You posted links to stuff that isn't even relevent. I told you I don't accept speculation. No one in their right minds accepts random speculation from unknown websites wirtten by unknown people.
With that, I bow out. You don't even know Pubmed or Science magazine. *facepalm*
Here you go buddy, you win teh Gold Star.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
You are right, I don't accept things because they are written in a magazine.
[00:31:12] <stickie> by the way, thanks for the sig sixofour
[00:31:23] <sixofour> dejavu
[00:31:25] <sixofour> what sig?
[00:31:55] <stickie> you will just have to find out *insert mystical music*
[00:45] <sixofour> dude!!!!!
[00:45] <sixofour> darkkobold is a fuckwit
No need for Ad Hominem. We all, all of us, agree and know that you are a simplistic person.™
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
That's not Ad Hominem :P Because that insult wasn't meant as a diversion around a topic.
[00:31:12] <stickie> by the way, thanks for the sig sixofour
[00:31:23] <sixofour> dejavu
[00:31:25] <sixofour> what sig?
[00:31:55] <stickie> you will just have to find out *insert mystical music*
sixofour why do you respond to these people? you are waisting your time.
Dear Bisqwit, why do you let this nonsense clutter your (or any) topic? Please feel free to not respond.
[00:31:12] <stickie> by the way, thanks for the sig sixofour
[00:31:23] <sixofour> dejavu
[00:31:25] <sixofour> what sig?
[00:31:55] <stickie> you will just have to find out *insert mystical music*
There is no way to tell if what brain scans observe are actual thoughts or reactions/side effects to by essence unobservable thoughts. You seem to act as if you knew.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Kuwaga wrote:
There is no way to tell if what brain scans observe are actual thoughts or reactions/side effects to by essence unobservable thoughts. You seem to act as if you knew.
To further fan the flames, I'll try to respond:
To measure activity in the brain, you can look at increased blood flow, or increased electrical activity. Some of the knowledge we have regarding neuroscience comes from finding correlations between images on fMRIs (or other imaging techniques) with specific stimuli given to the subject being studied, by looking for these increases in activity. If a person is shown a picture of a cat, and 4 areas light up, it may be due to the visual system being stimulated, the association areas linking the picture of a cat to the actual animal, or it may be memory of an old pet. However, will well controlled studies (those things that sixofour thinks are shit), we can try to limit the amount of "cross-contamination" present. The more test results that support a specific hypothesis, the higher the correlation. But remember, CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION. This is why there is so much that is considered "unknown" in science: We don't have enough data right now. Most "facts" we can "logically" rely on are really just a product of us seeing one consistent result after lots of personal experience. If I threw a ball in the air 3 times, and 2 times it came down, but one time it just kept going up, I would consider the theory of gravity to be a rather bad theory. In very similar ways, sometimes scientific studies will contradict each other. This usually comes from poor understanding of the confounding variables present. The better we understand and control those variables, the more we can say we have confidence in what we've found.
So, because many, many studies have found specific areas of the brain to correlate with motor planning, sight, hearing, emotion, logical thought, etc, we are fairly confident that those areas serve the same purpose in other people. That is how we "know" what brain scans show us: from learning from past experiences that we can correlate to a new experience.
To make this post even more applicable, I have learned from reading through the past two pages of this thread that sixofour will respond with some ignorantly trolling response, likely having something to do with me not believing in absolutes, or about how I think that holding brain matter in my hand means I'm holding thoughts. Thus, because I have seen him make retarded responses to logical and supported arguments in the past, I expect him to make the same type of response now, due to a high correlation. If he doesn't, that may mean that my correlation between logical posting and idiotic response was not as well supported, and I'll have to slightly rethink what I've seen and learned. But I doubt it.
I don't question the usefulness of brain scans, but still, we don't know f.e. if thoughts are something spiritual/super-natural that can't be meassured. It could be that brain scans only meassure our brains' reaction to those kind of thoughts (if they exist). There is no way to tell. It is largely irrelevant for the experiments, but some conclusions we tend to make about them are kind of uncarefully rushed. They assume that the simpliest answer is the most likely one to be true. Which isn't bad for science, but I wouldn't claim those conclusions to be 'true' because we simply don't know.
I don't question the usefulness of brain scans, but still, we don't know f.e. if thoughts are something spiritual/super-natural that can't be meassured. It could be that brain scans only meassure our brains' reaction to those kind of thoughts (if they exist). There is no way to tell.
Hence,
mmbossman wrote:
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
It can, but that's not the point.
If every time I want to take a piss I do it in the WC, it doesn't yet mean it's the WC that makes me piss, or that every time I visit WC I have to take a piss.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Also note that the hypothesis must be testable and falsifiable, or else it will have little scientific value.
Step 4: Do an experiment
Preferably a controlled experiment. Also, the experiment must be reproducible or, once again, it will have little scientific value.
Most hypotheses and experiments in pseudoscience fail most or all of these requirements.
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
58 consecutive non-Bisqwit posts and counting...
It would be interesting if somebody tabulated the length of the all the gaps between Bisqwit's posts in this thread (or something along those lines). Anybody up for the task?
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
Heh, People are still here talking about it.
You guys [you know who you are...mabey] outright deny the existance of intuition, and the standardization of logic. Your world might aswell be static if everything you think of can be a changed variable. If nothing is absolute, then you know nothing, because everything is meaningless. You guys sound like Sophists. If you don't have an infalliable system to base your understanding of the world on, then you have no method of knowing if your understanding is true.
That's the demonstration I provided in this thread. Who cares what you think about the human brain.
[00:31:12] <stickie> by the way, thanks for the sig sixofour
[00:31:23] <sixofour> dejavu
[00:31:25] <sixofour> what sig?
[00:31:55] <stickie> you will just have to find out *insert mystical music*
Uh. I don't think anybody denied intuition exists. It's just not related to logic at all. And yes, that's why we have lots of philosophical viewpoints. Perhaps everything is meaningless, hence nihilism. Perhaps it isn't. I tend to take a more practical view. Like "you are trolling"
