Shitty aphorisms

Odradek · 2016-03-14 20:40:20

"God does not play dice"

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result"

Odradek · 2016-03-14 20:40:48

The retort to the first one is dumb and un-witty too

Crystal · 2016-03-14 20:41:31

This just reminds me of that aphorisms book dude (don't tell me who please), who in turn reminds me of Borowitz.

Imipolex G · 2016-03-15 00:33:58

I especially dislike the second one, since it severely underestimates the range of possible insanity. Hell, it's a veritable insult to insanity.

Hexartes · 2016-03-15 00:44:14

I appreciate the sentiment behind the second

Odradek · 2016-03-15 00:49:07

Kexruct said:
I appreciate the sentiment behind the second

1: No, it's called "perseverance" or even "replication" when scientists do it.

2: It's a shitty overly narrow definition anyway

Sredni Vashtar · 2016-03-15 01:07:29

That's not the point, though. What the saying is talking about is not the same as perseverance or replication; it's about magical thinking and solipsism. Like believing that if you stare at a blue wall long enough, it will turn green because you want it to turn green. This is a common symptom of various psychoses. It does generalise excessively, as there are many different kinds of disordered thinking, but the sentiment is, more often than not, a useful one.

Honestly, just because an aphorism bugs you because people use it in stupid ways doesn't mean it can't be useful or helpful to other people.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 01:12:13

I actually have literally no idea what "God doesn't play dice" means.

Bee · 2016-03-15 01:16:51

Einstein didn't like the idea of randomness in quantum mechanics. He may or may not have fully grasped yet that it's not exactly randomness so much as indeterminacy that arises once you have particles whose wave characteristics become significantly large compared to their size.

Sort of. It's a lot more complicated than that, but that's the layman's version of things.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 01:17:25

so basically Einstein was being a fuckboy as usual

Bee · 2016-03-15 01:20:10

People used to quantifying things are naturally made a bit uncomfortable by the emergence of laws that are inherently very fuzzy.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 01:20:50

I could probably beat Einstein at checkers.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 01:20:58

I am quite good at checkers.

Hexartes · 2016-03-15 01:21:00

Sredni Vashtar said:
That's not the point, though. What the saying is talking about is not the same as perseverance or replication; it's about magical thinking and solipsism. Like believing that if you stare at a blue wall long enough, it will turn green because you want it to turn green. This is a common symptom of various psychoses. It does generalise excessively, as there are many different kinds of disordered thinking, but the sentiment is, more often than not, a useful one.

Honestly, just because an aphorism bugs you because people use it in stupid ways doesn't mean it can't be useful or helpful to other people.

Also, people who think the solution to all problems is to do what feels best/easiest harder

Bee · 2016-03-15 01:22:00

there is a very low but technically nonzero probability that a dead person could beat you at checkers by having his pieces spontaneously move themselves into place

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 01:22:27

has Einstein played against the Florida Pool Checkers Association champion and held his own?

Thought not.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 01:23:08

Bee said:
there is a very low but technically nonzero probability that a dead person could beat you at checkers by having his pieces spontaneously move themselves into place

in this hypothetical scenario I am obviously playing against an Einstein that is alive and at his intellectual peak. Don't be silly, Bee.

Klinotaxis · 2016-03-15 01:29:16

hey, don't bully einstein-chan, spooky action at a distance is pretty fucked up and the copenhagen interpretation is ridiculous

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 01:30:20

what about the berlin standard

Klinotaxis · 2016-03-15 01:31:52

that a pizza? pizza's good

Bee · 2016-03-15 01:54:01

its a doughnut you philistine

Klinotaxis · 2016-03-15 01:56:02

those are good too

Salix Babylonika · 2016-03-15 02:09:40

actually it's about roguelikes, but DungeonCrawl has pizza as one of its food items. So it's about pizza in a way.

Calica · 2016-03-15 04:14:28

ich bin ein jelly donut

Hexartes · 2016-03-15 11:32:34

Calica said:
ich bin ein jelly donut

Dunno if anyone knows this or if I'm just being a presumptuous cock by assuming people don't but JFK didn't actually make that mistake

Tachyon · 2016-03-15 13:17:29

i knew that, at least, but people keep repeating that story anyway, i guess cuz it's a funny story even if you know nothing about the man politically?

also i thought "God does not play dice" was mainly remembered as being a mistaken assertion? Indicative of how dissatisfied Einstein was with developments in his field.

Shitty aphorisms

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