knowledge

I remember asking myself one late night while drinking tea, "What is knowing?" and I repeated this question to myself a few times and realized I wasn't entirely sure. I decided to turn my attention to the words of the question to see if the answer lied in the very assumption the question makes...

To keep things under control, please use this format: "An object is: 1) a separate entity 2) it existence is independent of observers 3) has different characteristics which are not affected by observers and so on... " Change the list with what you believe, of course. I used what I think is...

I just finished reading The Rise Of Christianity by the sociologist Rodney Stark Here are some quotes for you that you might enjoy from his section The Appeal Of New Religions (p. 37-44):

There was a time, long time ago, in which I believed in woo. I wanted to adhere to things like reincarnation, immortal souls, unknown mental "forces" and that kind of things. Later, I learned that the world was more important than my beliefs, and so I spent a great amount of time reading books...

Last year construction begun on a doomsday seedbank on a remote Norwegian island that is to be completed in 2008. Ignoring the issue of its likelihood of ever being needed, what I would like to know is, what would it take to eradicate the physically recorded scientific and cultural data that...

This was the title of a post that I wrote in another forum some time ago. It is of general interest, so I thought that I'd present it for discussion here as well. What do you know, and how do you know you know it? The post was about how I, personally, address this question. Particularly when...

The BIG problem: Unity of Knowledge “The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”—Emerson Critical Thinkers, such as Emerson, must create shock...

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2081652.ece

A colleague of mine is going to teach a class this winter. Theme: knowledge/superstition. Level: (Danish) highschool (approximately 16 to 19-year-olds). What would you recommend? Preferably articles, not long books. And preferably texts that can be accessed on the www.

I have the feeling that many real doctors know little or nothing about homeopathy. It started with my cousin, an anaesthesiologist. We were talking about a woo family member who said she recently learned palm reading :rolleyes: I asked him about the woo in his field, e.g. homeopathy, and he...

In the Bible, it says that when an unbeliever hears a word of knowledge or prophecy, the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. I've dealt with a man in my past who claimed to have a 'word of knowledge' about me (God supposedly showed him things about me that apparently were embarrassing and...

I'm pretty sure that the ancients didn't have to worry about the effects of travelling at 500 mph and yet they discovered a cure for jet lag. Simply amazing. http://www.iama.edu/JetLag/JetLag.htm

From the Wall Street Journal: CHICAGO—Last September, Bruce Lahn, a professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, stood before a packed lecture hall and reported the results of a new DNA analysis: He had found signs of recent evolution in the brains of some people, but not of...

Weekly NPR show, couple of hours of interviews on a wide variety of subjects. This week, they were talking about faith and evidence. Pretty good show, though I didn't get to hear all of it. Audio available at: http://www.wpr.org/book/ First up was a historian who was also described as a...

I love phsysics. It's the coolest. But I realise I have some frightening holes in my knowledge. You, my information whores, are going to help me fill up my holes.... Perhaps I shouldn't start asking for favours by calling everyone whores and following up with some pretty bad innuendo huh? A...

I've often wondered why God's knowledge seems to be limited to exactly the amount of knowledge that the people of the time had and no more. Wouldn't an omniscient being have been able to provide some detail, however small, that wasn't available to the people of the time? For example... Okay...

I was listening to "As It Happens" on CBC radio (canadian, eh?) June 17. In the segment listed in their archive as "In a Michigan moment" they were talking to a Canadian from Windsor and an American from Detroit about establishing a Minute Man border watch in the area. The American was Kevin...

It contains the knowledge of light, colors, DNA, and complex astronomical knowledge http://www.jwmt.org/v1n4/readlight.html http://www.kheper.net/topics/I_Ching/IChing_and_dna.htm http://www.biosonic.org/ManualEng/COHERENCEoctaves.htm http://www.biosonic.org/ManualEng/COLORS.html Precise...

Thus if a hypothetical super being were acquainted with all possible information about the world - which I imagine would consist in a completed physics - would this entail that s/he would know all there is that could be known? Thus would such a super being know what love is, anger is, the feel...

Jamy Ian Swiss gave me one of the biggest thrills of my life.... when he did an up close magic card trick for me at TAM3 (get your minds out of the gutter....) Anyway, it wasn't a forced pick, and yet he got my card! It WAS magic! The sort of magic that takes your breath away and can't be...

Starting from the present, how far back can you correctly name the Presidents of the Unites States? ex. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, etc... I got stuck going back 13 Presidents, I skipped one...shame on me. My co-worker was able to get them all in about 10 minutes working it out on paper...

If he didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from it, why did he create it in the first place? Why was it placed in the middle of the garden? And why was it beautiful when it apparently meant death to even touch it? Why did he grant it the powers to give knowledge about good and evil, if he didn't want...

Be a part of my focus group! Shape the future of science education! Win great priz---oh, well, actually not that. :D Anyway, in this thread http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33309 from a while back, i had a long discussion about how to design a process to get...

In another thread the "Summarizing for Clancie" one Materia3 posted the following comment apparently there is some reasearch done by a group called SPR and they feel it is unfair to critique the study if you don't want to PAY for it. I misunderstand but the quote that caught my eye was First...

Anybody know anything about the veracity of this? Brain Types Sounds awfully fishy to me, but I'm not exactly a brain scientist. :p Lots of testimonials, big friggin' whoop, most of them are pro athletes and sports execs, but the one from Dr. Bob Arnot, from NBC, makes me a little less...

All explanations, hypotheses, and speculations are welcome here.

For all you people that live where it can freeze in the winter. Here is a question that I have for you (I already have the answer due to my knowledge in this field): You wake up one cold blustery morning and you go to turn on your water. Only drips come out of the faucet! Hmmmmm. What is the...

I've heard it on more than one occasion that there are just certain technologies that should not be discovered, the most obvious example being nuclear bombs, of course. I'm not so sure I think it's possible to predict a techonology that shouldn't be discovered, much less proove that there is...

Wittgenstein's concern: knowledge and understanding are not mental states because they have no temporal duration nor can they be predicated during the occurrence of a sensation. He gives the classic chess example: "I know how to play chess." What is meant by that is "I think I can remember the...