Comments on: Do personal beliefs change behavior?

By: StephenB

StephenB — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:20:04 +0000

Frost 122585, I didn’t get the impression that Dave Scot was subjectivising time. It seemed to me that he was updating Aristotles description of time as “a measure of motion.”

By: Frost122585

Frost122585 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:15:13 +0000

Davescott- to call time a “metric” and claim that physics has nothing to say about in which direction if flows is incorrect- You see the concept of time as expierenced in the mind is as best as physics can tell- a physical expierence betwee nbrain waves- sight reason and the physical body. There is not diffence between feeling somthing solid or deriving the intution of the passage of change as time is derived by sight memeory and reason which are all physically rooted- to get outside of physics one has to ask what is guiding time or what created or desingd it- but this question can equally be asked of matter- so unless you consider physics to say nothign about what matter can and will do then i think your claim that physics has nothing to say about which direction time is going in- is misconcieved.

To elucidate my point a little further- think about all the so called alws of physics and the like – they are all based on expeirce and that which we observe that is universal or cannot be broken- for if they could be broken then they would not be laws. Time as a metric if you like flows foward- i cant go back and change thigs that i have done-

even if time travel was possible until it is proven so the flow of time forward is a law and one which i think is very well gounded in physics and has yet to be challanged by a winner of tomorrow’s lottery-

By: Gerry Rzeppa

Gerry Rzeppa — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:35:26 +0000

Brilliant Physicist: "There's no such thing as time." Ordinary Man: "You said that before. But I'm busy now. Can we talk about this later?

By: D.A.Newton

D.A.Newton — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:49:18 +0000

Why would an experiment such as this even be of any significance? All one need do is look at the effectiveness of advertising, especially the kind that attempts to inculcate the notion that what it’s selling is “cool”, fashionable, or makes one appear more desirable in some way. This kind of pitch imparts almost no practical information, but is highly effective in getting members of its targeted audience (marks in Carney speak) to view themselves differently if they only have the product being sold. Just look at how many different ways one can supposedly lose all that “belly fat!”

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:37:05 +0000

IMHO it’s rather obvious that beliefs inform actions and behavior. The beliefs of the September 2001 hijackers informed their terrorist actions. Eric Rudolph’s beliefs that the US sanctioning of abortion should go punished informed his actions to bomb Centennial Olympic Park in 1996.

Imagine the resulting behavior of the following belief:

Because man evolved into a social species, various pressures selected those individuals who acted morally which fostered a healthy society in which offspring were more likely to survive and thrive. It is therefore beneficial to the survival to act morally.

Much data backs this belief. I don’t think the result of teaching this could be at all harmful.

By: Gerry Rzeppa

Gerry Rzeppa — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:31:11 +0000

Sorry, I forgot to mention that conscience is both easy to describe and highly unlikely to arise by chance, so it passes the specified complexity test and must therefore be the result of design.

Who would design such a thing? Why?

By: Gerry Rzeppa

Gerry Rzeppa — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:14:20 +0000

“I’d believe it if I saw the ten commandments suddenly carved into the face of the moon a hundred meters deep in letters kilometers in size… I’ll give you the last word.”

Why should God bother to carve ‘em into the moon when when He’s already carved them (or something very much like them) into our hearts and heads? Conscience is a universal and undeniable non-material force in every man’s life – it can make a man do what he ought to do, even if that’s not what he needs or wants. And the fact that you know what I mean by “ought” is proof that the letters are big enough for even you to read!

By: DaveScot

DaveScot — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:11:38 +0000

Gerry

I’d believe it if I saw the ten commandments suddenly carved into the face of the moon a hundred meters deep in letters kilometers in size. Or any other number of miraculous ways of communicating. While I still couldn’t be sure I wasn’t living in some permutation of “The Matrix” where all my memories and experiences are false I think I’d probably still believe my senses. We should probably leave it at that and agree to disagree. I’ll give you the last word.

By: Gerry Rzeppa

Gerry Rzeppa — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:00:51 +0000

“In my opinion deities should speak for themselves instead of having ghost writers.” – Dave Scot

Imagin again, if you will, those self-conscious entities we created living in the memory of our computer. How would you suggest that we flesh and blood programmers “speak for ourselves” to them? And would they believe it when we did? I think it’s a more difficult problem than you suppose…

By: DaveScot

DaveScot — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:41:21 +0000

Gerry

Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just telling you what physics has to say about the nature of time to correct inaccurate claims about time & physics. Different religions may have different views of time. I don’t really have anything to say about that other than I don’t give much credence to religious revelation as they all appear to be written by men claiming to be inspired by some deity or another. In my opinion deities should speak for themselves instead of having ghost writers.