Actually I'm using the groundwork JB laid out. I don't doubt that rock's got a path close enough to Earth that we should pay attention to it but your info paints it as a slim chance AND with how I know that we've basically already done the things with satellites that we would want to-

Well it's handled isn't it? No point actually building stuff until relatively soon before we'd wanna launch it anyway because we get so much better at this stuff each year and why would you want all that material just sitting there gathering dust while you waited for the window to launch?

To put it another way: we've already been spending money solving this problem. I'm all for better funding for the space program but your little (mini)doomsday scare isn't a good reason for it. Maybe a decade ago or something it was but now it's something we've got the full plan for how to handle.

I guess maybe if society collapsed and everyone decided to bury their head in the sand like an ostrich instead of bothering to look at the sky we'd be in a bad position but even if we failed phenomenally and didn't budge the rock at all it would still only have that 1 in 250,000 chance of it hitting.

I recall that "that's still risky when you're wagering the Earth" but we're not wagering the Earth or even humanity and if all our efforts fail to move it we don't have any other bets we can make anyway.


I suspect this hasn't really dissuaded you though. Here's what you can do instead: explain some of the details about what you want money spent on. "I want to turn the dollars into better odds for us" would basically be the opposite of what I've just asked for as that has no details of HOW to change the odds.

Bring up things we don't understand about deflecting a rock of that sort or some kind of rocket problem. "I don't think it's good enough" is again not the kind of answer I'm looking for. Lemme know why or how.

But clearly it would be taking away our freedom if people couldn't reject you for the reason...

Naw, I'm just not feelin it.

I still don't get it. If I don't believe these things aren't they not part of my reality and thus not true?

The way I see the universe? Ya, I'd want to know.

A different way where what I know determines what is real? No, if I didn't know about it it couldn't hurt me so trying to know about it and spreading the word would be making the world worse.

Another different world where a lot of people already know and make it real without enough time to change any of that? Well I'd be dead soon so it wouldn't matter than much but in general I prefer to be given a chance to mentally prepare myself so probably.

Well you could take up the American practice of abstinence only (ok, just parts of America) sex education and have the parents get upset if their kids are even shown medical diagrams to learn their basic anatomy. If they don't know what contraceptives are and all authority rejects them having any sex they'll pretty much just do it in secret and ignorance, ya?

But is it ok to reject a candidate if they show up to the interview without a penis?

I decided that I had a different response I wanted to express and it's decidedly subjective in nature so you should like hearing it from me:
The American majority is Christian. Does this mean that it's ok and important for companies in America to give preferential treatment to Christian employees? That they should make sure nobody outside of the religion gets better than minimum wage employment, if that?

Sure the Bible doesn't say "thoust should make life difficult for thine neighbor if he wilst not adopt thy religious beliefs" but you know that's basically part of the belief of everyone very concerned with their religion and it's obvious which ones would go to the polls if we were voting on giving more power to (their) religion.

That's not how representation works at all. Even if you didn't vote for the senator that covers your area s/he's still supposed to take your interests into account.

But why should businesses represent the citizens? I thought we had politicians for that and businesses most exploited the living crap out of people right up to the point where protesters and such could draw enough attention to it to make people not want to buy the product/service.

When we say discrimination we're clearly talking about the race/gender variety. When being female makes you not fit the image they want it's gone a bit far.

How could an employer even tell if one of the candidates was like that?

In my experience it's more of an attitude that they don't think certain races will even get them 1-fold profit. I read this one article where the people hiring for some low pay work said that there just weren't any black people working in the industry because they showed up two days after the hiring opened but an asian guy they hired recommended a black guy for a position who had already been turned down the starting day, was told there were no openings when he came by on recommendation, and the asian guy heard that they still had room the next day.

So it happens for no good reason and unless that's the only black guy that ever showed up on time you can tell it happens a lot.

You've almost the only person here who brings them up. Most of the people here probably do ignore it but there are going to be some that don't. Considering how you're one of the main posters in this section of the forums and it seems like you've actually got a rather large impact.

But even if we assume that you haven't planted the idea in a single person's head you're still nurturing it in many. One of the big things about the internet is that people who were isolated find out that other people think and feel these things and they change their attitude about it immensely.

Now it would be much worse if you were making people feel ok about pedophilia and weirder if you were making them think it was natural to want to dress up like a penguin when they had sex but don't let that justify your actions. Somebody has to take responsibility if people are ever going to change and if everybody just waits for somebody else we'll never get anywhere.

Don't you usually give examples to show how things work? Why would you give me examples of things that couldn't happen without a little line about "and that's why it can't happen" on the end to make it clear what you're getting at?


Which one it is makes a really big difference though. If it's someone someone dreamed up then we will know it's possible to make more entities like the Devil and we would have to be careful not to do so.



That's called a tragedy of the commons. Notice how China has been saying "why should we stop polluting if America won't?" lately? Also a tragedy of the commons.

The "I don't really have any impact compared to everyone else" and "if I don't do it somebody else will" lines of thinking are a really easy way to make yourself not feel responsible for problems but all those other people are telling themselves they don't matter because you're just going to do it anyway. You're as responsible as any of them and it's this "everyone else is responsible" thinking that lets anyone do this crap in the first place.

But think about it. Humans are pretty much just on this one planet right? Most of the possible entities out there have never even heard of us so if just the aliens that mess around with Earth were to stop believing in us "poof" no more humans (after all we're practically nothing compared to all of that so if what we believe doesn't really have any impact we shouldn't be able to keep ourselves around either.)

This would not only get rid of us for the aliens that want as much but it would also give them more power of belief. If all the big intergalactic types went and did this they could get rid of more and more little groups until the big ones were able to just believe what they wanted and make the universe work that way all on their own.

With all the devils and things smaller planets go around dreaming up they would almost have to do this to have any hope of survival.

Thanks for repeating the issue I've already made clear.

But there's a problem. I though you said earlier that you couldn't be abducted because your beliefs wouldn't let it happen but here you've listed it as a possibility and specifically said that if that's how things actually are your belief would change to reflect it.

I've really been trying to say if things that are impossible via a set of beliefs could happen to someone with those beliefs. Looks like you agree that they can but you've been making everyone dance around on some other topic we obviously weren't concerned with.

I'm saying that one person had to think up the Devil first and then share the idea with others before there could be a lot of people imagining devils.

However that's only if the Devil was created by humanity. If the Devil existed before us then there could be many people that discovered as much independently of each other. If this is the case actuality would have influenced people before they ever had beliefs one way or the other about what the Devil was.


Which is the problem I've been getting at. This means somebody created aliens and that enough people adopted the idea to make them part of your reality and that you are a part of the reason they are here, though the first person is probably long dead.

More importantly this means that when you tell people about aliens you're strengthening their established presence but if instead you and everyone else decided to never mention aliens again they would be gone in just a generation.

You don't need to know exactly what actuality is to say if people believing something create it. You just said that we couldn't believe aliens out of existence after all and like I brought up a ways back how would people have ever started believing in aliens if the aliens weren't part of actuality before the belief?

Did somebody have a nightmare and then go and make life really bad for a whole lot of people because they were confused about what it was or does actuality not really care what people think?

I wasn't trying to make this a topic about if there are aliens are not. It's still supposed to be about the question of belief.

But now you've said enough. What people believe doesn't determine actuality, correct?

I still don't see why you use the word reality there. You're just describing your life.

Nothing I've found looking them up explains this thing you said
"to a single observer who believes in something 100%, to him or her, that is the truth."

That's almost exactly what I want you to tell me. If you tell me that it would be close enough that I could tell what you mean by truth.

Please tell me how you define truth already.

I've already said enough about what I think about truth but we really need to know what you mean by truth to have a coherent conversation.

Sounds like preferences to me. I like cookie dough icecream but I don't think calling it my reality makes much sense.



No, that would be a double negative.
why not just- proposing something to do
not agree - action, interchangeable with "disagree"
that (animals) can eat you? - condition of the action.

So if everyone disagrees with you about aliens there are no aliens?

I have a harder time having actual dreams than lucid dreaming. Basically every time I'm awake enough that I'd remember the dream I ursurp it as it's become really easy for me to recognize I'm dreaming.

I've never been chased by a lion in my dreams though. I dream about having to sit still while I'm having dental work done or watching meta-personalities (sort of people I know but exaggerated) doing random stuff.

Ha.
Most of the time if I've got a troublesome obstacle around in the dream I erase it and everything and then sit there wondering what I should do with the lucid dream. If I had them a little more often I'd probably remember things to try.

Well really before I ever started having lucid dreams nothing in the dreams could hurt me. I'd fall from helicopters many stories onto concrete and recognize that my legs were snapping and basically turning into processed hamburger but it was just kind of "dang, I liked that body. Oh well."

I thought you were supposed to wake up before you hit the ground in falling dreams but I guess I'm strange.

Why not forbid it from happening to others? Seems like the until first abduction there aren't that many believers but they change their tune after.

*though as I've mentioned a lot if not all of the time it could just be sleep paralysis. People used to call it a demon but these days they call it aliens I guess.

"But to a single observer who believes in something 100%, to him or her, that is the truth."
"I said that BELIEFS change all the time. I think you are you confusing meaning of the terms "truth" and "belief.""

Well, let's go straight at it: tell me how the truth is different from belief.

Are we arguing about how nasty people in general are or how strong the word prick is?

If I owned a newspaper I filled with pictures of flayed open human corpses and I went trying to hand it out and display it I think that people would still want to stop me doing it.

So they didn't say they were with the government but you know they are because obviously the government would want to shut the paper down while not looking like the government except that they obviously look like the government.
mmmmmmmmm


Who exactly threatened him? I'm assuming that with the family threats there wouldn't be any paperwork.

You know, I once heard about this family that had a bunch of dogs. It was this nice spot they chose away from folks so the barking wouldn't upset any neighbors but they got all these threats and then the government burned the dogs. I think the dogs must have been witnesses to alien activity.

...so how do you link this to alien-government conspiracy other than it being in a place where people identify a lot of alien related stuff and cattle mutilations? Are the government and aliens the only groups capable of pointlessly mutilating cattle? The only ones capable of threatening people's families?