesting talk and like his "crazy" ideas.

Critical thinking-Here Be Dragons - The Movie

I found this video very helpful to understand critical thinking.

Anyone who is interested in critical thinking, should watch this video. So that you will eventually know how to answer this question :Does god exist?

My Crisis and Your Opportunity

There are several types of people in the worlds who can be successed morally or immorally.

1. People who are waiting for the opportunity are my first order food chain.

2. People who are fighting for the opportunity are my second order food chain.

3. People who are creating opportunity for themself are my third order food chain.

4. People who are waiting for crisis as opportunity for themself are my fourth order food chain.

5. Finally, people who are creating crisis for someone as an opportunity for themself are my fifth order food chain.

which order are you in?

Comparison between human faith and robot

Let's say there is a god. We all have faith to believe our destination.

When bad thing happens, as the believers, they must believe that it must have reason for such explanation. Finally, it must be the part of god's plan.

To believers, do you agree above statement? Let's say, god has a plan for us.

Now, let's say above situation can be programmed into robot.

I will do the following things:

1. Set me as the host, the robot must obey what I say

2. Ask the robot to perform task, if it fail to do so, don't need to evaluate the failure. Just repeat the task, else stop the task.

3. Finally, program this as a loop.

The robot will do what I tell him to do and will never be able to evaluate the cause of failure. Because I programm the faith program into my robot. It is simply I have a plan.

Now, is believer like the robot? All beliver has faith, has destiny, has god.

Perhaps, people would argue that what robot does not have is "free-well". The believer got "free-well", hence it is different.
What can I say if your free-well is trapped to do the task like my robot do...what make it difference?

In this analogy, the process may not be similiar, but the outcome is the same.

If you don't understand what I try to express... please rise your vioce.

Your thoughts are welcome.

^_^

Does god exist?

Refer to http://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html

1. Does God exist?
The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today. Therefore, god exist.
First question, does the designer name god? can you find the word "designer" in the bible? If there is a designer, the designer must have idea to design the world. Does it suggset that the designer IS the product of programing? simply because of its firm idea and solid plan? If the god can just do its plan, hence its plan has proved that the god is just a robot. No emotion, no affection and just got a solid design plan. If so, the designer is not god. Or simply put, there is neither designer nor god in the universe.

2. Does God exist? The human brain's complexity shows a higher intelligence behind it.
So there is god. Huh?
First question, how complex can be in our human brain compared to other organisms? like virus, plant, bacterials, other primates... I would like to think they are also complex as well. it all comes to the ability of problem-solving. Those organisms have developed the skills to solve the problem for their daily survival. They evolved as well as human brain. It is not fair to make such oversimply statement that link to the existent of god.
If the suggestion of higer intelligence is pointing to the result of moral behavior, hence there is existent of god. My second question is:
Can the results of the moral behavior or human mind stimulate the need and to create the story of god in order to stabilize the human society in old days? in other words, it is human mind moral behavior created god, not god created human.

3. Does God exist? "Chance" or "natural causes" are insufficient explanations.
If one cannot give reasonable explanation to certain result, hence there is god. This is really naive and oversimply...
For example, I don't know how to explain the photosynthesis, hence there is a god, and god can explain this. How informative it is? you tell me, believers. perhaps, I would simply say.. I don't know. How hard it is to say "I don't know". ^_^

4. Does God exist? To state with certainty that there is no God, a person has to ignore the passion of an enormously vast number of people who are convinced that there is a God.

Firstly, is quantity relevance to this question? I think it is quite unbeliveable. Well, the quality does not mean anything!!!! It matter the quality of the opinion. If you want the world to vote for this issue, I would say.. there is no god, let say China will vote first. Secondly, if there is more believers today, it does not mean it will have more and more believers tomorrow or in the future, it could be decreased in 2020, who knows? In other words, providing number of population to suggest the existent of god is irrelavant. plus How do you know his god is simililar or exactly to your god? If you insist on the number is the evidence for the existent of god, so God is dependent on the number? interesting...so if the number is decrease, may i say the god is shrinking? Very funny.....

5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him.

My first question is: come to see him for what? my second question is that is god being programed to do that? If so, how interesting it is.... a programmed god. the god must be programed by the bible.
I don't even know this is a solid answer to the existent of god.

6. Does God exist? Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God pursuing us.
ahh.. finally, I see the existent of god, it is Jesus Christ.. Yahoo... problem solved.... wait the minute, why we have to go through to answer the question of 1-5 first? Why can we just jump to the question of number 6? How diffucult to use this number 6 as number 1? ahh.. it is a strategy..Why not simply say: Jesus Christ prove god existent. end of story..It would save more money and time to do so....

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All the inputs or thoughts are welcome.

Relative atheism and absolute atheism.

I belive everyone is an atheist when you show your belief to other belief systems. I think it is called relative atheist. For example: I am a muslim, I don't believe in Christian god. it makes me as an atheist in Christian world. Again, it also suggested that I am not an agnostic simply because I have my belief system as a Muslim.

Moreover, when there is religious war, it is because of the fighting for being other atheisms. Do you agree? hence relative atheism starts the war.

Therefore, it is important to think that being atheist is just another human nature.

When we talk about atheism, perhaps by default it means absolute atheism. It implies that the belief system of deity is null.

Can null belief advance human civilization? Can null belief stimulate understanding of nature? Can null belief make human being more moral? and fianlly, Can null belief promote peace?

Critical thinking: Unknown precedes imagination...

We live in the worlds where are filled with less certainty and more uncertainty. When we try to make a single decision, we applied our moral thought, rational thinking and random thought as the factors for decision making.

How do human copes with the progressive event of uncertainty? perhaps we will start from our imagination. Because of imagination, we could come up with the agreement to make good decision for overcoming uncertainty. According to the inductive reasoning, people will always has problems in the future and uncertainty in their mind.

It is the unknown that make us create conceptual idea, so that we can test the idea and eventually theorize the unkonwn. for example germ thoery and evolution theory..

The post that I want to emphasize is the order of two things: unkonwn and imagination.

it is because of the effect of unknonws, hence we have imagination. In other words, unknowns are part of our imagination but not imagination is part of the unknowns.

I don't think we can imaginate something by not knowing the effect or seeing the effect or perhaps false effect.

If you insist on that imagination precedes unknown. it could be either null effect or negative effect. If using negative effect as part of the imagination, I think it wil waste the energy of imagination.

The significant experiments to prove the existent of god.

To believers, if you want to prove the existent of god in our world (not the after life world), try following experiments:

Stop praying for 1 day compared to 100 years.

Stop chanting for 1 day compared to 100 years.

Stop attending church for 1 week compared to 100 years

Then compare the differences. If you cannot live up to 100 years, then pick 50 years. Try it and see you got any effect from god. if you got effect from god. For example, punishment for participating this experiment.

The idea is to prove there is god which he is watching you, but you have to complete this experiment in order to see the effect. Wanna try?

What does god do right now compared to 100000000000 ago?

To believers, can you answer me this question.

I want to know how do you see your god at in present, past and future.

I am also curious how you could come up with the answer to explain my question.

If you don't know, then my question is why you don't know and how do you know that you don't know. (perhaps you can still come up with the answer, right? Hint: try your imagination) ^_^

Thanks.

is god a problematic problem?

In order to fix a problem, the first thing to do is to identify the problem. Agree?

If there is no problem and yet you are convinced that there is a problem. hence it is your job to show us the problem and then we can identify the problem with agreement.

The pro-problem people should take initiative to show us the problem. yet I still don't see the problem.

Perhaps, it is a problematic problem or it is simply a problem of hoax. It makes you believe that there is a problem. Your belief in the problem makes you imagine the problem and yet don't know how to identify the problem and solve the problem. Well the best thing for pro-problem can do is to create a new problem. perhaps it is moral to do so. what do you think?

If you cannot identify the problem, how can you claim there is a problem or to fix the problem?

Got problem? might to share your problem?

The role of information in the moral world.

Information provides knowledge-based certainty to drive decision making. whether it is "good" or "bad" decision, the outcomes will be determined by the information.

The information does not provide "good" or "bad" result; instead, human interest is the source of determining "good" or "bad".

As a citizen, people should live in a well informed society. Making a good decision rely on information. If a poor decision is being made, usually it is contributed by obtaining inadequate information.

If information is so important for making good decision. the question is:

Is information as a helper or determiner in our moral world?

If you cannot obtain enough information to make a good decision to save the world (for example), therefore predisposed moral-driven decision will be chosen as a "good" decision.

Isn't it ironic? moral-drive decision making isn't a legitimate resolution in terms of problem solving, yet people are so incline to take the uncertainty, and make it as if a certainty outcome.

In my opinion, helpful information is the key to make good decision in a well defined situation. in fact, it is the information drive our society to make good decision, not the moral decision to drive our society to make good decision.

Information should be provided freely and openly.so that people can make good decision for their life and their future.

It is moral to extract more information from nature and it is immoral to restrict the information for well-informed society.

Hypothesis started from verification or falsification?

I read this article from Cell.

It is quite interesting in terms of scientific crtical view point.

If you have any thougts after reading this article, please share.

If you are interested in this article. Please buy it. ^_^

Verification Vs. Falsification.

I found this article that is very interesting. I just wanted to share.

If you have any thoughts, please share!