How do we think ?

[Jimbuna]

If I were a gambling man I know which outcome I'd be putting my wager on.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

If I were a gambling man I know which outcome I'd be putting my wager on.

Pope Jim the 1st.

[Rockstar]

Psychology Reveals the Comforts of the Apocalypse

• By Daisy Yuhas on December 18, 2012

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...he-apocalypse/

..."I talk to kids in my practice and they see it as a good thing. They say, 'life would be so simple—I'd shoot some zombies and wouldn't have to go to school,'" Schlozman says. In both literature and in speaking with patients, Schlozman has noticed that people frequently romanticize the end times. They imagine surviving, thriving and going back to nature. Schlozman recently had an experience that eerily echoed Orson Welles's 1938 The War of the Worlds broadcast. He was discussing his book on a radio program and they had to cut the show short when listeners misconstrued his fiction for fact. He believes the propensity to panic is not constant in history but instead reflects the times.

In today's complicated world with terrorism, war, fiscal cliffs and climate change, people are primed for panic.

Pope Jim? Surely this is a sign of the apocalypse!

[Skybird]

Man does not like uncertainty, it reminds him of his own mortality and vulnerability and weakness. So he forms the illusion of being in control, forging his own fate, enforcing his will on the universe. Ways to acchieve this certainty there are many, and most of them have more or less to do with obedience, believing, and totalitarianism of any form. This not only helps to form the illusion of one's own strength and the relevance of one'S own ego, it also filters the way man perceives the universe around him - he then nho longer witnesses things as they are, but as he wants them to be, may it be on behalf of things obeying him, or things delivering him the justification for being even more imperial himself in enforcing his own view of things and impose this will on things and non-believers.

Sense of realism you seek in vein in all this.

At the bottom of all collective stupidity and all collective barbary and furor, lies existential fear of one's own end. One tries to become immortal by oneself dissolving in a higher entity: the collective.

And may the gods have mercy with anyone who is stupid enough to put this collective and its dogmas in doubt!

The fact that remains at the end of the day: the universe is a chaotic place, life is uncertain and vulnerable, and whether there is any meaning in life and existence that goes beyond just living the moment, is in doubt and has never been shown evidence for.

And that are some big, bitter, heavy pills to swallow. Most try to spit them out, therefore, and instead call the simplifying shortcut - believing in something - a higher virtue and courage. It isn't. Its just evading uncomfortable truths about our existence, and replacing lacking knowledge with fantasies.

I "believe" in the wisdom of living every day as if it were my last. For in fact even my next stroke of breath already is uncertain.

[Rockstar]

btw this is a good start for those who don't know anything about Schrodingers Cat thought experiment.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Pope Jim? Surely this is a sign of the apocalypse!

No far from it, let the good times roll.