Why do people pay any attention at all to self-styled 'prophets', considering their success rate has consistently been zero?

[Siri137]

"Will" end? I don't think so. An asteroid would have insufficient mass to destroy the planet.

Especially the ones who like to predict 'The End of the World'. They've always gotten it wrong, they've had a 100% failure rate, and yet they still persist with it. When the day comes along for things to fall apart, and it doesn't, they just shift the date further into the future, and when that day passes just like any other we've ever had before, they then just take up some other hobby (like write 'rapture' books for the gullible suckers who buy them) and their followers move on to some other con-artist or whacky "spiritual" belief.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I would say the same for Ray Kurzweil in the secular realm. That asshole showed up in my uni delivering a lecture that humans would be full-blown cyborgs by 2020 and basically live forever. I was one of the few who attended the lecture and said it's all bullshit and then people called me a dumbass, that I'm not smart as Ray Kurzweil (I don't need to be and I don't disagree), etc.

Singularity bullshit. Selling bullshit prophecies is a lucrative business for dumb people, and dumb people outweigh the critical thinkers.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

That asshole, Ray Kurzweil, this guy:

He's probably smarter than what I would estimate from his words. But his words are dumb. You have to be so dumb to believe them. He was saying we'd be cyborgs by the early 2000s and then defended it saying we have mobile devices.

This guy is full of shit. It's like a 300lbs bodybuilder transathlete with linebacker traps saying he has no advantage over women. Actually I was horrified at how many people in CompSci ate this shit up. They have no bullshit radar.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

And you know, I might come off so cruel while forgiving to Bible Thumpers who believe in people living to be 900-years old and virgin births and talking snakes and whatnot, but that asshole above convinced leading scientists and engineers of his BS. I can forgive someone who was born of his father's sister believing all this archaic nonsense. But these were really bright students we're talking about.

[Siri137]

Yes, I know all about Kurzweil and his ridiculous "prophecies" about AI and all that rubbish. He's a conman, a grifter just like all the rest.

[Siri137]

So according to him, the fact that people have mobile phones makes them "cyborgs"? Wow. What an idiot :D

[Siri137]

Maybe you should do a 'MyTake' on Kurzweil.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I might have to write like a 14-page essay that no one reads. 😁🤝 It's one of the few times I ever sat down and listened to a person and said, "I really, really, don't like this person."

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

But not just because I thought what he said was wrong. If that sufficed then I would have a far bigger number of people on my list this way. It's because I was looking around and I was so disappointed at how much my fellow classmates were lapping this up, like he was saying something so wise and true.

I've never had the level of disconnect ever again in my entire life, and I've heard a lot of what is probably BS. But I look around and at least I spot some other people realizing this is BS, and that wasn't the case with Kurzweil.

[Siri137]

Yes, and the belief, held by some (ex. Musk, deGrasse Tyson) that we're living in a "simulation". Oh dear. How people manage to fall for such obvious nonsense is something I'll never understand.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

That's actually kind of interesting to me just as a hypothetical. But I think a lot empiricists don't put enough emphasis in what's psychologically well-suited for us. We're still carving linear paths through time. And love is more than chemicals in the brain if we are to value it more than Spock.

[Siri137]

Yes, the idea is interesting, and works well enough in science-fiction, but I can't take it seriously because there are just too many problems with the idea, and besides, isn't it safer (and just make more sense) to assume that our reality is actually what it appears to be to us?

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I like to break from empiricism here to design, to the arts and humanities. We have to think of our lives in a poetic way as I see it to suit our psychology if nothing else.

You can't just see something as the sum of its parts and expect to find life so beautiful and meaningful. Rembrandt just becomes oil pigment on canvas, you know?

As for going by anything other than reality as it appears to us, as this linear path through time, influenced by our decisions in the way we carve this path through time, that's the way we need to think in my opinion even if it's not "right".

It's the beautiful way to think and I think beautiful is right. You see someone so stressed out and disappointed by a rainy grey day and calling it "ugly" and they're not nearly as "right" in my opinion as the other person who says this day is "beautiful".

Science and empiricism doesn't deal with beauty this way. It can make accurate predictions sometimes based on an abundance of data supporting a hypothesis that we might as well consider it true at this point.

But it can't say anything about what's really beautiful. Because everything is beautiful if we can manage it. I can't but that's what we're supposed to do as I see it.

[Siri137]

"Beauty" and "meaning" don't really mean all that much to me. People like to think that life is inherently meaningful and that it has a purpose, but if so, then what's it all about? Why are we here? What is life's meaning or purpose? It doesn't have one.
As for beauty, it's not an inherent property of the universe, it isn't found in nature's laws.

[strateguy632]

because of interpretation. i can say something bad will happen but if it doesn't "god is merciful" or interpreted something similar as if i was correct.

[purplepoppy]

I'm quite glad they keep getting it wrong. But one day one will get it right and they'll go "told you so."

[AngryCarl]

An asteroid doesn't need to destroy the planet to wipe out humankind. Just a small change in the climate could kill us all. Don't you ever wonder what happened to the dinosaurs?

[BLP11520]

Jesus said there would be false prophets and here they are😐

[Siri137]

Like Ray Kurzweil.

[BLP11520]

Right

[jahaims]

For the same reasons people believe in a sky daddy. They are stupid.

[Staximus]

They need that drama in their life