I have been having a few problems with posts showing up incomplete after I have saved them. I am using Firefox. Please indicate if you are having this problem too and what your configuration is.
Here is the complete post that should have appeared above:
Quote:
Originally Posted by alex_d
"Any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic" is just a meaningless, irrelevant sentence.
|
Let us not forget the many who attach firm credence to causation of the metaphysical variety.
Engineers use oscilloscopes. A signal can be displayed as referenced to ground (DC mode), or referenced only to itself (AC mode). In our thinking we like to believe we are reasoning from fundamentals -- that we operate in DC mode. In actuality our logical systems cannot define themselves and we are forever denied the comfort of objective reality.
We are fundamentally AC. Behaviorists show that any of us are subject to the development of "superstitious behaviors" that derive from causal chains that are not consciously examined. Though the operations of the brain derive their workings from the laws of physics, the brain's end results are not representative of any absolutes.
We are fallible. We are still capable of incomprehension to the extent that we may doubt our reality if and when faced with something sufficiently extraordinary. Clarke was right and will remain so for a long time.