I got through it easily.
I closed my eyes, counted the seconds elapsed in my head and opened my eyes every 10-15 seconds to see how close I ended up.
Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
181–190 of 217 posts
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#182I was just thinking about the fact that much of my work requires me to pause for a short time -- while building my project, or running a query, or launching the huge honkin' java webapp and waiting for 10 billion classes to initialize -- but the pause is too short to make a useful context switch, and too long to simply wait through without getting bored. So typically, I often check e-mail, HN, or whatever, but then e…
Take baby steps to change behaviour. Don't believe in "will power".
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying something is "clearly false" doesn't mean you claim to know everything - you just see there is no evidence for their conclusion. Is Scientology clearly false or should we say they have some good points? If the latter, we might as well explore every fairy tale that comes by - or we could follow real evidence to where it leads us.
Where I come from, if you say "A is clearly false" means there is evidence to support it. I have never heard of any evidence regarding spiritual or religious beliefs; maybe the OP has some. Until he presents some, I'll dismiss his claims as 'clearly false'.
Where I come from, we consider all hypotheses null until significant proof has been shown to back it up. I've seen none of this proof - let alone the scientific method being used. Therefore, it's clearly false - not "100% I can prove it's a duck-false", but it walks, talks and acts like one.
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I come from, if you say "A is clearly false" means there is evidence to support it. I have never heard of any evidence regarding spiritual or religious beliefs; maybe the OP has some. Until he presents some, I'll dismiss his claims as 'clearly false'.
Where I come from, we consider all hypotheses null until significant proof has been shown to back it up. I've seen none of this proof - let alone the scientific method being used. Therefore, it's clearly false - not "100% I can prove it's a duck-false", but it walks, talks and acts like one.
Are you arguing, or are you angry-agreeing with me? The end result is the same: the OP's claim is bogus until proven otherwise.
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#185Did anyone else catch Sam Harris' response to Edge's 2011 question, "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?"? I found it quite interesting. http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_12.html#harriss "I invite you to pay attention to anything — the sight of this text, the sensation of breathing, the feeling of your body resting against your chair — for a mere sixty seconds without getting distracted b…
I haven't logged in to comment for 37 days and this little essay is such utter garbage. The fact that it takes him just 7 paragraphs to completely dismiss all potential religious truth as "clearly false" should set off anyone's dogma-alert flag. Being focused in the present is awesome, but the fact that we have the ability to pay attention on things other than reality is not a problem, but in fact essential to the he…
i don't know about the religion stuff, but the focus thing does sound very silly. it reminds me of a certain philosopher - Kant maybe - who described "the self" in a way that was obviously characteristic of his specific personality, but couldn't be applied in my case, nevermind all humans'
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#186Why would I waste two minutes of my short-enough-as-it-is life?
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to get into a flamewar, but potential 'religious truth' generally lacks falsifiability. Certainly there could definitely be true things that the religious say but it doesn't really promote a method of thinking that leads us to knowing things that aren't false about the world. In the method of 'religious truths' everyone is right and everyone is wrong, there is no way to sort out the true from the false.
Religion is not a scientific subject, but a philosophical one. You can't prove "taste" either but most people know "bad taste" when they see it.
You're making several assumptions and leaps in your reasoning here, though. If one were to accept that aesthetics is objective (which you seems to be implying?) then it may just be that we haven't found the epistemological framework to quantify it.
Now then, I don't see how this (meaning, your example of aesthetics) is similar to religion. Religion is just assumed to be relative by most people I think; at least the religious people I talk to seem to say so and use it explicitly as an argument (you do, too, I think) to parry demands for falsifiability. So then your comparison goes out of the window.
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Religion is not a scientific subject, but a philosophical one. You can't prove "taste" either but most people know "bad taste" when they see it.
You're making several assumptions and leaps in your reasoning here, though. If one were to accept that aesthetics is objective (which you seems to be implying?) then it may just be that we haven't found the epistemological framework to quantify it. Now then, I don't see how this (meaning, your example of aesthetics) is similar to religion. Religion is just assumed to be relative by most people I think; at least the r…
No, what I'm saying is that the question "Is there a God?" is both unprovable and unfalsifiable. Science cannot answer every question for us. Philosophy is a better fit for religious questions.
Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I come from, we consider all hypotheses null until significant proof has been shown to back it up. I've seen none of this proof - let alone the scientific method being used. Therefore, it's clearly false - not "100% I can prove it's a duck-false", but it walks, talks and acts like one.
Are you arguing, or are you angry-agreeing with me? The end result is the same: the OP's claim is bogus until proven otherwise.
No anger at all - I'm merely stating what I'm sure you follow every day: If we're going to be pragmatic about exploring the truth (i.e. not wasting our limited time) we should explore claims with more proof than "I believe this to be true".
When someone says, "clearly false", it should be (and in this case is) referencing the absence of any proof at all for the extraordinary claims. In this case, people who defend religion have a burden of proof here. Perhaps more precise wording would be: "arbitrary and totally unverified".
This is why I brought up fairy tales. They are just as arbitrary and unprovable. Do you think we should seriously explore them as well? If not, why does religion get a pass - because so many believe it? Let's not have science by vote of the masses. After all, the scientific consensus is that religion is false ;-)