From the Games & Stuff Duex Thread:

AS deplorable as Hitler and his doings were, one thing I think we could learn from is his use of non-usual sciences to further his goals. He was heavily into the occult and that colored a lot of what he did, and many of the prototypes that were designed and/or built during WW2 were attributable directly to him.


Could it be that to advance our self to Michio Kaku's Type-I civilization, we should look more towards esoterica to help us along?

Also from the Games thread...

mmm, yes, but the fact remains, we took a LOT of stuff from Germany after the War that advanced us by several years. Not the least of which was in medical...

The only thing I can think of is rocketry, and we got those advancements by looting the land of scientists, not by reading Hitler's journals or anything.

Scientists schmientists. Engineers arn't afraid of a little philosophy. We're cool like that. :P

A lot of medicine in use today was taken from experiments in the death camps. We got doctors, scientists, engineer, et.al. from Project Paperclip. Mostly, it's only public knowledge about rocketry that came from there. Hell, the father of our very own space program, Werner Von Braun, was a hardcore Nazi...

Werner Von Braun wasn't exactly a hardcore nazi. From what I remember about him, he basically worked with the Nazi's because it allowed him to pursue his work. That's not to say he was a nice guy. He worked with the nazi's more or less willingly, ignoring what they did to the workers at Mittelwerk, and to the citizens of London because it allowed him to do what he loved. But that's kind of the story of Nazi germany. Some truly despicable human beings, and a lot of more or less ordinary people who were willing to ignore the suffering of others.

I think something keep in mind though with Germany is that it had been one of the major industrial centers of europe even before the war, as well as a major academic center as I recall. They lost a lot of faculty in the 30's, primarily jewish faculty, but they still had a lot of big names, including Heisenburg. And the thing is they were at war for a number of years before we were as well, which meant they were already in a war time economy. That's a great place to be in as a researcher, because a lot of money gets thrown around with much lower expectation of returns, so you can work on projects that there might not otherwise be money in. The problem with doing that, of course, is that you get a lot of wasted resources. For every manhattan project, you get ten Bat Bombs and Project Orcons.

The nazi's didn't help themselves either with things like Deutsche Physik (sp). I'm no scientist myself, but I'm pretty sure that the scientific method doesn't involve rejecting a scientist's theory because you think they're racially impure.

[edit: spelled they're wrong]

Wait, your telling me quantum mechanics came from NAZIS?!?!

No wonder that crap sounds like nonsense.

My problem with relativity is that it implies there is a god we have no free will.

However, I concede that that is not a scientific inquiry.

I still don't believe general relativity, but I admit it makes a useful tool.

Just stay away from this philosophy stuff about bending and warping the universe.

I think thats resultant from prospective, not some god.

Hrm... this argument sounds familiar but I can't quite place it.

edit: Estoeric knowledge? Seeing as I qualify myself as an agnostic and an engineer, I would say yes. Thats non-scientific, which fits the bill.

JP are you high or something?

Whether or not you believe in relativity doesn't make the theory untrue.

Ou, knowing you, you're probably honestly wondering. But that's dangerously close to an ad hominem attack.

Apparently, as the universe just fucked with me, but thats another topic.

Arguing no free will is illogical, which supposedly would make it untrue, however as the universe fucked with my just a minute ago I'm going to change my answer because skepticism has failed me.

So... yeah I guess I'm high. Without taking drugs. Woot?

edit: Godwins law.

I have a choice atm.

Accept the existance of god.
Become a conspiracy nut.
Accept that the universe makes no sense.

edit:
option 2 is reducable to option 1 since the head of any conspiracy is the same as a god.
option 3 is self defeating

<_<

Well, golly, guys. That sounds like another topic entirely.

And can you invoke Godwin's Law if the argument is about Nazis to begin with?

*Sighs*

You "qualify yourself" as an engineer, but if you're willing to throw out science because of literally random nonsense (and without even understanding anything about them; lol relativity means praise jesus amirite ), what exactly does that mean?

And MFD, what Ou did wasn't anything like an ad hominem, since he wasn't saying "you sound high; therefore your argument is wrong". He just asked an honest and entirely understandable question unrelated to his actual refutation.
If the rules actually do mean "don't say mean things", you might want to change how they're worded. :P

If it was a fallacy, it was a red herring.

But since he was essentially right it was more of a non sequitar that later became relevant.

edit: and I did look up chaos theory and I didn't understand it.

Yeah yeah, chaos is chaos I suppose?

Godwin's Law?

If you have a choice between an apple and an orange and one of them will kill you than is free will that makes the outcome unknown? What if the poison is planted by a caretaker who knows her charge hates oranges, has she just destroyed free will?

That's a flawed metaphor, but is that what you mean by God or a great big conspiracy making a slave of you, IE destroying your free will JP?

Than don't worry, for not everything that happens is observed and predicted, and I shall explain why in a method that makes more sense than the drier forms of chaos theory.

1st postulate: Not every molecular reaction is watched. I think this is self explanatory, you aren't surrounded by electron microscopes, themselves watched by electron microscopes, ad infinitum.

2nd postulate: Without knowing what each molecule is, the smartest scientist or machine can only make very accurate guesses, with some chance of failure, of what will happen. The smarter ones can estimate the chance of their guess being wrong, but they still can't predict exactly when.

3rd postulate: In specific instances, being a little off can cause a great change, like setting off dominoes. This is sometimes called the 'butterfly effect,' where in due to a change reaction started by the dust coming off a butterflies wings results in a change in the atmosphere that changes where a tornado strikes down.

Similarly, a damaged molecule might affect an embryo's DNA, alter someone's mood, change who wins the lottery, any number of things that can't be predicted.

Therefore: The more elaborate the plan, the easier it is for it to fail, as all the little things that don't go according to plan will add up to something that is bigger than the plan can handle.

If Godwin's law holds true, we are still about a decade away from when computers will be able to outsmart us in such a fashion without fail, and even then they will rely on parts so small that a sub-atomic flaw can cause the same sort of unpredictability in them. So that takes away the man made conspiracies.

If you're talking about God as all knowing, there is no argument that can stop that line of reasoning. If God knows all and creates all, than he'll have known I'd think anyone who does is an ass when he created me, and has noone to blame for that. But I don't know that that's possible or even relevant if it is, so I'll pretend I'm free anyways and until you can convince me otherwise I'll be happy with that.

And while we can't understand the universe completely and gain the 'God's eye' that would allow us to make perfect predictions, that is no reason not to try to understand it at all. We can make progress dealing with a universe that seems pretty indifferent to us whether it knows us intimately or not, using observations and our human brains.

But if you want to share conspiracy theories, I can make shit up with the best of them and keep you company.

Um... is that a temporary ban?

No.

Why are we assuming a god? JP said it's necessary for relativity, but that's just another one of his nonsense statements.

I don't know either, for sure. Based on JP's other rants, I think he believes

1.) If things don't exist in a concrete way, they only exist subjectively, that is in the mind, and
2.) it would take a God like intelligence to keep track of everything that exists.

I find the first premise to be faulty. Most people do. It's not an either/or situation. Their's an answer for yes/no questions that aren't answered by yes/no in eastern cultures, mu, unask the question. He needs to put some of that mu in his head to soften that rigid thinking that drives him in circles...

JP, if you read this, send any rants to spriteless at gmail dot com and I'll dissect them. Also, read the Jurassic Park movie tie in book and tell me how it can be so much better than the movie? Paradox!