Advocatus

The final value in Drake’s equation is L for length, that is the duration that a civilization is transmitting.  After that, either they have destroyed themselves or they have given up attempting to communicate.  Isn’t that what you mean by “duration of existence”, or do you mean something else?

I resist saying anything as trite as this, but as with a lot of popular philosophy it probably “means” whatever you THINK it means.  🙂

Clearly she’s not physically, chemically allergic to water if she can drink milk or orange juice.  Not being a doctor by trade, I would guess that there’s something psychosomatic going on, more like an extreme phobia than an allergy.  But what do I know?

Maybe I watched the wrong videos.  The first one says that the climate is indeed warming and gives the reasons for it.  The second one also admits that the climate is warming, just not as fast as predicted.

I’m not clear on this “Hoax that costs us $1 billion  day” thing.  You don’t provide links to where those figures come from.  I followed the…[Read more]

I think it’s astounding that she was okay with you being an atheist.  Most people who believe in God tend to think that “non-believers” must be immoral or something.  So you’re already ahead!

For a while I belonged to a forum on a Christian website, and I had a good time talking with them about various things.  I never tried to talk them out of…[Read more]

Mike Yohe wrote:  “I appreciate you helping with an easy win for our President in 2020.”

Sadly you’re probably right about that.  I mean he stole one election with the help of his Russian friends, so what’s one more?  And obviously the Republicans would be okay with him running the country straight into the ground as long as they got to ride on hi…[Read more]

If you want armchair theorizing, it looks to me as if the hikers panicked for some reason and rushed out of their tents half dressed into the freezing cold, where they got lost and froze to death. We seem to be on fairly safe ground making that deduction. The only mysteries are what made them panic and why some of them had broken ribs (and I think…[Read more]

Xain wrote:  “It’s more like refraining from temporary and transient things such as dancing and art, for they don’t last. One must remain focused on liberation.”

I’m getting the impression that you’re reading this stuff somewhere without fully understanding it.  Clothes are temporary and transient things, but we don’t see Buddhists going aroun…[Read more]

I’m no expert, but the understanding I have of Buddhist teaching is that what they shun is the desire for material things.  Desire leads to disappointment, anger and disillusionment.  They can’t be opposed to Art because Buddhists write books and create paintings.  Steven Seagal is supposedly a Buddhist and he makes action movies (or he used to…[Read more]

Most of the blame goes to the capitalist system which means that manufactures must keep churning out more and more goods into order to rake in more and more money, that means they have to encourage consumers to buy things that they don’t need.  But I think a large part of the problem is that individuals don’t realize how much their hunger for…[Read more]

Believe it or not most people have this little quirk in their personality which makes them wonder if they are somehow missing out on something.  This is the reason that thousands of people are drawn to religions or to cults.

Part of what they’re saying is right.  Your mind does build up an image of reality based upon ideas (or memes) which may o…[Read more]

Hola!  I don’t think anyone here will judge you too harshly for your English not being perfect.  Being largely humanists, we don’t expect people to be perfect.  🙂

“You (Probably) Don’t Exist” — I didn’t watch the whole thing either, but it looks like the same old “there is no free will” argument.  The maker of the video defines “you” pretty much as the homunculus inside your brain which is completely independent of all physical structures and instinctive reactions, and then goes on to prove that this…[Read more]

I think the song recommended that you “put him in the longboat ’til he’s sober.”  🙂

Xain wrote:  “Because I went to the site and saw a few bits of literature. One board talked about releasing all your attachments, along with some other things. Another was about touching “the source” and coming back.
But rest assured it isn’t what Advocatus said.”

All I did was go to the website and read the Overview, and I interpreted what they w…[Read more]

I was talking to a friend who puts forth this theory — the Wall is just Trump’s way of getting back at the Democrats for winning so many seats in the last election.   He can shut down the government and put all those people out of work without worrying about being held responsible for it.  If the Democrats back down, he wins.  If they don’t ba…[Read more]

I experience the same thing at a Star Trek forum which I help moderate.  People sign up, introduce themselves, make a big deal about how much they loved the show and all that.  I always greet them, try to engage them in dialogue (Which is your favorite episode?  Favorite character? etc.), and sometimes they respond once or twice, but the vast ma…[Read more]

Oh, do you mean bullfrogs, cicadas, things like that?  🙂

He’s certainly not saying that reality isn’t real.  He’s just saying that our perception of reality is a model put together in our brains based on the input from your senses.  We assume that our perception of reality is accurate, but we can sometimes see (in the case of optical illusions, for example) that it isn’t necessarily.  It’s just the be…[Read more]