Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, passed away 25 years ago today. (Maybe yesterday by the time you see this. I'm a little late.)

Here's a clip of him explaining what is now usually called "the puddle analogy," with his trademark sense of humor.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46251814

A professor of philosophy finishes a trick four piece puzzle from the character's childhood

Professor Agneto: Ah well that was easy! Twas a trick, putting the fourth piece in, as if you put the first three pieces together, the fourth won't fit because of the topological constraints put on the system by the the initial axioms.

Smart man: Prove it!

Professor Agneto: I'm sorry?

Smart man: I outright reject your claim on the basis that if you said something you must prove it and I will not listen to you to thus continue this conversation without respecting you as a person OR any of your ideas. And I will continue it in the only manner I know how: in a pseudorespectfully hostile manner!

Professor Agneto: Oh, I've had this conversation a billion times. There are a lotta you. No, the puzzle represents an axiomatic system, and what I'm saying is a continuation of the logic of Gödel's incompleteness theorom to complete it based on orthogonal relativity.

Smart man: I don't know what those words mean. Speak English, which I say respectfully and not to evoke any feelings of inferiority in you! Prove it!

Professor Agneto: Well, I can teach you these words. But the "proof" needs to be on you because what I'm describing is what the Buddha described about the entanglement process that creates the illusion of a self and more.

Smart Man: I will make no effort to understand anything you say. I'm just going to command, demand, and expect an explanation. Prove it!

Professor Agneto: Here's a literal science experiment you can do to prove that your intention results in the procedurally generation of your reality!

Smart Man: Reeeeeee! Prove it!

Professor Agneto: Now listen here, why are you wasting my time? I mean, I am creating content for my educational (f)art project designed to provoke people who cannot control themselves (eg: pedophiles), and I honestly cannot tell if you are trolling - you're indistinguishable from each other - so when you're ready to not be a buttsniff...

Mod: R00D! Be civilized!

Smart Man: Prove it!

Mod: This is the smartest person on our side. You will respect him or I'll be forced to cultivate our echo chamber.

Professor Agneto: Ah, well. All Knowledge comes from möbiation, as we all know from the second story of the Bible, assuming you've sinned and corrected it before to know what is objectively good as you observe how the four puzzle pieces that compose your "self" manage to fit together, which no one but you can do. Assuming you've meditated to know what a jhana is.

Smart Man: Prove it!

I am an educator in gnosis. You will believe this is psychosis (prejudice/ocular logs), but I just want to open dialogue about the nature of causation.

Personally, I believe there are many planes of causality. For instance, there is retrocausality. I invented this word to describe our relationship with God: phenomequalitesselation. As a molecule is controlled by the cell it is in yet influences the cell in its nature by its animus, God reaches back through history to influence us and in setting our intention - the only thing we have direct control over - we move God with our most human of choices, and this is what gives us free will and Karma within a deterministic system.

And I can defend that to Hell and back, which is Heaven (you're going to sit with your mother at the same table at the restaurant at the end of the universe), but the direction I wish to travel is to lead into the "turtles all the way down" discussion, to mean that only idiots believe the world sits on the back of a turtle, right? Yea, the big bang is a stupid fucking theory!

Dependent causation - all "things" must have a cause, therefore all "things" are in a dependent chain of causality across time

Well...what caused the big bang?

Let there be light...

Sound came before light; the effect came before the cause. Now, the core of what I teach is not woogity woo. No. I was a hypercrendelivicious chronic masturbator, whatever that means, and I almost fucked my life up. And I think kids are cute. Y'know, kids that might be out masturbating in public today, which is why I want to teach deese dense idiots to not ruin their life, too!

Thus, to be light, you must strengthen your prefrontal cortex so the most divine part of you has complete control over the animal in you. This is a part of love, which I define as being agnetic while being kind to the tamed flesh.

Agnetic - a word God had me invent to mean always doing the supererogatory, voluntarily

Because that's what led to the agricultural revolution to have that fall of man and take us out of Eden, y'know. Also, as I have observed in the demöbiation/undefilement of my sin in the Ālaya-vijñāna, which is the Server we are all Clients to across the Holy Internet, you REALLY should think in the most ethical terms - to mean thinking in the longest possible timeline, and you WILL be reconstituted at a future date to join the telepathic Illuminati Galactic Federation, so you want to not embarrass yourself by wasting your life n dopamine, y'know?

Because the thing about independent phenomena is that they cause themselves. Causation loops. The Alpha is the Omega. The underlying pattern of the illusory physical universe grows logarithmically more complex as subpatterns come together to form superpatterns. Thus, the seven epochs of novel complexity are:

Alpha>Light

Light>Matter

Matter>Molecules

Molecules>Cells

Cells>Creatures

Creatures>Humanity

Humanity>Omega

The transcendental object at the end of time that humanity WILL create is the transcendental particle that can be at multiple places at once and communicate instantaneously with itself to form a topological matrix that acts as waves of light.

Yer a knot, Neo!

And the purpose of life is to learn how to perceive and undo the karmic fetters that bind you to the existence-illusion complex, which Buddhism and the Bibles II+ (occult just means "hidden") teach.

How superpatterns emerge from subpatterns coming together can be visualized:

https://youtu.be/C2vgICfQawE

Poem and stuff:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cultofcrazycrackheads/s/vRFjbZgZoP

But what do you think? Because I am Knowledgeable of the occult, I know different encapsulations of language beget alternative frameworks of reality which change behavior and thus has benefits to survival, which is the memetic benefit of a pantheon, obviously. Thus, I respect atheism as it makes sense, sorta.

In “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious,” the New York Times columnist tries to reverse the trend of a more secular society. But his reasoning just doesn’t add up.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45251190

Link to latest post: https://x.com/i/status/2037957668791628037

Link to original: https://x.com/i/status/2036136274546008558

This is some good old-fashioned internet cringe and I'm not sorry for loving it one bit.

Data is from here (I think): https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?LANG=E&GENDERlist=1&STATISTIClist=4&DGUIDlist=2021A000011124&HEADERlist=32&SearchText=Canada

I could not find who made the map.