That's not the point, I simply consider it bad discussion style to insinuate other participants are unable or unwilling to understand when they lay out the arguments for their disagreement.
Idgaf.
...supernatural? Metaphysical? Paranormal?
No, that's not what I meant. But then you knew that, you're just being a scamp for funsies. Rather, I meant it isn't a force in the physics sense, like electromagnetism or gravity. It's a process.
I have been playing around with Mandelbrot sets on a Commodore 64 20 years ago and have translated the Matlab code for 2D L-Systems into 3D for POV-Ray as a finger exercise and have run thousands of generations of boxcars2d.com on "The Hills" for the heck of it. This is not an argument from authority, just mentioning it so you know you don't have to talk to me like someone who just came crawling out of some dark cave.
How am I supposed to know that about you in advance?
Your counter still doesn't address my argument; you have only given examples for some computational parallels I mentioned earlier, which have to be programmed, engineered intentionally and purposefully with a given set of rules/laws in order to mimick the very thing we are talking about; they do not emanate by themselves out of random noise.
Yes, procedural generation on computers is artificially contrived. However, this does not mean it cannot naturally occur. Humans sometimes artificially produce crystals. Does this mean crystallization cannot naturally occur?
The fact that nature bears the tell tale marks of procedural generation is hugely significant because it is the only source of complexity and apparent design we know of which can naturally occur.
It can do this because the 'rule set' generating the complexity can be simple enough that it can come about in an emergent way, for example the interplay between animals, their environment, and heredity.
Some would simply proclaim "none has been found on the moon, none on Venus, none on Mars, so obviously, there is no basis to suggest that any will exist anywhere else and those crackpots still trying to prove otherwise shouldn't be allowed to waste any more funding" – if you know what I mean ;)
That's a rather small sample size. You've also left out Earth, an extant example of a planet where life arose.
There is no similar overt example of the supernatural we can all look at, nod and agree exists. It isn't additional examples of the supernatural you're searching for, but any.
It wouldn't be _super_natural if it obeyed the known laws of nature...
Can you define the Problem of Interaction for me? I don't want to do it for you, as it bothers you when I assume you don't know stuff.
So you understand what I mean when I say that the laughter is a terrible metric for those seeking understanding and enlightenment.
What I meant when I said that they laughed at Columbus, but also Bozo, is that the fact that certain historical luminaries were mocked in their day does not mean every guy with an unpopular idea is an uncelebrated genius destined to be recognized as such by future generations. This is a case where hindsight is 20/20.
Youtube is full of guys like this with "free energy magnet motors", "water powered cars", and various supposed antigravity devices. You don't need a crystal ball to predict with near perfect accuracy which of them is onto something, just a highschool level physics education.
When a lunatic can present a reproducable result however, he stops being a lunatic and is hailed a "genius", if not, he'll be forgotten together with all the other lunatics of history.
I'd like to see some repeatable demonstrations of the supernatural. Not to other supernaturalists but to scientists in lab conditions.
It's a gamble of sorts. High risk, high reward. It seems the men staring at goats at least thought the game was worth a try. I'm not a gambler, but I obviously wouldn't bet against every lunatic; one day, one of them might make an egg stand up and show the way to a whole new world of possibilities.
Another comparable gamble would be betting on the specific Nigerian nobleman who has mailed you about helping him move his fortune out of the country being legit, where all the others were frauds.
Sure, there have been a lot of guys like him who were all scam artists. But what if this one isn't?? What if he's legit?? The reward is so great, surely it's worth the risk? Just gotta keep trying until we hit on an actual Nigerian prince with an actual fortune he's looking to share.
Since staring at a goat costs only a fraction of what it costs to send a probe to Europa or Enceladus, there isn't even any harm done.
Yeah, I don't object to any sort of experiment. Just to people claiming that they have already produced positive results.