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Do you believe there is extra-terrestrial life?
Topic Started: May 13 2008, 01:58 AM (1,398 Views)
Moonbat
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I think there is some basis for almost every belief.

For example, a person observing the beauty of nature may consider this as evidence for the existence of god. Or attribute the unexpected recovery of a sick person to his/her prayers. Or believe that a person likes you because he or she brought you flowers.

Maybe you won't accept some of this evidence as evidence, but what I want to say is that evidence does not necessarily have to be of a scientific nature.


I can call the sky being blue evidence that cheese is made of cauliflower but that's just playing with words likewise one can claim the fact that you find the world beautiful to be evidence that there is intelligent creator but your asthetic feelings do not infact support the conclusion.

You can attribute the unexpected recovery of a person to prayers but infact recovery following prayers by itself is not evidence for the power of prayer because it's entirely explicable in terms of the opposite hypothesis i.e. that prayer did nothing. Evidence must support a conclusion over it's own null. If it doesn't then it's not evidence. Or whatever word you want to use if it doesn't support a conclusion over it's null then... well it doesn't support a conclusion over it's null so talking about as if it does is just a contradictory mess.

So if we want to look for actual evidence that means ruling out known influences. So you have to adjust for the fact that some very sick people do spontaneously get better, you also have to consider people getting better because of the placebo effect. You have to adjust for people suffering from confirmation bias, etc. etc. So what you do is compare a large set of people involving one control group so that you can use statistics to see if there is any effect above beyond normal random variation, and you make sure that the process is double blind to rule out people subconsciously influencing the setup to get the result they expect, and of course whenever you eliminate non-God causes you eliminate any effect. So in no sense can these accounts be called evidence for God.

I mean you say evidence does not have to be of a scientific nature but that's just a confusion, i can't defend my sky being blue therefore cheese made of cauliflower arguments on grounds that my "evidence" is not "scientific evidence" it's a special different kind of evidence. That's just special pleading and it doesn't even make sense since by using the word "evidence" i'm appealing to the idea that these observation do infact make my hypothesis more likely if they don't then well they don't and hence my special "non-scientific" evidence is of no value in determining truth.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Klaus
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Well, eventually you can never say anything about causality; we can only observe correlation.

For most people, what makes a correlation interesting enough to assume some form of causation is that it has an explanation in your model of the world. Assuming that prayers have an effect is a consistent with and part of a sophisticated model of the world called religion. Assuming that the sky being blue is evidence that cheese is made of cauliflower , on the other hand, is not part of a general model of the world, but just a single hypothesis out of the blue.

Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Daniel
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Klaus
May 14 2008, 02:08 AM
Well, eventually you can never say anything about causality; we can only observe correlation.

For most people, what makes a correlation interesting enough to assume some form of causation is that it has an explanation in your model of the world. Assuming that prayers have an effect is a consistent with and part of a sophisticated model of the world called religion. Assuming that the sky being blue is evidence that cheese is made of cauliflower , on the other hand, is not part of a general model of the world, but just a single hypothesis out of the blue.

Yep.
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Moonbat
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Well, eventually you can never say anything about causality; we can only observe correlation.


Causality ultimately involves claims about whether correlations are implicit in reality or whether they are simply figments of our imagination. The use of evidence based theories offers a way of distinguishing between these two.

You have theories regarding causality, that's why you look both ways before crossing the road and why you use an umbrella when it's raining.

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For most people, what makes a correlation interesting enough to assume some form of causation is that it has an explanation in your model of the world. Assuming that prayers have an effect is a consistent with and part of a sophisticated model of the world called religion. Assuming that the sky being blue is evidence that cheese is made of cauliflower , on the other hand, is not part of a general model of the world, but just a single hypothesis out of the blue.


Assuming that prayers have an effect is not implicitly contradictory, though neither is assuming that the world is actually flat and everyone is hallulcinating when they see anything that indicates it's broadly spherical. Consistency is necessary but not sufficient. One requires evidence if one is going to say that a (constistent) description is more probable than the infinite number of alternative (consistent) descriptions.

Whether or not people find a certain correlation interesting is of no relevence to the validity of their accounts of those (supposed) correlations. The fact that psychologically we are susceptable to regression/post-hoc fallacies and not sky being blue therefore cauliflower made of cheese fallacies does not make the former any less falacious does not make conclusions based on them any less disconnected from the real world.

The religious model becomes equivalent to a single hypthesis out of blue as soon as one realises that there is no evidence for this model. Nothing supports the religious model and nothing supports the idea that cheese is made from cauliflower. One can point to people getting better after prayer and say look this is psychologically appealing however as soon as one examines it in more depth and realises it doesn't actually support the conclusion, and one realises that when one does eliminate placebo like effects then no correlation is found and then further goes on to realise these accounts are easily explained in terms of prior knowns like people's susceptibility confirmation bias and susceptability to post-hoc fallacies then any attempt to support this religious model with these debunked anecdotal accounts of prayer followed by convalescent becomes as invalid as supporting the cauliflower made of cheese hypothesis by pointing to the wavelength of light scattered by the atmosphere.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Klaus
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Moonbat
May 14 2008, 12:41 PM
Consistency is necessary but not sufficient. One requires evidence if one is going to say that a (constistent) description is more probable than the infinite number of alternative (consistent) descriptions.

But what is evidence, then?

I'd say that evidence for a theory is the observation of phenomena that are explained by the theory. By this definition, a religious person can find a lot of evidence for his or her model of the world.

I think I said this a couple of times in earlier discussion, but this brings me back to the point that I believe a scientific model is not "better" or "more true/real" in an absolute sense than other models of the same phenomena (including religious ones). It's a different kind of model with some nice properties such as falsifiability or predictability, but that doesn't make it more real.

I don't say this because I am religious (which I am not), but because deep in my heart I'm an anti-realist - which is in my perspective the only logical position on science once you've done your homework in model theory. I'm happy to see that after many decades of uncritical realism, anti-realism now gains momentum again, as evidenced, e.g., by the recent book of Neil Tennant.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Moonbat
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But what is evidence, then?

I'd say that evidence for a theory is the observation of phenomena that are explained by the theory. By this definition, a religious person can find a lot of evidence for his or her model of the world.


Evidence are phenomena that serve to distinguish one explanation over and above competing explanations. A phenomena that can be explained by two competing explanations is not evidence for either (over the other).

People who make up random stories can find stuff that's consistent with their random stories but that's not evidence, to be evidence it has to be inexplicable in terms of other theories competing theories. (competing theories have similar generality/simplicity)

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I think I said this a couple of times in earlier discussion, but this brings me back to the point that I believe a scientific model is not "better" or "more true/real" in an absolute sense than other models of the same phenomena (including religious ones). It's a different kind of model with some nice properties such as falsifiability or predictability, but that doesn't make it more real.

I don't say this because I am religious (which I am not), but because deep in my heart I'm an anti-realist - which is in my perspective the only logical position on science once you've done your homework in model theory. I'm happy to see that after many decades of uncritical realism, anti-realism now gains momentum again, as evidenced, e.g., by the recent book of Neil Tennant.


I really have no idea what you mean when you say this stuff.

How can you talk about a theory of modelling unless you're implicitly accepting a real world? - If you're not modelling the world what are you modelling?

Cogito ergo sum, provides absolute proof there is a real world. I think/have experiences therefore something exists. That things that exists, it's the real world!

What does it mean to about to talk about falsifiability being "nice" except in the context of having descriptions that better match the real world. What's nice about them? Why are they important? Why bother making sure our scientific theories are falsifiable? Why not use mythological accounts to construct flying machines rather than a theory of aerodynamics constructed by repeated falisifable hypothesis and collection of evidence?

How do you explain the contradictory double standards that you apply in every day life where you use theories about what is true whilst simultaneously denying the validity of such a claim? Why do you look both ways before crossing the road? Why do you use an umbrella when it's raining? Why do you press the power button before typing on your computer? Why do you choose windows made of glass and not concrete? Why is it that in every conversation about every other topic you allude to certain statements being true? How can you claim that global warming is likely whilst simultaneously saying all descriptions are equally true. Why would you react with ridicule if after being given a parking ticket in a parking zone if the attendent responded by saying oh well your theory you were in a parking zone is no less true than my theory that you weren't. What are you doing talking to me when you don't think i exist! You must think you're talking to yourself, that i'm a figment of your imagination, and even then that's still realism. There's still a real world and really thinking i'm figment is just playing with words.

To say that all descriptions are equal is just.... :confused: Klaus! To claim that an account of an eclipse which describes said eclipse in terms of a giant flying lizard which consumes the moon and then regurgitates it having been scared off by humans beating drums is as true as an account that claim thats a a giant rock 407000 km away has moved in between the Earth and the sun and hence is blocking the light so that vastly less is reaching the eyes of people who are looking up and seeing the darkened sun, is beyond crazy.

You think that anti-realism is gaining momentum but realism is the modern theory. The Vienna circle style positivsm predated the modern realistic approach, it was an attempt to try and really work out what science was about but it failed. It failed philosophically and it failed pragmatically. Mach's insistence that it was meaningless to talk about atoms stemmed from his positivistic approach.

I'm quite happy to think about the kind of neo-Kantian account of the world that people like Bohr were influence by. I'm certainly happy with the idea that our naieve intuitions about the world really are approximate and do not capture the nature of reality beyond a certain order of magnitude (e.g. our ideas of solid our concepts of time and space and time). I'm tentatively open to the idea that reality may be fundamentally unknownable (tentative in that i think one should always proceed on the assumption that such a hypothesis is wrong).

But this does not make all descriptions equal, you cannot use such arguments to hand wavingly claim that mythological accounts that are easily explained in terms of psychology and anthropology are somehow as accurate as modern scientific theories.

Even if we are implicitly constrained to approximations, even if we cannot have a perfectly true description, and even if we are cognitively constrained to work within a certain framework that limits our ability to describe nature. Regardless of all of that it doesn't mean all descriptions are equally true! Some approximations are better than others: one can approximate a piano as a homogenous sphere but it's not as accurate a descriptions as a description of it being... well piano shaped and having strings and soundboards and keys etc. Infact if you want to understand the relationship between pressure at various points on the piano and the vibrations in the air that follow them then a homogenous sphere approximation is utterly useless. I mean really unless you're interested in the gravitational interactions between pianos then it's pretty useless. And regardless of whether or not we are implicitly limited to ideas like particles and waves which are perhaps not sufficient to describe reality that doesn't mean that everything is equally true and that therefore is just as sensible to talk about dragons causing eclipses as it is to talk about the moon causing the eclipse. Or just as true to talk about magic Gods making the world or flying spagetti monsters or pink unicorns on Mars as it is to say that the influenza virus infects cells by injecting is nucleic acids into a cell leading to the enzymes normally involved in cellular reproduction being used to create more copies of the virus.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Larry
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That would be me, and you really are quite crazy.


Given that you just proved how crazy *you* are, I can fully understand why you think i'm crazy. But i have a lot of people a hell of a lot smarter and more educated than you are who agree with me, so I'm not too concerned that you think i'm crazy. It's just a symptom of your youth and lack of wisdom.

Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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kenny
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There must be extra-terrestrial life.

Larry had to come from somewhere. :lol:
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QuirtEvans
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Larry
May 13 2008, 06:17 PM

or..... man is causing global warming, but nature has canceled that out for the next couple of decades..... all during a period of record cold worldwide...


Once again, with gusto ...

Nature hasn't cancelled it out all over the globe, only in North America and Europe. The study's authors said explicitly that their findings didn't apply to other places. What you're doing is roughly equivalent to saying that, if it's hot in Tennessee on Wednesday, it must be hot everywhere in the country.

Yes, I know, you didn't say all over the globe. You didn't mention the limitations of the findings, however (that they are limited to North America and Europe), which is fundamentally dishonest.

Say it wrong unintentionally, and it's a mistake. Say it wrong intentionally ... and it has to be intentional, since the mistake was pointed out and even quoted to you ... and it's a lie.
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
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Klaus
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Moonbat
May 14 2008, 02:33 PM
Cogito ergo sum, provides absolute proof there is a real world. I think/have experiences therefore something exists. That things that exists, it's the real world!

What are you doing talking to me when you don't think i exist!

I'll address the rest of your post later when I have some time. For now let me just say this:

I think you are misunderstanding anti-realism (which is always a problem with labels), but anti-realism, at least as I see it, is not the position that reality does not exist, but rather that it is just impossible to perceive and describe the objective reality.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Daniel
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kenny
May 14 2008, 06:19 AM
There must be extra-terrestrial life.

Larry had to come from somewhere. :lol:

:lol:
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
BBC article c/o Axtremus
May 14 2008, 12:23 AM


'Free from sin'

Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.



:blink: Assuming of course there actually is such thing as original sin in the first place- I highly doubt it. If so though, then these little green aliens must be quite the immaculate creatures living on an equally immaculate celestial rock.

Edit: Why by cracky, they just might even be Mormons!
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pianojerome
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HOLY CARP!!!
Moonbat
May 14 2008, 05:11 AM
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If we haven't found evidence, then it is a matter of believing.


I believe that there is a bird outside my window, because i can hear cheeping.

Beliefs without evidence/basis are confused and contradictory and should be avoided by all.

Evidence can take many forms, and it can be small or big, convincing to everyone or only convincing to a few. In the end you could say that everything requires belief, since we're always limited to whatever evidence we do have.

Hearing cheeping outside your window is pretty good evidence of birds... of course it could be a radio instead. So then you look outside, and what you see is pretty good evidence of birds... or it could be toy dolls. So then you touch one and it pecks at you: pretty good evidence of birds... or it could be a toy robot. At some point you have to say, here's the evidence that I have, and I'm choosing to believe that based on this evidence, there are birds here.

But if you don't have any evidence at all -- if you're just waiting for it all to roll in, because theoretically it seems possible, but you haven't got any yet -- then it is entirely a matter of faith. That doesn't mean there isn't any; it just means that you haven't got any, and therefore can't claim that you do.
Sam
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Moonbat
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Hearing cheeping outside your window is pretty good evidence of birds... of course it could be a radio instead. So then you look outside, and what you see is pretty good evidence of birds... or it could be toy dolls. So then you touch one and it pecks at you: pretty good evidence of birds... or it could be a toy robot. At some point you have to say, here's the evidence that I have, and I'm choosing to believe that based on this evidence, there are birds here.


You should say i hear cheeping so i think there's a good chance there's a bird, i.e. when you say "I believe X" you should mean I think it's really likely that X is the case.

Anything else is indefensible.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Moonbat
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Klaus
May 14 2008, 02:35 PM
Moonbat
May 14 2008, 02:33 PM
Cogito ergo sum, provides absolute proof there is a real world. I think/have experiences therefore something exists. That things that exists, it's the real world!

What are you doing talking to me when you don't think i exist!

I'll address the rest of your post later when I have some time. For now let me just say this:

I think you are misunderstanding anti-realism (which is always a problem with labels), but anti-realism, at least as I see it, is not the position that reality does not exist, but rather that it is just impossible to perceive and describe the objective reality.

When i say science describes the real world i mean that

1) There is a real world

2) We can create descriptions that map onto reality. (perhaps only approximately)

3) There is no implicit difference between statements about the contents of scientific theories like atoms and statements about everyday objects like tables and chairs.

In terms of perceiving or describing objective reality - well i'd accept that our experiences are not purely a reflection of the way reality is. But at the same time they are clearly derived from a real world and that link allows us to construct theories about that real world.

Further regardless of whether or not there is stuff about reality that we do not know or cannot know that does not mean all descriptions are equal, some are clearly more accurate than others.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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big al
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And will the scientist, the philosopher, and the mystic ever find common ground on which they can agree?

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"jesu, der simcha fun der man's farlangen."
-bachophile
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
Yes of course. When we earthlings make first contact with intelligent alien life.
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Mikhailoh
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Renauda
May 14 2008, 02:24 PM
Yes of course. When we earthlings make forst contact with intelligent alien life.

And they start making excuses as to why they have to leave after a few minutes.

We're space trash on a trailer park planet.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
Mikhailoh
May 14 2008, 10:28 AM
Renauda
May 14 2008, 02:24 PM
Yes of course. When we earthlings make forst contact with intelligent alien life.

And they start making excuses as to why they have to leave after a few minutes.

We're space trash on a trailer park planet.

"I think the surest sign that there are aliens from other planets is that none of them have tried to contact us."
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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Klaus
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Moonbat
May 14 2008, 06:14 PM
Further regardless of whether or not there is stuff about reality that we do not know or cannot know that does not mean all descriptions are equal, some are clearly more accurate than others.

OK, I hope this will not turn out to be too philosophical.

Probably you know Orwell's book "1984".

In this book, the government has a "Ministry of Truth". Its purpose is to rewrite history and change the facts to fit party doctrine, for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite history so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate.

Let's say that, in 100 years, the Ministry of Truth removes all records of my existence. Let's assume that nobody remembers me and that I have no descendants. Let's assume the Ministry of Truth does its job so thoroughly that the whole state of the world in 2108 is exactly as it would have been if I had never existed.

My question is: Did I really (i.e., in reality) exist? The obvious answer seems to be "Yes!", but I think you could just as well say "No!". The state of the world - which includes the position of every atom, what each person knows or remembers, everything - in 2108 in my story is such that it is consistent with both my existence and subsequent erasure through the Ministry of Truth, and with my non-existence. It's impossible to say something definite about the past; we can only say something about the shadows of the past in the present. The past itself is in a sense unseizable. I argue that every past that would have led to the same state is equally "real". This may sound counter-intuitive at first, but if you think about it it is much more plausible than assuming that there was just one designated "real" past.

If we observe a phenomenon, we can speculate about the cause, but in the moment we observe the effect, the cause is already part of the past. But what was the cause? How can we explain the phenomenon? What a daunting task, given that there are gazillions of possible pasts that may have led to the now...

Well, I guess I better stop now because:

Posted Image

:wink:
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Renauda
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Mikhailoh
May 14 2008, 11:28 AM
We're space trash on a trailer park planet.

Speak for yourself, Bubbles.
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Mikhailoh
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Renauda
May 14 2008, 03:46 PM
Mikhailoh
May 14 2008, 11:28 AM
We're space trash on a trailer park planet.

Speak for yourself, Bubbles.

Especially Canucks.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Mikhailoh
May 14 2008, 03:52 PM
Renauda
May 14 2008, 03:46 PM
Mikhailoh
May 14 2008, 11:28 AM
We're space trash on a trailer park planet.

Speak for yourself, Bubbles.

Especially Canucks.

The USA is the bestest trailer in the park.
Canada is just lucky to get to park besides the USA.
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
The USA is lucky that we are good neighbours and don't take its brash, blustering and unmitigated BS superiority complex too seriously.
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
Renauda
May 15 2008, 10:52 AM
The USA is lucky that we are good neighbours and don't take it's brash, blustering and unmitigated BS superiority complex too seriously.

Hey! When it comes to brash, blustering and unmitigated BS superiority complexes, we're the best!

U-S-A! U-S-A!
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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