Chicken Little says December 21st 2012 is the end of time as man knows it

[Oberon]

[Sailor Steve]

Okay, here's an alternate take.

Originally Posted by Skybird

a disgrace.

Okay, no disgrace, but a declaration of bancrupcty of intellectual, reasonable thinking.

too absurd

simply idiocy

fantasy

When it doesn't fit you're narrow view of the world, call it names. That's good sound judgement.

Scepticism is good, I am a basic sceptic myself.

No, you're not. You're a firm believer. A believer in your own innate rightness and superiority.

When I was homeless I spent a lot of time in our huge city library, reading everything I could. Among the things I read were so-called 'Sceptic' magazines. Some of the finest minds in the world contributed to them, and they have some fine articles. They're basically devoted to debunking everything in sight, and they make very convincing articles. The problem is more than half of those articles are devoted to debunking all things religious, which is also fine, except I began to see that these people were, to a man, absolutely convinced. There was no scepticism aimed at themselves, which means they weren't sceptics at all, but devout atheists.

And you firmly believe, and even preach, that you are right. There is no question, no room for even the slightest doubts. This is why I have so much trouble discussing anything with you. You don't have room for even the slightest chance you may be wrong.

I don't think for a second that the world is going to end a year from now. I just admit that I don't know it for a fact, which is why I voted the way I did, and found some humor in it. You seem unable to admit that there's anything you don't know, and everything that disagrees becomes a subject of derision for you. You are a true believer, and have your own religion. It's just not one people normally look for.

Yes, I have problems with my judgement and my sanity. How's yours?

[Task Force]

I can for see that there will be unrest from these 2012 nutjobs around the time that the end of the world is supposedly gonna happening, though I say only the big believers who are sure of it will probably do anything.

Surely something will happen in the middle east with all the unrest happening there lately.

In the end the only thing that will happen is something that people will cause, no end of the world.

[Armistead]

I say yes,

I generally hate people and humanity in general, so be nice to see us all wiped out.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I say yes,

I generally hate people and humanity in general, so be nice to see us all wiped out.

We do a pretty good job of that without outside help tbh. The whole resource wars and food and water shortages of the future will help a lot in reducing populations though, that's for certain...

[Pisces]

Yes, ofcourse it is. Everyday is the end of the world as you know it, and may or may not love. Each day brings new events and there is no way going back to them. So it's the end and those are the last you'll experience. But the sun rises the day after again, as it allways has. Those 10 days next year won't be any different than those before. (in the large scheme of things)

[Herr-Berbunch]

I've said before that there are too many people and we could do with a good cull one way or another - that's life!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Okay, here's an alternate take. <-- (...) --> with my judgement and my sanity. How's yours?

If there is a man who is not only healthy but has fully functional legs and trained splendid muscles, and who chooses to roll around in a wheelchair voluntarily, than he mocks himself, and his behaviour is a disgrace for himself and even an offence to those sitting in a wheelchair and having no choice.

And if God has given you a brain and sanity and ratio and logic and you refuse to make use of it, instead get fixiated on absurd constructions that in the end just mean that you claim that any fantasy one could imagine should be given as a possible glimpse of an existing reality just not discovered so far - then this is a disgrace, too. Not to use your brain when you have one, is a sin, one could put it in other terms. I know the Black Swan Fallacy and all that - but the extremes you push it too is not what Black Swan Fallacies are about. where it is reasonable to remind yourself that just because you never saw a black swan there are no black swans (since you know some things about genetics and mutations and albonos and natural diversiofcations etc etc), it is idiotic to claim the same for just any fairytale, fantasy or hallucination the human mind can produce. The Black Swan Fallacy is not to arbitrarily or randomly declare just any random fantasy a possible reality. That is no tolerant thing to do,m that is no thing of freedom or open mindedness - that is simply pathologic and if people practice it too excessively it indeed can bring them into psychiatry. It then is called a delusional disorder or a pathologic loss of sense of reality. And that is hell for the human mind.

You get too fiddly too easily, and too often, and mikstake that with a defence of "principles", while reality passes you by. Its exactly the mechanism that made us banging heads repeatedly before. And that really kills my nerves. Not to mention that it gets nobody anywhere. Not you, not me, and nobody around.

However, with that I move on from here. I am not buying into Mayan mysticism.

If there is a man who is not only healthy and has fully functional legs and trained splendid muscles, but who choses to roll aorpund in a wheelchair volu7ntarily, than he mcoks hiomself and his behaviour is a disgrace for himself and an offence to those sitting in a wheel chair and having no choice.

So to take that to the brain analogy, if someone speaks a load of crap , invents ludicrous facts and after being shown to be undeniably making up stuff and talking out of their rear end on numerous occasions that person repeatedly insist that their lunatic fantasies and invented facts are still real then that behavior is a disgrace and/or the person may be insane.
hmmmmm global consipacies secret cabals and quoted legislation written in invisible ink which no one else can see....Sky just self diagnosed himself as a disgrace

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I don't know about that.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I say yes,

I generally hate people and humanity in general, so be nice to see us all wiped out.

The sooner the failed species called human dies off, the better the earth will be.

The world cannot end in December 2012 since I have a credit card that does not expire until January 2013 and the banks would never lie to us...

Not intending offence to Geetrue, I didn't vote since I consider the premise behind the poll absurd.

[the_tyrant]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

The world cannot end in December 2012 since I have a credit card that does not expire until January 2013 and the banks would never lie to us...

Not intending offence to Geetrue, I didn't vote since I consider the premise behind the poll absurd.

Even if the world has ended, the banks would come into hell to collect their money

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Skybird

If there is a man and blah blah blah...

Once again you launch into a major diatribe out of fear of admitting that you don't know everything. I have no problem with you feeling as you do. As I always say and you always ignore, you're probably right. That doesn't excuse your wave of insults and name calling. Telling someone you disagree with him is an act of honesty. Telling him he's a fool (and worse) for admitting he doesn't know everything is the act of arrogance.

[Skybird]

If you do not know the difference between a fantasy or a fairy tale or a mysticistic imagination, and an event with extreme low probability that nevertheless maybe could turn out to be true, than I call you a fool. Fiction and Black Swan events (events of extremely low probability) are two totally different things.

He who has healthy legs but behaves like a cripple, is a disgrace. He who has a brain but refuses to use it, is a disgrace, too.

And stop telling me at every opportunity how many things you do not know, and stop posing as if you think that is an enobling pose, of some sort. I wonder how you would get along in your life if you were indeed not knowing anything as you claim. If you cannot get together such basic acts like above or the issues we banged heads earlier about, than I cannot help to just grin from my left to my right ear, sorry. To me, taking serious the belief that the world will end because some Mayan calender says so, is an insult of human intelligence. I deliberately reject to give that the same status of respectability like an empirical conclusion, a scientific theory, a guess based on earlier experience, a hint-founded speculation. When I do not accept religious fairy tales and miracle-beliefs the same respectability and credibility like ratio and reason, empiry and experience, observation and trial & error - why should I now make an exception: just because the Mayans? The Mayans were so clever to overstretch their society's size until they could not feed it anymore, and so they fell apart as a culture, moved, starved and now nothing is left. They sacrificed prisoners to please their gods because they believed they need to please them that way, and they waged wars for the mere purpose of catching said prisoners; and the moon covering the sun they interpreted as a heavenly battle between divine entities. Granted, they made some suprisingly precise astronomical observations for the tools available in their time and place - but I refuse to overrate that or to ignore the many things that they got hopelessly wrong, too.

But their calender running out of numbers and thus oracling the end of the world - that I now should take serious as a possible scenario that could manifestate in reality, yes? Really? Because that is what this rumble started about - that I called it an offence of intelligent thinking, a disgrace, that reasonable, logically thinking, modern, educated people of the present enlightened culture and time could be so insure about the absurdity of the claim that they rate it as "I don't know." You all are modern educated people of the 21st century - by the hottest inner circle of hell, you should know that it is absurd for damn sure...! Like you also should know that Santa is not for real, babies are not brought by the storch, and the world was not created in six days. Giving respectability to such claims is not tolerant, polite, or noble. It is a disgrace, it is idiotic, it is an offence of all potential in humans that is positive and good and looking towards the future, distancing itself from the darkness of the past. Little children you can fool with stories like that as long as they are young. But how old are you?