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things_that_make_no_sense
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anne-girl
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http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600
1 The placebo effect
DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the
experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.
This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the
University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the
saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.
i was trying to explain how this makes sense today to someone...
You know in stories? How, say, there's a curse and then 200 years later something happens related to the distant great-great-grandchildren of those who were cursed and then the next day it rains in the desert for the first time in 200 years, a gigantic thunderstorm ... everything in the present is interrelated with things that happened in the past and it's all pretty and harmonious and then everyone lives happily ever after?
Like how in Orson Scott Card's Xenocide there are these force-lines joining things together {they had a name which i don't recall} and in living beings they all clustered together and also joined people who were related to eachother together? {these were the same things which permitted FTL communication}
Or in English class where you write essays with metaphor and simile and everything works together magically, from a million and five different angles, subtly, subtly and it's confusing as hell {at least to science-types} because there are no definite answers - it's just that everything's related to everything and you have to pull in cultural references and such
So, so, this interrelatedness of things... this metaphor-type-thing that human minds invent in stories... that's why it makes sense
That explanation of why it makes sense makes no sense... not scientifically at all {the artistic approach rather than scientific would be interesting to watch... instead of quantifying and measuring simply write a poem and try to get across some sublime or hard-to-catch-in-numbers idea by alluding to other things}
just a thought. Not a rational one, no. {science can't be all there is, can it?}
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050530
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andru235
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i can assure you that science is but a fractional piece of a larger puzzle...i am certain.
but...it is a rare person who rests on my assurances, indeed.
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050531
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andru235
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see: what_science_cannot_see
anne-girl i'm telling you to see something that you already do see. please, excuse me.
i have posted frequently on the shortsightedness of science and scientific thought. i am no religious zealot! see: it_all_exists
but i am one of several human uranials; from the standpoint of sentience i am painfully aware of yet *another* drawback to fission, but it is a drawback science will never acknowledge because the evidence for it is not to be found in the physical realm. blah blah blah...i've already posted about this 50 times...
anyway i liked your observations; that placebo thing was interesting, as was the literary observation
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050531
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dandy
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the surrealist compliment generator and the uncyclopedia
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050531
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dandy
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but as you were making meaning. lovely and noble and real as it is.
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050531
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somenom
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my thoughts my thoughts my words, mostly
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050531
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anne-girl
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astrology
and all the non-scientific things that science-people say is crap
so i was thinking (dangerous, i know)
that people_don't_make_sense, so why should the things that people make up?
like logic
you know in star trek, with the vulcans?
and how they're utterly, totally, logical and spock raises an eyebrow and says "captain, that is illogical"... but sometime the illogical humans pwn them through intuition or whatever
even if that's just made up by illogical humans who want to pwn the vulcans, i think they have a point...
cause i was thinking about weird shit people do...
like electing bush or whatever, or bombing and fighting wars and falling in love
and none of it makes any sense... and when my religion crashed and burned, so did my moral framework and i'm only beginning to rebuild it now, but i'm not going to do it logically based on axioms and proceeding in an orderly manner, causes life isn't logical and assuming it is... just doesn't work, mostly
being logical and sane and only doing things that make sense would be nice, in a perfect world... but it wouldn't be as fun, idon'tthink, because then there's less room for creativity and randomness and all the sporadic beauty that comes from our happy illogic
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050712
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anne-girl
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the problem with these blathes is i have an idea of what i want to get across
and then end up rambling incoherently and stating the obvious
sigh
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050712
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anne-girl
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it was something like
science-people shouldn't judge non-science things by science-standards
which is not related to the first blathe
but to other things, like religion && stuff which logical people dissect and cut apart
when they're not intended that way
it's a useful tool, but not for everything, say
seriously useful, that is... illogical rantings and ravings and basing beliefs on nothing at all can be way dangerous, and applying a modicum of logic make everything work together much more nicely
forgive my ramblings
i'm just trying to work this out
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050713
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anne-girl
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another thought, to be considered:
the idea that people, much of the time, only use logic to justify a conclusion reached though some other irrational means
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050713
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andru235
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oh, i love you. hooray.
in conversation, when writing, and when blathing, i usually know exactly what i want to say, but having not the words, feel as though i end up rambling incoherently and - at best - stating the obvious.
perhaps this is why i felt as though i have understood - as best as one might - a variety of your posts (and other blatherers also).
rather, it is the articulate, clearly stated persons i have the hardest time understanding. as they vividly elucidate their meanings, i find myself wondering, "what are they trying to say?!?"
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050713
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andru235
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oh, and also, i also agree with what you said about science judging non-science things by its standards.
same, of course, with religions judging science.
i am reminded of the quip about a composer who shows his magnum opus to a painter, and the painter gasps, saying, "i've never seen such a hideous mess of black and white lines and dots. what a worthless piece of art!" so the composer walks over to the painters newest series of paintings and stands there with his eyes closed, listening intently. "sounds like junk to me," he retaliates.
while i partially agree with this sentiment, i too must disagree. if one proceeds by analogy, sometimes one can make interesting inferences about strange and seemingly unrelated topics. the danger is in attempting to build concrete bridges over abstract rivers, i suppose.
on the other hand, it would be just as silly to dismiss science/religion based on what the other says, as it would be to throw out a painting because it cannot readily produce sonorous preludes and fugues.
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050713
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