Meanwhile, Disnarvel won't let a kid's family put Spider-Man on his headstone. As much as Disney has been trying to pivot into social consciousness in its various media properties, it's the direct fan support that the Elite Dangerous crew showed Michael here that stands out as truly magnanimous.
A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
91–100 of 113 posts
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and as an individual everyone needs to investigate for themselves which religion (if any) to follow I disagree. Nobody needs to investigate any religions. There's no knowledge based reason to do that. You might want to join religion for the community but even then there rarely any investigation necessary. It's sufficient to just follow their practices.
It's sufficient to just follow their practices if you just want to join a community, and don't actually care what the community stands for, sure. but we are discussing pascal's wager. if god exists, you want to do what god asks for. that requires that you investigate what god is really asking for. joining a random community and just following their practices will help you do that. you have to investigate and figure o…
> sure, you can take pascals wager on blind faith. but that would be a pure gamble.
It's always a pure gamble since there is no knowledge about which god is more real.
> i prefer to make an educated guess. and that requires investigation.
Your guess will not be anymore educated regardless of how much you investigate. Because the only way to investigate claim of some god's existence is to ask people who can't know either.
No matter how smart you are, garbage in, garbage out.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we reduce the number of people dying, you will still see stories just like this because they have an impact and they cause reflection. They're meaningful stories. Many fewer people did die prematurely in the last 50 years, precisely because people did the work you're wanting them to do. The reason this story even could happen is because it's so rare to hear stories like this anymore. It's not like the middle ages…
You’re sort of taking a tangent on what I was saying. It’s not really relevant to my point. Yes, the world is a much better place. Your article summarized it nicely: “Rising prosperity, rising education and the spread of health care around the globe are the major drivers of this progress.” My point is that more research compounded over decades would help us cure more people sooner. I didn’t say we can cure everyone b…
Things like this are already extremely rare. The number of kids that die from cancer has to be a very very large sigma event.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
fyi to the downvotes: o7 is a farewell salute. https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3sdixv/what...
Just because it has a meaning does not mean it is adding constructively to the conversation.
You are right, but maybe once, we can just see it as what it means in this context. o7
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#95Meanwhile, Disnarvel won't let a kid's family put Spider-Man on his headstone. As much as Disney has been trying to pivot into social consciousness in its various media properties, it's the direct fan support that the Elite Dangerous crew showed Michael here that stands out as truly magnanimous.
I'm sorry, but putting whatever character on a tombstone does nothing for the kid, he's already dead. Like, this kind of thing makes no sense to me - gestures towards dying people are fantastic....while they are still alive. Also, if the family really cares about it this much they could just do it and then Disney has to consider the bad optics of suing a family over a kids gravestone. Most likely unless someone goes and tell them no one will notice - my local cementary has plenty of children's graves with Mickey mouse and donald duck on them and I'm 1000% certain no one asked disney for permission either.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best way to live your life is highly subjective and personal. By allowing people to instruct you on how to live your life based not on knowledge but on centuries old guesses almost inevitably prevents you from having best possible life regardless of what it might mean for you. Relying on old guesses instead of knowledge gives you objectively worse results in any kind of activity. It's not a stretch to assume it a…
indeed, that's why it is necessary to check whether what they say still makes any sense. independent investigation (and not letting others tell you) is the only way to find out.
> indeed, that's why it is necessary to check whether what they say still makes any sense.
The never did make any sense. It's just that now we can use knowledge to point out many specific places that we know are wrong.
> independent investigation (and not letting others tell you) is the only way to find out.
You definitely should let others tell you about the world we are living in. But those others should be the ones that posess knowledge. And since science is the only way to get actual knowledge about reality then you should probably stick to what science says and ignore everything else.
If you want to investigate religions be my guest. Just start with atheism. It will save you a lot of time and a lot of mistakes.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
indeed, that's why it is necessary to check whether what they say still makes any sense. independent investigation (and not letting others tell you) is the only way to find out.
> indeed, that's why it is necessary to check whether what they say still makes any sense. The never did make any sense. It's just that now we can use knowledge to point out many specific places that we know are wrong. > independent investigation (and not letting others tell you) is the only way to find out. You definitely should let others tell you about the world we are living in. But those others should be the one…
You definitely should let others tell you about the world we are living in
oh sure, but every individual still needs to judge for themselves what they learn.
science doesn't help us solve our social problems. and as far as i can tell, neither does atheism. none of the mainstream religions are capable of that either, but the answer is out there.
i'll leave it at that because i don't want to promote a particular belief here. that's a topic for another time and place.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#98the original longer version of this article is here: https://westhorpe.net/2019/07/an-open-letter-to-frontier-and...
I literally could not read this, or the comments underneath, without being reduced to a sobbing wreck.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s orthogonal to Pascal’s wager. Various religions all have tangible costs and rewards. Pascal’s wager is essentially trying to decide how valuable the rewards after death offered by each religion are when you can’t verify if they exist. My point is the availability heuristic makes biases people to overestimate how likely each religion is to be true. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic ) The…
or rather, you need to investigate for yourself if a religion makes sense before you decide to follow it.
I am not sure why a religion making sense would have any relationship with it being correct. Physics for example involves some very non intuitive things that are verifiable.
Suggesting you can intuit the non verifiable parts of existence seems like hubris in that context.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
or rather, you need to investigate for yourself if a religion makes sense before you decide to follow it.
I am not sure why a religion making sense would have any relationship with it being correct. Physics for example involves some very non intuitive things that are verifiable. Suggesting you can intuit the non verifiable parts of existence seems like hubris in that context.
intuition is not needed. if the point of religion is to solve social problems, take a look and check if the religion in question does solve social problems.
does prayer or meditation make you feel better?
do the laws proposed help you interact better with others?
all these things can be verified.
you need to look at what each religion claims, and what the outcome in that religious community is.