The flat earth society

[JK Ferret]

It just goes to show that rational thought can lead to all kinds of places. That said, you have to admire their willingness to follow an idea.

It's a bit like a though experiement I read once, a brother and a sister who lived in India and had never left the country. One day, the brother went on a long long journey. When he returned he was talking excitedly about the wonder's he had seen, in one place, high in the moutains he saw water become solid, and change back when it was heated. His sister, who had never seen this happen, said he was crazy, it wasn't possible. After all, how could something become solid and change back? It defied rational explanation, in her experience such an occurance could never take place, but yet her brother was a trustworthy person and had never lied to her.

So, was she right to doubt him?

Same sort of thing as 'seeing is believing'? If everyone behaved like the sister here, there would be no religion for a start, and no-one would believe you if you said there was humans across the water (unless you went of course, but the nearest Euro cousins we have are the French anyway, practically a whole different race )

[mediaboy]

The French exist? I thought we were all just figments of our own imagination... after all - the universe is infinite, but the populated planets aren't...

and as the population isn't finite, and any finite number divided by infinity (to get the average population) will be so close to zero as to be zero it means that no one exists. Therefore, anyone you occasionally meet is no one, and can be classed as your imagination. Like flat earth's, only on a bigger scale.

[JK Ferret]

Taken from Hitchiker's?

[mediaboy]

Some people are less intelligent than I give them credit for. You're not one of them


You're one of the few people who actually recognise the quote. It's NEARLY word for word... just added in the last sentence.

The sad thing is that I have this off pat from memory... and didn't actually use the book itself to quote it.

[JK Ferret]

That's some memory then! I wouldn't have remembered it word-for-word, although that's probably a combination of my dodgy memory and having not read the book for a rather long time (about a year).

[mediaboy]

I think I might have mucked up the first paragraph slightly. It's 6 months or so since I read all 5 books in the trilogy, but I still remember Marvin - older than the universe, and the only android capable of making a police ship commit suicide due to depression.

Oh - and also the android that can make a stupid robot blast away the bridge beneath it's feet and get smashed to pieces. Marvin is probably the best character...

But that's off topic...



Y'know - I had a teacher who set us the challenge to prove the earth is round. I can't actually remember if anyone proved it, but I don't think they did (cohesively, coherently and without argument or dispute from devil's advocate... myself Best role you can play in any situation is devil's advocate. Give's you a reason to disagree with the teachers )

[JK Ferret]

Ah, secret flat earth society member?

[mediaboy]

Nope, just devil's advocate.

Did it for terrorist vs freedom fighter argument. And moral decline. And "Is a building needed for worship" and for just about everything EVER debated in front of my nose. Unless I really don't like one person on one side of the argument. Then it's tough luck them. Because I won't stop talking until they give up.

My English teacher learnt early on just what a pain I can be.... she decided to have one of these persuasive talk tasks. I persuaded her entire class that the American's planned 9/11, paid Al Queda to do stuff, planted nucleur missiles everywhere and that they are to blame for AIDS (biological warfare.)

I then went on to destroy everyone else's argument for ANYTHING... the simple "imagine your in this situation" trick shut up most people, as they all had too vivid imaginations and could invent the stuff I forgot to mention.

The amusing thing is that out of a group of ~50, only 1 person wasn't persuaded enough by my arguments to write them down and then check them, every single one, for all the arguments I made to all the people. Some people just didn't like me

[Whiternoise]

It is an awesome quote, the version from the radio series was rather excellent

Covered all the extras like rainfall etc

For pedantic properness:

The universe, some information to help you live in it:

1. Area
Infinite. As far as anyone can make out

2. Imports
None. It's impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from.

3. Exports
None. See imports.

4. Rainfall
None. Rain cannot fall because in an infinite space there is no up for it to fall down from.

5. Population
None. It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds but that not every one is inhabited. Therefore there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds. So if every planet in the universe has a population of zero then the entire population of the universe must also be zero and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

6. Monetary Units
None. In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the universe, but the Altarian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flanian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flanian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pew doesn't really count as money. Its exchange rate of six Ningies to one Pew is simple, but since a Ningy is a triangular rubber coin 6800 miles long each side no one has ever collected enough to own one pew. Ningies are not negotiable currency because the galactic banks refuse to deal in piddling small change. From this basic premise it's very simple to prove that the galactic banks are also the product of a deranged imagination.

7. Sex

None. Well, actually there is an awful lot of this - largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, rainfall, or anything else that might keep all the non-existent people in the universe occupied. However it's not worth embarking on a long discussion of it now because it really is frightfully complicated.

[sammyc]

Therefore, anyone you occasionally meet is no one, and can be classed as your imagination.

everyone i occasionally meet is no-one, that would include Douglas Adams (had i met him in the first place), but on account of solipsism rather than anything to do with infinity & maths & stuff.

[MadduckUK]

deranged imagination.. yep, quite possible also.

that's lack of essential nutrients that is nice sneaky edit attempt

[sammyc]

blast, how did you do that? ...not sneaky, just pernickety editing. calm down sammy, remember, madduck is all in the mind...