311–320 of 329 posts
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As an experiment, I wonder if octopuses could be taught rudiments of culture that would have evolutionary advantages...
"You were so busy wondering if you could do it, you never stopped to ask if you should" That's going on your headstone come the Great Octopus War of 2033.
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I find your lack of [a good definition of] faith disturbing. -- Darth Webster Seriously though, I think the "blind faith" usage of the term faith is its weakest form. "Trust" and "confidence" are good synonyms. Because as a rule, humans have faith in a great many things, and the vast majority of those faiths are not characterized by a lack of knowledge or evidence. Consider the following statements: - The astronauts…
I'm not sure if you think your making a point against my definition. Replace the word "believe" with "trust" and it could fit perfectly as one of your examples: > In fact, I argue that such is the definition of faith -- to trust despite not knowing. I don't think that's such a big difference. Believing in something is trusting it to exist and to have the properties that you think it does. If the astronauts were wrong…
We agree in the main. My point is one of where we put the emphasis.
My counterargument, if it is one, is simply that when humans actually have faith in something, it's almost always "trusting what I don't know is going on, because of what I know of this object in other circumstances".
The husband "trusts" his wife to be faithful, not because he has a tracker on her and so knows where she goes at all hours, but because he knows who she is when she's with him.
A soldier "has faith in" in the general's battle plan because of the general's past victories.
I'm just arguing that all the really useful definitions of faith imply that the trust is actually rooted in knowledge and past experience, not merely blind, hopeful, stick-your-fingers-in-your-ears-and-sing-la-la-la ignorance of reality.
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Honestly, as a native english speaker who is usually a nazi in spelling, grammar and pronunciation - octopi sounds most intuitively "correct" to me. Octopuses sounds awkward and inconsistent with idiomatic English, like a non-native speaker might guess at. Octopodes sounds like a scientific term. As far as I'm concerned octopi is correct. Screw the etymology.
AFAIK (I'm not a native speaker), English language has short and long words. Short words are native, long words are foreign. It's because long words in other languages are composed: short root, and suffix(es) to make proper form. English language uses other rules, so remnants of foreign languages are not welcome, but foreign languages are associated with wisdom, so longer words are associated with wisdom and science…
The various irregular forms and tenses of the existential verb, "to be", is etymologically stitched together from at least three distinct languages.
Remnants of foreign languages certainly are welcome, though they certainly get rough treatment in comparison to their language of origin. The majority of the whole corpus is "foreign", and a significant fraction of the 1000 most commonly used "core words" are from a different branch of the linguistic tree as the official branch for English.
This is, in large part, due to the Saxon and Norman invasions.
Pseudo-Greco-Latin words are associated with higher education, because for a long time, Latin was required for higher education at English-speaking universities. Thanks to the fact that such words can be composited from a variety of common Greek and Latin roots, it remains the etymological origin of choice for newly-coined words describing new scientific knowledge. English, of course, tosses their grammar onto the tire fire, and chops up the vocabulary like a butcher disassembles a side of beef.
Length is likely just a side effect of the etymological origins.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PWP8uL-1o
Original video posted by merriam-webster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk But they weren't arguing about the plural form, but that cuttlefish win in a battle of intelligence. Also, if you watch the video it says all are correct.
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I'm not sure if you think your making a point against my definition. Replace the word "believe" with "trust" and it could fit perfectly as one of your examples: > In fact, I argue that such is the definition of faith -- to trust despite not knowing. I don't think that's such a big difference. Believing in something is trusting it to exist and to have the properties that you think it does. If the astronauts were wrong…
You argue that the definition of faith is to (trust, believe, have faith) in something despite not knowing. We agree in the main. My point is one of where we put the emphasis. My counterargument, if it is one, is simply that when humans actually have faith in something, it's almost always "trusting what I don't know is going on, because of what I know of this object in other circumstances". The husband "trusts" his w…
1. I don't think it serves much purpose if it's directly synonymous with trust.
2. Such a definition of faith runs directly against the definition of agnosticism, which asserts that such knowledge is unattainable.
I think the word faith brings to the table much of the denotation of trust, but with the connotation of doing it despite not knowing. After all, there are many husbands who find their wife cheating. There are many soldiers that end up dead, despite the best general's most careful planning. There's a level of the unknowable in all these scenarios, and faith is the continuation of belief in the face of these unknowns.
Or, put this way: The saying is that "trust is something earned". It's earned through proof of intention via past experience. I think faith removes this "earning" step -- it's trust without necessarily being earned.
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It's hard to light a fire under the water. You're not going to do much industry there. The deck is stacked against water-based intelligence developing technology. Might be a good thing for us. I bet they could evolve into awesome tool users.
This being said, they have the 'third hand' that every technician dreams of. Two hands to hold the work steady, and the third to do the action.
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Also booze. The desire to make our own alcohol is what triggered the spread of agriculture, if I remember my old history classes correctly.
Agriculture predates history.
But don't ask me how we figured out that humans switched to agriculture in order to make booze, because I'm not qualified to answer that, all I can tell you is that I learned this at some point from someone else who is more qualified than I am to talk about this.
Total anecdote here, but when I volunteered at our aquarium in Charleston, SC (amazing aquarium, go check it out), we had a problem where our flounder were vanishing from their tank. We suspected theft and so put a camera up in the back room. The next time flounder disappeared we checked the feed - one of our octopi was escaping from his tank that we thought we had already anti-octopus'd, climbing over the walls, bre…
Total anecdote here, but when I volunteered at our aquarium in Charleston, SC (amazing aquarium, go check it out), we had a problem where our flounder were vanishing from their tank. We suspected theft and so put a camera up in the back room. The next time flounder disappeared we checked the feed - one of our octopi was escaping from his tank that we thought we had already anti-octopus'd, climbing over the walls, bre…
Presumably he (or she?) wanted to go back to his own tank to get the regular food. Frankly I think you should take the carpet down - OK you don't want to keep losing flounder, but if the guy can wander around and climb out of his own tank you should be studying that , not trying to make the behavior go away. If nothing else, it's cruel to bore him like that. Yes, I'm serious.
Total anecdote here, but when I volunteered at our aquarium in Charleston, SC (amazing aquarium, go check it out), we had a problem where our flounder were vanishing from their tank. We suspected theft and so put a camera up in the back room. The next time flounder disappeared we checked the feed - one of our octopi was escaping from his tank that we thought we had already anti-octopus'd, climbing over the walls, bre…
I'm also a veteran of working at an aquarium and have heard this story before. Is it something you witnessed? I've wondered where this story came from: - http://belizeadventure.com/2013/08/octopus-facts/ - https://www.tonmo.com/threads/midnight-tank-escapes-fact-or-... Edit: this is not to call you out for you story, it's very possible that this happened at CHS aquarium, I'm just wondering the origins since it's such…
I would guess that Octopi just tend to do this. They really are smart and can fit through crazy small spaces.