“However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it. ”—D. T. Suzuki
Want to bet?
(At stakes of a few thousand galaxies worth of energy and negentropy. It’s not going to be cheap to win this bet! I’m not too comfortable with the whole making myself blind thing either but I guess I can rectify that once I finish deploying the antimatter disruptor beam.)
I just noticed that I implicitly assumed that it would have to be me that blinded himself. What sort of nefarious sun destroying intergalactic mastermind would I be if did foist that role upon a henchman?
Alternatively, he could lock himself onto a sun-destroying path, and then forcibly do an unBayesian update away from the existence of the sun.
Alternately, he could interpret the sentence literally, note that ‘not at all’ is a level of insistence, deny the existence of the sun not at all, and then destroy it.
You are mistaking the map for the territory. It doesn’t matter if its a quark-pair or a hyper colossal cosmic structure gravitationally influencing everything in the universe; if a condition is present, then it has effect.
Humans are blind to all kinds of things. Radiation for one. But it still can be detected and controlled. A civilization of blind people would eventually build detecting equipment and learn to control the real world.
As the saying goes: “In a world of blind people, c would be the speed of heat.”. But I don’t think anyone believes that anyone actually denies the sun’s existence.
“However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it. ”—D. T. Suzuki
Want to bet?
(At stakes of a few thousand galaxies worth of energy and negentropy. It’s not going to be cheap to win this bet! I’m not too comfortable with the whole making myself blind thing either but I guess I can rectify that once I finish deploying the antimatter disruptor beam.)
“Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the Sun.”
“Since the beginning of semester, man has yearned to destroy the Sun.”
I just noticed that I implicitly assumed that it would have to be me that blinded himself. What sort of nefarious sun destroying intergalactic mastermind would I be if did foist that role upon a henchman?
You’re going to have trouble destroying the Sun if you don’t believe it exists.
He only has to deny that it exists.
Alternatively, he could lock himself onto a sun-destroying path, and then forcibly do an unBayesian update away from the existence of the sun.
Alternately, he could interpret the sentence literally, note that ‘not at all’ is a level of insistence, deny the existence of the sun not at all, and then destroy it.
You are mistaking the map for the territory. It doesn’t matter if its a quark-pair or a hyper colossal cosmic structure gravitationally influencing everything in the universe; if a condition is present, then it has effect.
That settles it. I’m going to recruit Chewbacca as my Mook Luitenant. There can be no other choice.
The replies are better quotes than the original.
Humans are blind to all kinds of things. Radiation for one. But it still can be detected and controlled. A civilization of blind people would eventually build detecting equipment and learn to control the real world.
As the saying goes: “In a world of blind people, c would be the speed of heat.”. But I don’t think anyone believes that anyone actually denies the sun’s existence.