in an attempt to find a picture for another thread, I came across a website that I thought had some real potential ---> http://8ball.ofb.net/procedure.html
my first initial reaction was to create a thread using something along the lines of 'the inner workings of a mystic' as the title, and having some sort of ambigious content that told little about the actual link itself (in the hopes that people would take the link seriously, and then find the humor in what the thread was all about when reaching the page at hand) but then I took the time to actually read through the page myself, and I realized it could potentially become something more then just a quick gag that may or may not actually bring a smile to a few faces - there was something there...something subtle...that could very well have spawned quite the discussion (provided, of course, that enough people actually caught on and followed the ensuing train of thought)
it seems though - subtlety is not something this board takes to very well
(as I had discovered earlier with my SMILE animation...which apparently never once struck a religious chord with anyone)
so instead of presuming the path that I took will be followed by others - I'm going to simply relay the thought processes which went through my head upon viewig this page
perhaps this will prove useful in deciphering some of my responses in the future...
it all started in the section labled 'An Opinion was Obtained' where the author of the site mentioned inquiring about whether or not the Magic 8-Ball enjoyed being dissected...to which the response was 'Outlook not so good'
this initially made me think about the fact that there very well *could* be some sort of metaphysical shit going on behind the scenes that science simply could not explain (due to any number of unconfirmed phenomenon which existed outside traditional means of observation)
I then thought about how Einstien's brain had been studied after his death, and found to be really no different then anyone else's brain (in the sence that there wasn't excessive amounts of grey matter, or a larger number of connections, or whatever else really)
and that made me think abut how just because an individual might understand the inner mechanics of an object, that still doesn't nescessarily mean that they truely understand how that object works (e.g. knowing that a small twenty-sided figured with unique phrases on each side is suspended in a mass of liquid in order to give it the ability to rotate about in such a manner so to produce a random 'response' to any given question...might explain the actual inner workings of such a device, but it certainly doesn't explain how such accurate results can be accomplished (simply because there is no specific mechanical property of the device as a whole that determines the best suited answer fot the question at hand))
mechanically speaking (e.g. based purely off of the actual inner working of a Magic 8-Ball) accuracy would be completely bassed on probability...and as such - fairly easy to predict (at least as far as correctness of the responses goes)
at times though - it doesn't seem to be quite as simple as that
(like when you ask the same question reatedly, and continually get the same result)
(or when you're asking a question like "do you enjoy being torn apart" and getting the exact answer you'd expect from a real person under similiar situations) <even if in real life it would probably be something more along the lines of: 'do you want me to sttop hitting you' or 'are you afraid of that man holding a gun to your face' or whatever really - the fact still remains the same that an entity which finds itself in an infavorable situation, will inevitably show discontent in some manner or another towards said situation>
the Magic 8-Ball does indeed take on a sort of life of it's own from time to time...and analysizing it's pieces-n-parts is certainly not going to give any sort of insight as to where this apparent personality comes from
metaphysics seems the only explaination
(as is the case with most things people are ignorant about)
but is there really something else going on here that we're just not seeing 
during the section 'Further Examination of the Answer Icosahedron' it is confirmed that of the twenty possible responses a Magic 8-Ball can give - 10 of them are positive, five of them are nagitive, and five are ambigously indecisive
is it possible that the secret to the accuracy of the Magic 8-Ball's clairvoyance lies within the fact that it's ratio of positive to negative to ambigiuos responcese correlates to a similar ratio between positive, nagative, and neutral forces within our own realm of existance?
perhaps the reason appropriate answers are so commonplace is because the same unseen forces that guid the types of questions being asked also guide what sort of responses are given
but is this not also just another metaphysical fallback?
(what 'unseen forces' are being referred to here...and how eactly do they manipulate questions/answers from both conscious free-willed entities, and inanimate masses of iconized plastics)
enter occam's razor
is it more likely that some mysterious force is determining the out-put of some frivolious child's toy in order to give the illusion that said toy possesses the incedible ability to accurately predict future events (to some extent anyway)
or that the the results given by aforementioned toy are indeed completely random...and that any peculiarities which may arise are most likely due to either the individual's interpretation of the randomly given response, or simply probability
enter rebuttle
at one point in time it was absurd to think that the sun was in the ceter of the galaxy (people could quite clearly see that the sun revolving around the Earth) and any ideas that spoke otherwise where imediately scoffed at as nothing but inconcienvable rantings of an obviously malfunctioning mind that was incapable of seeing the plain and simple truth that was right before their eyes day-in and day-out
the simplist, most obvious explaination turned out to be false
occam's razor is a commonly accepted cop-out for elitist simpletons that refuse to acknowledge the fact that there might just be more to what's going on then what's imediately precienved through traditional scientific methods
que the retort
engulfing one's self in fantastic abstracts that have no grounding in proven emerical evidence what-so-ever is the foundation of fools...without a sort of reference point to base your ideas off - you might as well be writting science-fiction novels for entertainment purposes
how can one possibly expect another to take their beliefs seriously if they are not even based on anything
and the retaliation
but has it not been the dreamers of dreams who have made the largest impacts on society as a whole? Einstien, DeVincci, Copernicus, Leary...are these not people who concieved their most valuable contributions while endulging in the abstract
one may not discover information that lies beyond what is already known, unless they are first willing to allow their minds to wander beyond what has already been proven
the greatest explorers to have ever lived don't feel their journey has even begun until their point of origin is already out of sight
*******
*silence*
*******
I sat for a moment and let this all sink in
then I realized I was completely off track from the original topic at hand
(as did I realize I was arguing with myself yet again)
and that's when I realized that my initial hunch about this page having potential for some sort of deeper meaning was true...but not neccessrily because the page itself had some sort of deeper meaning embedded within it - but rather because I myself took a simple meaningless idea and complicated the fuck outta it
but in a good way...
- I considered the possibility of as yet undiscovered natural phenomenon
(even if I couldn't quite put my finger on how such occurances take place)
- I scrutinized the age old adage "the sum of it's parts is more then it's whole"
(and re-worded it in such a manner to better understand what was actually being said)
- I contemplated occam's razor 's role in all of this
- and I pondered the importance of embracing the abstract
the downside though, is that it's likely I'm the only person that any of this actually makes any sense to
partially because I'm likely not conveying it in an easily understood manner...and partially because my mind (like everyone else's) has it's own wholely unique way of sequencing thoughts (which is likely very different from anyone else who may happen to be reading this)
which pretty much means that unless you think the same way I do - this whole thread is most likely just a bunch of poinless ramblings that states no real information, and serves no real purpose
the only thing that *might* transfer over would be my initial 'joke' that I started with before I began derailing it into some massive spiel (which, I suppose, is a moot point considering I never *technically* made it in the first place)
so instead of getting a half-assed attempt at trying to be funny...
you get a half-assed attempt at trying to be enlightening
don't you feel dumb for reading through all of this now 
..........
Thus Spake Muppet
--------------------
 Ravings of a Madman
|
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Golden Teacher Liquid Culture For Sale 
Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order
Muppet 
Edit 
Reply 
1 2 3 all )
Muppet
trendal
cosmicchic
NiamhNyx
Sclorch