Jump to content
Ghost Recon.net Forums

The_Slink

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    2,878

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by The_Slink

    Debate

    in "Off Topic" Posts

    Posted

    Nasty....

    Snared_Gambit: If you have the patience to read my post, I mentioned Galelio (:P)....

    Agree with what you say, they are needed *as the world is today*. They ultimately shouldn't be.

    Any other major objections to the peech?

    Debate

    in "Off Topic" Posts

    Posted

    Umm... how exactly can you do something that is impossible? If you manage to do it, then it obviously wasn't impossible at all (bearing in mind the dictionary definition of impossible is "something that cannot happen or be achieved")... If something is impossible it will always be so. The problem isn't that we feel constrained by what is impossible; the problem is that some of us consider things impossible when in reality they are not - they just haven't been done yet.

    But they may be percieved as impossible. To my mind, anything that has been seen as too difficult and so not attempted is not attempted because it is seen as impossible. I don't think that's the right attitude, in fact I agree with you. But I also think that nothing is truly impossible.

    I work as an engineer. Engineers and scientists try to push the boundaries of human achievement. We don't seek to achieve the impossible, we attempt to innovate our way around what is impossible so that the things that truly are impossible (as opposed to difficult things that a layman may wrongly consider "impossible") no longer constrain us - using new applications of what is already possible to give a new result that, whilst not being impossible, had previously never been done before.

    But you *are* achieving what appears to be impossible. So, while you achieve the currently possible, you make possible new impossible things. Flight for example.

    Rules do not constrain us (in fact I disagree totally with the trend in your post that effectively says we need to break rules to move on - what sort of society would we live in if that were the case??). What constrains us is the limits of our imagination.

    So you never break rules? If they didn't constrain you, you wouldn't dream of breaking them. If you don't learn, and sometimes rulebreaking is part of that, there is no real point to life. Life is there to be lived, and to do that you need to experience (read: learn) new things. Illegal activities will always take place. The point is that life would have no interest if they didn't.

    Again, many rules are self-evident, you shouldn't need them. (Hard hats on construction sites for eg.)

    I just think that rules, ultimately, are not needed. Humans now need them but if we can become truly human, we won't.

    I do not think rules should go out the window right now....

    Ta. The_Slink

    Debate

    in "Off Topic" Posts

    Posted

    Why I like public speaking better. You can say stuff like this without contradiction:

    The Crocodile

    There's an interesting fact about the crocodile: It grows no bigger than it can. That may seem obvious, but it's not. A crocodile contained in a fish tank will be no bigger than the fish tank. It's a bit like people really.

    Humans can grow no bigger than the boundaries that hold them back. The boundaries are many: fears, rules, the limits of the possible are among them

    Fears are such a big limiter that people are defined by what they fear. If they fear open spaces, no matter their other qualities, we call them agoraphobes. They may however be capable of great things. The fear has somehow become them and it becomes impossible to think of them without thinking of their fear. It becomes a detriment to them even if it never affects them. The fear can also limit what they know. A person who is scared of heights will never know what the view from the mountaintop is like unless they break the limits holding them at the mountain’s base.

    People have feared the unknown for a long time, not because it’s scary, but because they don’t know what to expect. Who knows what’s beyond that horizon? It’s probably something really nasty so maybe we shouldn’t go and look. The unknown only has power as a fearful thing if it is allowed to. Once you know what’s there, it may still be frightening but it will be a defined dread and you can work to overcome it. We are limited by the fears we have and they hold us back. They don’t need to. There are good reasons to be afraid of things: a man pointing a gun at you is frightening. However, the smaller things, the dark and science will only stop you as long as you let them.

    Rules are the biggest cage to human growth. They are stifling things. Rules are, we are told, there for a reason. They are there to constrain us. Many are common sense but they hold you back by stopping you experiencing life to the full. The idea of being told: you will do something or you won’t do something else chafes so people break the rules.

    If everyone is breaking a rule, such as no talking, does that mean that it is working?

    No. They are simply a background noise that is trying to hold you back but which ultimately has no power. The only power they have is what the consequence of rule breaking it will be, and that is something else entirely.

    The caging of people by rules does not work: it is impossible to cage anyone who does not want to be caged. Blocking the route that may be taken in life with rules, such as what the church did in the 1600s merely leaves humans unable to advance. As life has shown us, if you can’t advance, you remain stagnant.

    You may not die but, to quote from Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax: what can't die can't live. What doesn't live can't change. What doesn't change can't learn. And to add my own ending: if you don’t learn, by breaking rules if need be, you won’t learn why not to.

    Those limits, rules, are sometimes needed. If there where no rules, how would you know when to stop. And you do need to stop sometime.

    It’s not the same with the possible. How do you know what is possible?

    If someone has done something, it’s possible. Maybe not again. Albert Einstein rewrote modern physics on his own (well apart from some of the maths). That will in all likelihood not happen again for quite a while. It is possible but not likely.

    It is also possible to fly. I recall seeing some crazy ideas for flying machines in a book on the history of flight: none of them worked. George Cayley should be considered the father of aviation: he devised many of the things that aircraft of today have. He only failed because no one had invented the internal combustion engine. Now, however, a trip across the Atlantic, something that took Christopher Columbus 70 days, almost 2 and a half months, takes a few hours. The boundaries have been changed. The impossible is now the routine.

    Until you push the boundaries of the possible, you can't do the impossible. There is no achievement in achieving the possible. Anyone can do that. You need to create the impossible. The only way to do that is to try. If you succeed, then you become famous for doing the impossible. If you fail, well then, it must have been impossible all along. Each new possible thing done means that another impossible thing can also be done. Until we had the right engines we couldn’t fly. That was dreamed of for eons but was only developed 100 years ago. The impossible will be possible. Eventually.

    Nothing that can happen won’t happen in due course.

    As long as humans think they are caged, they are. Once we wake up to the fact that the only thing holding us back is physical impossibility (for the moment), then we can really call ourselves human. We can’t do that yet. If we are to be able to truly call ourselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens, we need to break the bars of rules and fear and possibility. And we will. In time everything will happen to someone, somewhere.

    Calling all Aussies!

    in "Off Topic" Posts

    Posted

    And before any of you drongoes make comments: It's out of a book by Terry Pratchett.

    There is a mangy mutt called Gaspode who has a whole range of dog diseases, including Licky End which you can only get if you are a pregnant sheep....

×
×
  • Create New...