2012 Off topic thread(basketball,movies,etc whatever)

[MMA_scientist]

Oh. Well, good luck. Does the guy teaching the class have any cred? Either a rank in a sport or some fights?

We have a legit bjj lineage, but we have some affiliated schools that are total shit. Affiliations are a way for legit guys to make money, because there is an affiliation fee and then you pay for them to come up for the seminars and do promotions. This may not be like that, but just be aware. Still, if there is no where else to train, at least there is a mat.

[poopoo333]

No clue yet...guess I will see tonight if I can make it.

[poopoo333]

This new job is awesome. Such good money for such little work.

[SPX]

I might be checking out this gym around here tonight after work to train at. My schedule may allow me to train 2 or 3x a week in the fall semester due to less nights at restaurant because of school. I think tonight is bjj/mma

I thought you signed up with some other gym like several months ago or something.

[SPX]

The reviews I am reading on these books are that they are anecdotal crap. Were you giving me these books as examples of lying doctors? Or refutations? I am never going to be convinced by what someone in a state of total trauma says they experienced. If they ever did an actual study that was verified and controlled, I would be intrigued. But a couple of isolated incidents (like the shoe on the ledge story), I write off as the person saw it before or it is a lie/hoax. I recall you saying they were going to do thing where they place objects high up in trauma rooms, but I still haven't seen anything about that.

Basically, I don't trust what people say at all. People tell me crazy shit constantly, and they may even believe it. People are liars.

This is exactly the kind of attitude I was talking about when I said to Svino that scientists only find something worthy of study if they can capture it in a bottle and subject it to tests in a laboratory. Otherwise, they just pretend that it doesn't exists.

If you'll never accept any anecdotal evidence then it's not really worth discussing because this is a phenomenon that CANNOT BE CONTROLLED. It is random. It is spontaneous. It happens when it happens. Luckily, there ARE some scientists out there who are studying it as best as they can.

Thinking about it like this: If in fact NDEs represent what many believe that they do, would you expect them to be something that can be controlled? Do you really think you can control the soul leaving the body?

I'll also point out that at this point even professional skeptics like Michael Shermer don't doubt that people are having these experiences. They don't believe they are anything spiritual or supernatural. But they do acknowledge that people are having them.

What I will say is that any individual experience can be bullshit. Any single person can lie or be delusional. But at this point we have collected thousands and thousands of reports from all around the world, and early researchers--before books were being written or the term near-death experience even existed--found that these experiences being related by people in different locations, who had no chance of knowing each other, and had not been conditioned by any sort of media on the subject, were reporting experiences that in large part correlated with each other.

I like to use the white crow argument. William James said, "If you want to prove that not all crows are black, it is not necessary to prove that none of them are. You only have to find one white crow."

The same is true with NDEs. I have no doubt that many people who have reported such an experience have been liars. But I don't believe that all of them are and you only need one that is legitimate.

[Mr. IWS]

This new job is awesome. Such good money for such little work.

[SPX]

This new job is awesome. Such good money for such little work.

Unless you're doing something you're really passionate about it, those are the best types of jobs to have.

[SPX]

Speaking of martial arts, leaving town obviously fucked my wado-ryu up. Not sure what I'm going to do. I think I might actually go check out this Shotokan dojo.

[poopoo333]

Seriously...I am going to make about $50 or more today in 8 hours in tips for doing nothing on top of $8 an hour pay. In 6 months I will be at $10 an hour here plus the tips. Still have the restaurant job too.

It's gonna be rough though, working a lot of hours compared to my usual 15, plus 4 classes, and an internship in the fall.

[SPX]

Internship for what?

[poopoo333]

Teaching

[SPX]

Really? What are you majoring in? What do you want to teach?

[poopoo333]

Really? What are you majoring in? What do you want to teach?

Elementary Education. I want to teach middle school..probably high school so I am going to have to take some tests to get up there. I am only majoring in elementary because it's what is available around here. I still don't even know if being a teacher is what I am going to do as a long term career..thinking about some other stuff too that will require a little more schooling.



So no new gym for me tonight, I ended up at work late tonight because the power went out in a crazy storm so by the time I turned all the computers back on, closed the register, etc it was too late. On a side note, with tips...averaged $15 an hour today.

[MMA_scientist]

The same is true with NDEs. I have no doubt that many people who have reported such an experience have been liars. But I don't believe that all of them are and you only need one that is legitimate.

I don't think it has to be bottled in a lab... but I don't think it is unreasonable to seek some sort of verifiable objective information.

I don't dent that people are experiencing something, or think they experienced something. But if we are just going to accept people's experiences the study of NDE is a lot closer to religion than science. For sheer numbers, it is hard to beat people who claim to have experienced God in some way or another, probably 40% of the 7 Billion people on the planet will say they have experienced God... do I think they are all lying? No. But does that convince me that what they say is true? Not really. NDE's are similar to me, only far less persuasive, because the people have generally been under anesthesia or had major trauma. There are a lot of people who convinced they have seen aliens/big foot/loch ness/demons/dead grandma... I see people almost every week that talk to demons. I just really don't find people reliable at all. It does not mean that NDE's are not real, but I would just like to see something other than testimonials before I give a shit too much.

[SPX]

I think that's a reasonable position to take. I am not against skepticism. I'm against closed-minded skepticism.

Some of the lengths that hard-core skeptics will go to to deny that there is a phenomenon are mind-blowing and, in my opinion, border on lunacy.

To be clear, I'm not convinced about anything with near-death experiences beyond the fact that SOMETHING is happening. I have no idea what it means. I don't expect anyone else to, either. But I do think it's interesting and I think that people should at least be open to the idea that it's more than just fantasies people are having.

After all, if these experiences are indicative of an objective non-physical reality that we will all one day experience then that is pretty exciting.