You Can't Prove You Exist
 

You can't prove to me that you exist. Don't even bother, it's impossible.

You can't prove I don't.

It's generally assumed that you do. I'm questioning that assumption, not commenting on the chances that the opposite is true.

OK

By acknowledging your attempt not to bother, you implicitly legitimze your subconscious desire to bother.

You said "don't even bother" not "don't want to bother." Part of me wants to bother, but I see the futility, so I won't bother.

Oh, and who's words are you reading right now?

Shit! I attempted to convince you I exist. Damnit!

To whom are you addressing this?

I can prove I exist, but only to myself, not to you.

In fact, it is the only provable thing there is.

Well, I'm the only one present. If my boss walks in, this window goes away.

And yet you keep talking to me.

You keep creating those threads.

You keep listening for me to reply.

Your refusal to accept the proof does not negate the proof.









Besides, I don't exist. How's that possible?

I am neither talking nor listening.

I wrote and erased a reply saying basically that proof itself is delusion. You seem to feel otherwise. How does one go about proving one's own existance.

Does proof require a concrete statement of the conditions that are to be met, therefore a total knowledge of the subject under consideration, therefore an impossible omniscience; in other words, is proof impossible? If we attempt proof of a limited data set, do we ignore the interrelationships it has with it's surroundings?

If existance is a delusion, then I am the deluded thing.

"Proof" simply means you haven't seen the exception. And since you can't prove there isn't an exception then you can't prove anything.

Finally, something we can all agree with:
 

An exception to what?

To what you are trying to prove. Evidence to the contrary in other words.

There isn't really any possible exception to "cogito, ergo sum". Unfortunately, there also isn't anything else that can be concluded using it.

I think therefore I am.

how . . . clever . . . of you to create a thread to which any response can be slammed down. :eyebrow:

.

No, but I can prove to me that you don't exist. That's all that matters.

What is it of you to comment on it? More clever than me? Okay, you win. Hands down.

"What is it of you?" I have no idea what that means. Or why I win. I think you do, cause, you know--it was clever!

. . . and also a bit mean.

and I was going to make a sex comment, along the lines of if we were having sex you'd know I was real . . .

but then I thought--but he could be thinking of Angelina Jolie at the time.

. . . so I didn't! :)

I am so confident about that.....I had to do this

This is a Far Side cartoon, isn't it? Or at least something from the golden days of the New Yorker?

You all know the one, right ... blackboard full of equations, chalk falling to the floor, another scientist looking guy comes into the panel and says something like "My God, Johnson finally proved he doesn't exist!"

I don't think any computer program can be as successful in fledging full out responses, threads, emotions and substance that Dwellars crank out on a daily basis. We all exist whether we want to believe it or not.

Computer program? Let's start at the top. My eyes absorb some radiation and it gets converted into a neurochemical phantom... where? ...inside my head. Oh. Actually all I have to go by is inside my head, I can't even count on the eyes, the radiation, or the assumption that I'm even looking at a computer screen; much less that anything, even a computer program, is making the pixels (do pixels exist?) change configuration.

You lost me at the top.

Come back and get me!

you are so weird, Flint. (but that's okay, since I love weird)

I hope ultra-facility isn't important to my expression . . .

since I have no idea wtf it means.

You read my signature! Bozzio is an ex Zappa drummer.That quote is from an interview in Modern Drummer, and the bonus is that he references Joseph Campbell. It's like all my favorite things at once. ... . . . I know it's a little longish and I always wonder if anybody ever actualy reads it.

a ha!

the bliss!

Yes... "follow your bliss" ...

the bills i get in the mail say i exist - my birth certificate says i exist, but if i had a death certificate i wouldn't exist

computers don't follow their bliss. I posit that it's JOY that proves you are alive.

It's not about computers versus people. But if it were, I would ask you if you are composed of materials which must obey the laws of physics.

only partially

"Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter."

(pinches self)

OW!

Now, see what you made me do!

I'm real, I'm real, I'm a real boy!

. . . er, girl.

What else are you made of? Energy which must also obey the laws of physics, or something else?

joy

Oh, and what is that? ...is it made of magic fairy dust?

Which reminds me of the funniest song I heard today:

people are more than physical matter, cells and blood, organs and skin.

joy is my personal word for that More. We were just talking about bliss. Yoda uses the Force. If you believe in religion, maybe it's the soul. It's the feeling you get when you heart swells at a beautiful sunrise, or you dance yourself to trance. It's the More of human experience.

And what else, specifically, are they made of? Unless we are to believe that human beings, of all things in the universe, are endowed with some magical property, then we have to conclude that we are made of whatever everything else is made of. If there is some magic in us, it just goes back to being defined as a physical property of the universe. Unless we, of all things that exist, are favored with some special supernatural quality.

Don't know that humans have the exclusive claim to the More. I only know I experience it.

Maybe it's YOU that doesn't exist.

For the record, The Force that they refer to in Star Wars? I believe in it literally. And on that note, the Joseph Cambell/Bill Moyers interviews were filmed at Skywalker Ranch. Campbell credits Star Wars as being a valid modern source. The Force is real, I just don't think it's "supernatural" ... There is one nature; whether we fully understand it or not has no bearing on whether it can violate it's own laws. We are physical objects, whatever that is.

I know all that, and I tend to agree. We are a tribe of two.

Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. Go back and pick up freshnesschronic!

well, I would say I don't do threesomes . . .

but I'd be lying!

This thread just keeps getting better and better!

Of course not. It's made out of Midichlorian excretions.

Yea..solipsistic- the only thing I like to prove is my own existence.
As for my tattoo- it's right above my smelly arm-pit for effect.

tattoo? wha . . . ?

hmmm......could it be somewhere in this very same thread? Nah.

I don't see any tattoo, and trust me, my attention is immediately riveted when someone talks about body art.

I know! it's one of those things I can't see. You guys must think I'm completely bat-fucking-blind!

pg. 2..................(the photo)

and to think that i went to all that trouble....

what photo? There's no photos in this thread.

are you pulling my leg?

Pg. 2 #27

yep, now I see it. My page two is different.

are you in IAMBME by any chance?