HOME | DD | Gallery | Favourites | RSS
| HousesOfApollo
HousesOfApollo
[1189323]
[2004-10-25 01:40:42 +0000 UTC]
"The Center Of The Universe."
(Unknown)
# Statistics
Favourites: 37; Deviations: 179; Watchers: 110
Watching: 2; Pageviews: 42258; Comments Made: 19296; Friends: 2
# Interests
Favorite visual artist: Escher, Giger, Dali.Favorite movies: Bladerunner, A Clockwork Orange, Dr Strangelove, PI, Pulp Fiction, The Seventh Seal.
Favorite bands / musical artists: Tool, King Crimson, ELP, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Rush, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, APC, FSOL.
Favorite writers: Philip K. Dick, Bill Hicks, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, C.G. Jung, Frank Herbert.
Favorite games: Life.
Favorite gaming platform: Punching Bags.
Tools of the Trade: Tools are for chumps.
Other Interests: Art, Psychology, Writing, Humor, Sci-Fi, Fiction. Science, Mathematics.
# About me
Current Residence: Why? So you can come kill me?
Favourite genre of music: Prog Rock, Psychedelic Rock, and some ''Electronica'
Favourite style of art: Dark, brooding, psychedelic, personal, abstract, Science Fiction, Surreal, satirical.
Operating System: Linux 95% of the time.
Shell of choice: Clam.
Wallpaper of choice: Log.
Skin of choice: Snake.
Favourite cartoon character: Glenn Beck
Personal Quote: Guns don?t kill people, people kill people; so outlaw people!
# Comments
Comments: 1051
everything happens for a reason, every effect has a cause and so on... yes but, not always the reason we think it has right?
My comment was sort of self-refferential; things are not all fated to happen (predetermined) but also not random (accidental)... errrm, our lives: a dynamic equation to which and from which new factors are added/subtracted, depending on how we act/what we do/ how we think.
π: 0 β©: 1
If you're using the terms "fated" and "predetermined" interchangeably, then yes, things are fated. Although things like atmospheric weather phenomenon and the behavior of certain subatomic particles may appear to be random, they may simply be too complex for us to figure out yet. You could either assume that sometimes determined events appear random to us because of their complexity, or that a random universe somehow produces the illusion that it is determined. I understand probability as the mathematical construct it is--it's very useful for making sense out of events that are too complicated to comprehend otherwise. (For example, you couldn't realistically account for every physical force which determines the outcome of a coin clip. Although, I understand that a machine has been built, in laboratory conditions, that can repeatedly flip a coin so that it always comes out either heads or tails.)
If something is neither predetermined nor random, what exactly is it?
If you ask me, the best argument for a stochastic element to human behavior is the evolutionary one. There is a hypothesis (I wish I could remember where I heard it--I might ask the next math or philosophy teacher I run into) that some prey animals have a "random" element to their flight behavior as an adaptation to confuse predators. The idea is that if a prey animal's behavior is too predictable then it's too easy for predators to capture them. A good example of this is catching a fly in midair--the fly will jiggle about in no easily predictable path. While this isn't exactly the old fashioned notion of Free Will, it at least would save us from completely predicting our own actions for the time being.
Belief in an internal locus of control, even a false one in a predetermined universe, determines a better, more productive human life.
π: 0 β©: 1
yeah, thanks for the reply, interesting... i usually find the scientific /mathematical debates about determinism and chaos theory boring and useless, but the personal / solipsistic view sometimes interesting, but i think, as you say, we live better lives if we believe in free will, even if it is not real.
I guess you can't really investigate the question if you want to exclude either method from the investigation.
I do happen to believe it is real though.
But, as asked in my initial question, still think, just because some things seem to happen accidentally, and are not absolutely predetermined, they still all happen for a reason: felt in synchronicity, which is of course, rejected by most as mere coincidence.
by the way, stochastic = ?
π: 0 β©: 1
This is what you sound like when you're too subjective: [link]
Scientific and mathematical discussions may be boring, but at least they're based on some kind of shared reality. Any viable scientific or mathematically idea is, by definition, demonstrable. I can tell you, from what I know, what to expect if you toss a coin over a thousand times and record each result. It can also be shown that the probability that any two people out of a group of twenty-three share the same birthday is approximately 0.5073. The beauty of his is that you don't have to take my word for it--you can go out and poll random groups of twenty-three people, and flip thousands of coins, and you can verify this. [Although you're very unlikely to find an exact result you'll find the results approaching the probability with each additional sample. In the early days of probability there are examples of people flipping coins ten thousand times or more to see how well the math worked.]
I think that my point was that just because something appears to be undetermined, it doesn't mean that it isn't determined. And if there is a reason why everything happens, it doesn't follow that everything happens for a reason. That is a judgment outside of what I believe can be rationally discussed. Which is to say, it's something you can believe in, but you can't expect anyone else to have sufficient reason to accept it.
A stochastic process is a process whose behavior is non-deterministic--which is to say, random.
π: 0 β©: 0
[listening to Year Zero, The Great Destroyer]
say your name
try to speak as clearly as you can
you know everything gets written down
nod your head
just incase they could be watching
with their shiny satellites
i hope they cannot see
the limitless potential
living inside of me
to murder everything
[wipe the slate clean]
i hope they cannot see
i am the great destroyer
turn it up
listen to the shit they pump into
your head
filling you with apathy
hold your breath
wait until you know the time is right
on time
the end is near
..i hope they cannot see
the limitless potential
living inside of me
to murder everything
i hope they cannot see
i am the great destroyer
π: 0 β©: 1
Listening to ISIS -- Panopticon -- So Did We:
Our skin worn thin
Our bones exposed
Life reduced to ticks
From forest caves and azure skies
We crashed upon this earth
The years they passed and so did we
But, resistance would be brought
Minimalistic, yea. But I like it.
π: 0 β©: 1
The Hedonistic Imperative
Daringly abstract, but i like the monkey's site.
π: 0 β©: 1
More rantings of crazy people! 
π: 0 β©: 1
Better than rantings of sane people.
π: 0 β©: 1
ain't that the goddamn truth
π: 0 β©: 1
Sane people all say pretty much the same sorts of things. Insane people, you never really know.
π: 0 β©: 1
haha.
didn't see that coming
π: 0 β©: 0
your current signature quote:
βThere can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotionβ -- C.G. Jung.
but what does this mean to you?
everything you appear to seek
lies within those words.
it's a paradox
we are a
paradox
π: 0 β©: 1
It means that if you don't feel it, it doesn't matter. All you want, and all you do, it nothing to those who refuse to feel.
Sometimes I can't stand how it feels. Sometimes I can't feel anything at all.
And not feeling anything, hurts an awful lot.
π: 0 β©: 1
it's not a riddle
for us to draw implications
tethered to our own understandings.
take it back a bit,
into it's simplicity
and awe.
It is everything you appear to seek.
π: 0 β©: 1
Then they are empty words, an arrangement of text characters, with no meaning whatsoever.
π: 0 β©: 1
That's the spirit.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yea... Has anyone ever told you that you're more frustrating than Yoda on his worst day?
π: 0 β©: 1
speaking
in riddles
is my way of
smashing the ego
on the head
with a mallet
π: 0 β©: 1
I like to speak in riddles, sometimes. Because if you speak in riddles all the times, people may shut you out as just a riddler; someone who's just trying to purposely confuse them. My style is more 'start out somewhat normal, then get stranger as my speech progresses. That way you can sucker people into your weirdness 
π: 0 β©: 1
Like the story I'm working on now has an element of non-syntax 'speech' and communication. A little bit non-linear. It has been difficult to do without writing like Yoda 
π: 0 β©: 1
excellent. kick heads.
π: 0 β©: 1
that's all part of it
π: 0 β©: 1
how have you been?
π: 0 β©: 1
Alright, you know. Kind of the same, I hate to say. Not any bit worse off or better off than I was, I suppose.
π: 0 β©: 1
I can't tell if thats good or not...
π: 0 β©: 1
It's better than getting worse, but not near as good as getting better. My life is stagnant.
π: 0 β©: 1
Stagnance can be a form of regression, do try and move forward!
π: 0 β©: 1
Yea, but that's going to be one hell of a fight.
π: 0 β©: 1
Man, I seriously thought you were dead. I went looking for your username everywhere in some sort of panic, because that was the only thing I could do, to see if you were still alive. Unfortunately, you were dead by several more weeks everywhere else than here, so that wasn't exactly fulfilling of the point.
π: 0 β©: 1
Well. My last journal was titled "Suicide is Painless" the theme song from M.A.S.H.
I figured that people would figure out that I wasn't serious about suicide, just like that song wasn't. Feeling something strongly and actually doing it are two different things.
How often do you feel like garroting some asshole with barbed wire?
π: 0 β©: 1
Well, I know. You even ended it with saying you will live, but there's still the possibility everything finally got to you. It's pretty concerning when someone writes about suicide, and disappears for a 2 weeks.
And you know, if I actually let my temper off a leash, I imagine someone finding barb wire in their rectum pretty fast.
π: 0 β©: 1
| Next =>