And there's the crux of the situation: Not that the world will end or won't end, but that you started your first post with insults, and several of them. I'll bet that, like myself, those of us who voted "I don't know" didn't do so because we think that there's the slightest chance the world will end next year, but partly because we thought it was funny and partly because we're honest enough to admit that there is a chance, no matter how tiny, that we might be wrong. Those are two things you seem to be incapable of doing - getting the joke and recognizing that you might possibly be wrong.

I don't consider it enobling at all. That's you completely misreading me again. I just recognize that every piece of knowledge I claim to possess comes to me second hand. I'm taking somebody else's word for it. Did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor seventy years ago tomorrow? I've read the books and I've seen the pictures and films, and I accept it for the simple reason that I have no reason to doubt it, and the evidence is pretty overwhelming. I speak and act as though it's a fact, because to not do so would be counterproductive. That said, I wasn't there, so I don't "know" it for an absolute. That's all I've been trying to say, and you can't see the difference. And you call yourself a "philosopher".

And you "know" this how? I was there when my daughters were born, so I know about babies. Eyewitness, as they say. Santa I safely dismiss, and the world in six days I doubt, as both go against all evidence, but to claim to "know" is, again, arrogance. I see no evidence for the existence of a God, but I believe it is foolish to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

I don't give respectibility to the claims we're discussing. I don't really believe any of them. On the other hand, unlike yourself, I'm honest enough to admit that none of my disbelief is 100%, hence, I don't know.

As always, in your haste to see what you think I'm saying rather than what I'm really saying, you rush to condemn, and you become incapable of even discussing it, choosing rather to talk down to people and call them names. You call yourself a philosopher, but you don't even try to understand anything further than what you already believe. Shout otherwise all you want, but you march in lockstep with what you already believe, and you'll never see anything outside your own narrow viewpoint.

How do I know that? I don't.

If this is about the Mayan Calender all it means is its the change to a new harvest end of the old harvest not in those exact words but that's what ive heard from a documentary on it I watched couple of yrs back. No end of the world. New Havest new beginning.

Okay Tebow.;)

Can't be the end of the World, but that event could be triggered by:

Cubs winning a world series:o
Vikings winning the super bowl.:haha:

President HRC.:o:o:o
Jim stops posting.
Steed posts his mug.

SH6-DC2

Neal gets re-married and wife says "no more subsim."

Skybird converts Christianity [insert faith here]:hmmm::haha:

Mookie declares Reagan as his personal economic "Lord and Savio(u)r."

Fav-ray QBs for da bearz and Texans in the same season.

Dowly gives up booze.

Call me a Homer, but +2:sign_yeah:

Although the Y2K thingy was great for the technology industry. Everybody upgraded.

You forgot one more thing McBee:

A black man becomes POTUS....oh wait, scratch that.

I have to say, with such attitude Steve would become a great historian. I wish more people in my university shared his views towards knowledge.

Obviously I am more willing than you to take a position and to draw consequences, even when any of these two mean that I provide somebody with a target (=my view). But you constantly claim that you do not know, that you cannot know, and by that often give an image of being totally diffuse, vague, non-concrete, unable and/or unwilling to give any form, any substantial obligation to stand for anything you say. You just keep saying "I do not know", and "I cannot know", and so "I must not say, do anything", and that leaves you in the comfortable position to be able to pick up or ignore any idea you want without needing to give reasons for that, and to criticise others who make a solid stand on something without needing to accept any respnsibility for your own psotion - becasue you refuse to take any position. What'S more, you think that is a sign of tolerance and human freindliness towards others. I call it a diffuse lack of substance and repeatedly now I saw it leading you into dead ends - may it be over your idea of all or nothing at all-concepts of freedom, may it be about unlimited tolerance, or may it be about you misconception or false claim now that I went out and offended people - I labelled a certain intellectual weakness or self-uncertainty over a hillarious claim as what it is - the rejection of the gift of being able top use your intellect. I criticised an attitude, a flawed way of thinking or arguing. In just my last reply above, I explained why I do.

You simplify it and summarise it as "Skybird offends peoples", and you give the impression that that was the original motivation or idea behind it. But if it were like that, I would not need to weait for an opportunity. I could any time run into the moderators and start a thread and say "This is to let everybody know that you all are just braindead zombies making the world feel sick." I would not need to be provided with a target first to do so (hm: seems I discovered a new favourite English phrase... :) )

On that issue of yours, your hobby so tpo speak, to not accept that you know anything at all, I leave you alone. That is too abstract, too unpragmtaic, to unfit to deal with my,mlife, with sciences and empiry, with almost everything I could think of. Like before with your idea of freedom and tolerance, you get trapped or lost in you hunger for abstract unlimitedness of terms. You say that is your freedom. I say it is getting lost in a void.

I am a sceptic, that means I take little for granted or untouchable, and I am open to possibilities for which the probability that they turn our true may be extremely low, but nevertheless is an option, no matter how unlikely it is. And I differ these low-probability events (black swan events) from events that are the prodczut of mere fiction and imagination. These latter classes of ideas I reject to give the same status in intellectual discourse, like a theory, a black swan event, contradictory witness observations that need to be decided upon, or whatever.

And I am quite aware of the implications of radical constructivism, believe me - I am very familiar with those concepts.

Fiction is fiction. Not one bit more than this. Just fiction.

So if I understand correctly, you consider the idea that world will end in 2012 such an idea? As I see it, there are three ways of approaching this matter scientifically.

1: Claim that the world ends in 2012. Results: someone says "prove it."
2: Claim that the world won't end in 2012. Result: Someone says: "prove it."
3: Claim that the end of the world is a possible, even if very unlikely event and we can't predict when or how quickly it will happen, and therefore answer "I don't know". I'd choose this, because I can't prove 1 or 2.

I see the same with any fiction. I don't run around saying that the moon is made of cheese, because I don't believe it is. But if someone is willing to prove me scientifically that it is, then I'm willing to listen. Not agree or start believing: simply to listen and then make up my mind if I start to believe in it or not. Most likely not, but listening won't cost me anything.

Yesterday I was sat here thinking to myself what's happened to Castout after his little 'I'm right, you're wrong and going to hell' posts. :hmmm:

Reincarntated I'd say. :D

Nasty, accurate but nasty:rotfl2:

No you are wrong because you come to the answer that sky says is wrong, the fact that it is the only real answer which can be given is irrelevant as it is the wrong answer for some.

How is this different from when I asked Anthony to provide sources for his controversial views on the American Civil War?

Well, actually I would not really object to that.

Point is: a claim is just a clkaim, and an opinion is just an opinion. Both are nothing vlauable in themselves. Valuable makes them what they are based upon, and the way somebody explains why he considers them.

A theory in the way I use the term - and that is deriving from ther ancient Greeks' fundament they laid for what today we call scientific methodology - is based on an observation you make in reality, and then you want to explain the phenomenon. You start to develope a system that allows you to approach that phenomenon by means of "trial & error" in an effort to understand the "how does it work" and in order to predict the phenomenon'S behaviour.

A hypothesis is less than a theory, nevertheless is also based on something you undeiably can link to reality - not just fictional ideas and just claism about reality, but real reality. You then work to turn the hypothesis into a theory. The more predictable your assumtpions and conlcusions you stated in your hypothesis become, the more it turns into a theory.

But just sitting down and having an idea of fiction, just making a random remark that just happened to be on your mind and cannot immediately be falsified, something like that there are pink, flying tri-eyed elephants singing on the dark dark side of Io - that is no theory. It also is no hypothesis. It is just that: just a claim, a fictional fantasy. So is the claim that the world got created in six days. Or that somewhere in the solar system giant glibbery jellyfish swarm with the solar wind and eat particle streams and cosimc radiation. Or that the world ends on a certain date due to an ancient culture with very limited experience and knowledge claimed due to a flawed concedtion of theirs. Superstition makes for a bad source of material to form hypothesis, not to mention "theories".

The statement that you plan to build your life on the lottery win you are about to win second-next weekend, makes more sense beside it'S obvious absurdity, than the Mayan claim. Becasue for the lottrary win second-mnext weekend you at least have a small, a very small probability that it could turn out (if you buy a ticket). That is not a claim, that is mathematics. But to see any causal link between a Mayan prophecy and a future event - that is superstition. Fiction. Imagination. And actually, the fears of the Y2K bug could be defended, there were technical arguments that made it appearing as a possibility why such bugs maybe would cause troubles. you could explain it. But the Mayan prophecy - explain why the end shouild end on that and that date, explain the How it should take place, and how they could have known it centuries ago!

It's just a claim by an people with awfully lesser insight and knowedge than we have today. And this superiority in knoweldge we can rightfully point at today - that is what people should not forget when assessing what to think about a claim made many centuries ago. Link that causally to any variable of reality as we know it - then you can form a hypothesis, or even an educated theory maybe. Show that there is a stellar object hitting Earth on that date. A pandemic wiping out mankind. A nuclear war breaking out not one day earlier or one day later, but right on that day.

As long as you cannot do that, you have nothing - just a random claim. Like the claim that there are pink, flying tri-eyed elephants singing the British anthem in reverse on the dark side on Io.

Agreed.


Again, agreed. But it is not my job to falsify it: it is the claimant's job to prove that it's true. Usually in discussions like these someone tends to say: "OK, prove me that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Oh you can't? Well you must believe in Santa Claus then." But I have never said that Santa Claus exists in the first place, so it's a strawman.

The issue I see in this thread is that no one has said the world is going to end in 2012: they have said that they don't know. You are right in that the original idea is based on the end of the calendar (usually), and I agree that it's not a suitable proof of anything. But those who make that claim are not here to defend their claim, and it's not either the job of those who say "I don't know".

I say I don't know, because I mean that. If you asked me instead what I believe, it would be entirely different. Then I'd say: "No, the world is not going to end in 2012". At the moment it seems highly unlikely to me. But if right after that I opened up the TV and saw the news saying: "China to declare nuclear war on the world: bombs start falling in 5 minutes", my belief could change.

To know that it's not going to happen, I'd have to be able to see into the future with 100% certainty, which I can't do.


You know, as a historian I'd love to hear that as well.