Moderation Questions

Attractiveness is commonly understood to be a subjective assessment. The ability to play chess at an elite level isn't.

This father almighty, living in heaven and performing magic tricks like creating heaven and earth (where was he living before that, then?) definitely sounds very magic sky fairy-ish to me.

No, but your treatment of the ability to play chess at an elite level as dispositive evidence of being "smart" is.

If 'lack of good judgement' is a sufficient criterion for stupidity, then I guess I can accurately describe d2_e4 as 'stupid.'

(Not that it would ever even cross to mind to describe d2_e4 that way.)

I certainly won't be reciprocating your restraint, so feel free to describe me how you like.

I haven't used that description because I try to stay away from using those words as they're pretty hopeless descriptors of people except for outliers. I'm questioning why you think someone who excels at deep analysis and good judgement could be called stupid because they may have one or more eccentric takes.

Well, then I guess you're just stupid.

I don't. You found an exception. The vast, vast majority of people who have such "eccentric" takes, as you euphemistically refer to them, do not excel at any sort of analysis and have bad judgement.

I used the chess eval bar analogy for a reason - I'm sure Kasparov would still beat me after hanging a rook.

😀

That's whatever, but what is important now is where this god character was living before he created heaven. Was he already living heaven when he created it? How does that work? Enquiring minds need to know.

Like, if I build my own house, I can't really live in it before I build it, can I? Maybe I could like live in like a tent outside or something while the construction is under way. Was god living in a tent? I guess he's pretty quick at creating stuff, what with a wave of the magic wand and whatnot, so he could probably just stay in the tent for however long that takes? I guess a tent is not particularly glamorous though, which is why we don't see it mentioned very often. I mean, think about it, it'd be like finding out that Beyonce lives in a double wide or something.

I pray that one day soon you will like it again!

I wouldn't hold your breath mate

So top chess players are exceptions. Let's say all top mental game players are exceptions too. How about top mathematicians and physicists? Are they stupid if they hold any eccentric beliefs?

I don't believe that a significant number of top chess players, physicists or mathematicians believe in astrology, numerology or personal gods. So far you have given one counterexample, so I don't know what's up with all the plurals above. If you demonstrate otherwise, yes, you would change my mind about what is "stupid".

Minimal googling gave this first link

https://www.wondersofphysics.com/2019/11...

with 10 top, mostly Nobel Prize winning, physicists believing in religion.

Remember when you didn't believe that engineers voted Republican?

The world of physics is a magical place where they're forced to believe some crazy **** like multiple universes, so it shouldn't be too surprising that some take on religion.

Ok, I'll concede that some smart people might have eccentric beliefs. 15 is still not a significant number, and as a percentage of all physicists that have a place in history it's basically de minimis.

I mean, that's mischaracterising it a bit. I believed they voted Trump at a lower rate than the general population. I don't actually recall if that was ever dispositively disproved, but I think I did agree in the end that I was most likely wrong.

Heaven has different meanings in Scripture.

For example:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.- Genesis 1:1 (KJV)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.- Genesis 1:1 (NKJV,NIV, NLT, ESV)

Here, heaven(s) is a reference to the sky and outer space.

Now, let's see another meaning for heaven:

And harken thou to the supplication of thy servant, and of thy people Israel and thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place: and hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place: and when thou hearest, forgive.- 1 Kings 8:30 (KJV)

In this context, heaven is a reference to God's dwelling place.

Hopefully now you are less befuddled.

Not in the slightest. Lordy, this book of yours is very confusing, what with all the different versions and whatnot. You'd think that for an important subject like how the world and everything in it came into existence, there would be a little less ambiguity. No wonder you guys can't get your story straight and keep having those "superman vs. batman" like arguments.

In your "defense", stupid people are oftentimes befuddled by words with multiple meanings.

Exactly! Which is why one would think a book telling everyone a really important thing like how the whole world came into existence that we really need everyone (even the stupid people) to understand would try and steer clear of such ambiguity.

The multiverse is not a proven theory (in fact, I don't think it's even falsifiable, at least not in its basic incarnation), so no physicists are "forced" to believe in it. There is certainly other stuff like entanglement, quantum tunneling, wave particle duality, the uncertainty principle, superposition etc. that sounds "out there", but for the most part this is really just attempts at interpretations of the underlying equations that you don't really need to think about much to work with the equations themselves (i.e. the actual physics).