# Lekatt's Thread: The \*only\* place to find out about Lekatt's beliefs! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 7, 2010, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273 "2010-04-07T14:05:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/101 "2010-04-09T18:34:44Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > By “spiritual friends”, do you mean human friends that are spiritual, or friends from the spirit realm? Friends from the spiritual realm. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/102 "2010-04-09T18:36:01Z")
> [@iophobon](#): > > I believe the idea was referenced in [God’s Debris](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Debris), the textbook on the nature of the universe, by Scott Adams. > > Seriously, though, it’s an excellent read. Sounds interesting, I would like to read it. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/103 "2010-04-09T18:47:47Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Sorry for the belated quibble and minor hijack but as a statistician who works in the cancer arena this always bugs me. People tend to throw around claims that like this as proof that a miracle happened or that the doctors were totally wrong and their cancer was cured by the herbal supplement. What they fail to recognize is that this diagnosis isn’t a set drop dead date but rather is the estimated median survival of patients in your situation. ie 50% of patients in your situation died within 4 months with 50% living longer than 4 months. It tells you very little about individual cases. And it is possible that some cases (although less than 50%) may actually be cured. > > Basically your doctor is giving his best guess, and recognizes he may be wrong. In the same way if in a particular game the Washington Nationals beat the Yankees in spite of what the bookies say is the likely outcome, it doesn’t mean that the bookies were incompetent for making that prediction, or that there was divine intervention that let the Yankees win. The Nationals were just lucky. I am well aware of that, and it is why I don’t take the prognosis of doctors seriously. So when a doctor says this person is a vegetable, well, maybe, and maybe not. Only time will tell, if that. There are a lot of professions that now use percentages to hedge their bets or predictions, including weathermen. Wisdom is knowing that you don’t know anything – Socrates In my statistics class in college the professor took the first week to show us why we should not believe statistics. It was very enlightening. In one case he presented us a box of marbles and said “the average marble in this box is one-half inch around.” Then he asked a couple of students to sort out all the marbles from the box that were one-half inch around. Armed with a gauge the students went through the box of marbles finding not one marble that was one-half inch around. So much for statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/104 "2010-04-09T18:51:06Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > Friends from the spiritual realm. The voices in your head then, and thus, unverifiable. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/105 "2010-04-09T18:59:21Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > I am well aware of that, and it is why I don’t take the prognosis of doctors seriously. So when a doctor says this person is a vegetable, well, maybe, and maybe not. Only time will tell, if that. > > There are a lot of professions that now use percentages to hedge their bets or predictions, including weathermen. > > Wisdom is knowing that you don’t know anything – Socrates > > In my statistics class in college the professor took the first week to show us why we should not believe statistics. It was very enlightening. > > In one case he presented us a box of marbles and said “the average marble in this box is one-half inch around.” Then he asked a couple of students to sort out all the marbles from the box that were one-half inch around. Armed with a gauge the students went through the box of marbles finding not one marble that was one-half inch around. > > So much for statistics. So much for wasting the professor’s time in learning the wrong lesson. I doubt _very_ much that a professor teaching statistics at an accredited college taught anything along the lines that statistics were useless. Unless, of course, this was a spiritual professor at a college you had a vision about. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/106 "2010-04-09T19:03:34Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Ok, stop right there. ‘I’. Made out of stuff, how is it possible for beings to be self-aware? > There is nothing controversial about your explanation, I agree. However, the camera, the light, the film- it is all just a contrived set of cause-effect relationships. A bunch of billiard balls if you will, confined to certain channels such that they can only bounce in certain ways, with predictable results. There is no ‘I’ there. > > Yes, but again, a computer is just a fancier set of billiard-ball channels. If you ascribe to it a point of view, you are more likely to deny the existence of human identity rather than demonstrate the existence of a computer with an identity. Are you trying to say that a robot is self-aware? Ummm, how? It is just a machine. Let’s be succinct here - I’m a materialist. I don’t believe in “consciousness particles”, only the usual known physical and energy particles. (I also see **LOTS** of methodological problems with **lekatt** ’s consciousness particles - if you have a hundred billion of them in your brain or pencil, how does that add up to _one_ mind? By _committee debate_? :dubious::dubious::smack:). So anyway - if there are no consciousness particles, then your brain must logically be an organic computer. And there’s no reason we couldn’t build something just like it - or simulate it. Seriously - the ability to do so is a _logical necessity_, presuming the ability to completely map the particles of the brain, which is merely an implementation detail. So, I don’t deny human identity - I deny the _magic super-specialness_ of human identity. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > If **Begbert2** doesn’t mind my answering my own question… As 'dopers are in general agreement, life originated from self-replicating chemical elements, nucleopeptides or something (I made those up for brevity). Eventually their complexity increased; or their ability to reproduce increased. Bacteria number in unnameable numbers, but individually are only so cool. Humans reproduce with enough felicity, but compared individually to a bacterium they are almost infinitely more complex. Humans seem to compare (or maybe it is just a case of auto-species vanity) favorably to _all_ other creatures on Earth. No? > > But how are they self-aware? Well, I suppose a thing could be alive yet not self-aware. A slime mold probably doesn’t know what it is or that it is even there, yet it performs all the other functions of life. I’m thinking that the state of being alive is a sort of biological circuit. The whole system runs smoothly enough on its own carnal caloric input that… the biological circuit runs smoothly enough. > In a being such as a human, there exists a highly integrated sensory apparatus. Biological functions are organized and integrated. There just happens to be ample enough brainspace and neural networking to effect the emergent property of a ‘will’, or a self-aware agent. Hard to pin down, even for all this. > > But it boils down to a _lot_ of neural self-reference, and a stable biological circuit. You want a cite I suppose- how about ch. 11 from the Tao Te Ching: > That is not a scientific text you say? Ok. And, it would be easy to map this out mathematically, then point at it and laugh because it was just so much nonsense on a page. As abstraction it is vulnerable to these tactics. But when expressed in a bona fide biological circuit, the identity is a veridical, physical, self-aware agent. A being. > > But if life-forms would improve themselves from self-replicating chemicals to independent cells to self-aware organisms, is there a pattern and an end? Biologically I suppose it would be toward ever more stable, and also ever more complex, biological circuitry. Taking over a planet is a pretty good biological strategy for complex organisms, for the human species example. > > But if the being can be conceived abstractly, then its ends can also be conceived abstractly. The most stable abstract circuit would integrate _everything_, at which point it would be inviolable; eternal. All as One. > > But… **Begbert2** , it’s just a brainstorm. I’m not sure I am serious about each point. > > ETA: your camera is just a product. What’s with the anti-machine bigotry there, in your ETA? But thanks for putting it there; it exemplifies my whole point. What’s the difference between your mind and a dog’s mind? It’s just a matter of complexity, right? The further you climb down the evolutionary ladder the simpler the minds get until the housefly is just a wind-up toy. I think we can agree that there is not a sharp difference in the _hardware_ (as in, the brain matter/structure) when you cross the line into self-awareness. My current theory is that there’s not a sharp difference in the ‘software’, either; your brain patterns are pretty similar to the next critter down, with the difference in consciousness being a gradual increase in complexity rather than a ‘suddenly popped into existince with chimps’ kind of thing. As a computer programmer, I’m aware that most of the computer programs you run function like a simple consciousness. They don’t just run through a bunch of steps and then stop; they hang around waiting for input and reacting to it. Sometimes their reactions themselves include long calculation processes that react to data as it comes in and produce intermediate data before they end - or sometimes they never end. With my understanding of how they work I can see no difference in _kind_ between them and the human consciousness. There is a huge difference in _complexity_, but it’s roughly the same species of thing. Add to this, this is the only coherent explanation of consciousness I’ve _ever_ heard, _including_ the spiritual ones. Seriously, consciousness particles? How are they supposed to work in concert? Souls? Positing a soul doesn’t explain how the soul _functions_ - it just displaces the problem to someplace we can’t examine the hardware, which doesn’t change the fact that our souls demonstrably have complexity which requires interacting parts _within_ the soul. I refuse to accept “magic” as an unvarnished explanation for demontrable and consistent complexity - if it’s magic then the magic has rules, the rules can be simulated, and the entire thing can be replicated in a computer _anyway_. **Necessarily**. Anyway, the complete lack of alternate functional explanations leaves me no choice to but to accept my current theory until I hear a better one. Fortunately for me, my current theory seems to explain things pretty well as it is. Despite the regrettable fact that it doesn’t allow me to pretend at human unique magic specialness over machines. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/107 "2010-04-09T19:08:58Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > I am well aware of that, and it is why I don’t take the prognosis of doctors seriously. So when a doctor says this person is a vegetable, well, maybe, and maybe not. Only time will tell, if that. > > There are a lot of professions that now use percentages to hedge their bets or predictions, including weathermen. > > Wisdom is knowing that you don’t know anything – Socrates > > In my statistics class in college the professor took the first week to show us why we should not believe statistics. It was very enlightening. > > In one case he presented us a box of marbles and said “the average marble in this box is one-half inch around.” Then he asked a couple of students to sort out all the marbles from the box that were one-half inch around. Armed with a gauge the students went through the box of marbles finding not one marble that was one-half inch around. > > So much for statistics. Did he then go on to call off class for the rest of the semester since statistics was clearly useless? or did he actually proceed to then teach that while statistics can be misunderstood and misused it can still be very useful. In the case of doctors diagnoses it is useful to the patient for them to give their best guess as to a patient’s chances, as this will distinguish a case of ebola from a stubbed toe. The key is to make sure the patient understands the meaning of the diagnosis. The common phrase “There’s lies, Damn lies and statistics” is only relevant to people who misunderstand statistics, or charlatans misuse them. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/108 "2010-04-09T19:39:42Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > Friends from the spiritual realm. Uh, how do you talk to these um, “spiritual friends?” ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/109 "2010-04-09T19:50:00Z")
This is just getting pathetic. No one expects \*\*lekatt \*\*to come up with any rational answers here and it seems to be turning into, “let’s see what whacky shit we can get him to float next.” ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/110 "2010-04-09T20:08:40Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The voices in your head then, and thus, unverifiable. I don’t hear voices, I ask questions, and am shown answers. Most of life is unverifiable, it is called personal experience, everyone does it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/111 "2010-04-09T20:09:35Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > I don’t hear voices, I ask questions, and am shown answers. > Most of life is unverifiable, it is called personal experience, everyone does it. Not that way, they don’t. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/112 "2010-04-09T20:11:43Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > So much for wasting the professor’s time in learning the wrong lesson. I doubt _very_ much that a professor teaching statistics at an accredited college taught anything along the lines that statistics were useless. > Unless, of course, this was a spiritual professor at a college you had a vision about. He didn’t say statistics were useless, just subject to intrepretation, look at the current bank meltdown. They were not showing honest statistics. It was sound advice. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/113 "2010-04-09T20:13:31Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > He didn’t say statistics were useless, just subject to intrepretation, look at the current bank meltdown. They were not showing honest statistics. It was sound advice. Did he then teach you have to properly use statistics, or did you figure you learned all you needed after that first example? ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/114 "2010-04-09T20:19:26Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Not that way, they don’t. How many ways can personal experience be? ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/115 "2010-04-09T20:20:52Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > This is just getting pathetic. No one expects \*\*lekatt \*\*to come up with any rational answers here and it seems to be turning into, “let’s see what whacky shit we can get him to float next.” Then why are you still reading it? Give yourself a break. I give answers to the questions I am asked, better questions, better answers. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/116 "2010-04-09T20:23:10Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Did he then teach you have to properly use statistics, or did you figure you learned all you needed after that first example? I don’t know, I quit the class after that, in order to buy a business. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/117 "2010-04-09T20:25:13Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > Then why are you still reading it? Give yourself a break. I give answers to the questions I am asked, better questions, better answers. Same reason I watch the TeeVee – shit doesn’t have to be real to be funny. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/118 "2010-04-09T20:32:50Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > He didn’t say statistics were useless, just subject to intrepretation, look at the current bank meltdown. They were not showing honest statistics. It was sound advice. Actually in retrospect I’m now realizing that you were making my point for me. Its just the “so much for statistics” comments punched a few of my buttons. In the same way that an average of 1/2" balls in the bag doesn’t mean that there aren’t balls much greater than 1/2" in the bag, a 4 month prognosis doesn’t preclude the possibility of 10 year survival. Misusing this statistic as evidence of the incompetence of doctors or the existence of miracles would fall in the region of “lies and damn lies”. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/119 "2010-04-09T20:43:07Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Same reason I watch the TeeVee – shit doesn’t have to be real to be funny. Fair enough, now stop complaining. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273/120 "2010-04-09T20:44:47Z")
Just to avoid moderator wrath I want to make it clear that in the final sentence of my previous post I am not accusing Lekatt of lying, rather saying that his misuse of statistics is the kind of thing that prompts the quote “lies, damn lies, and statistics” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lekatts-thread-the-only-place-to-find-out-about-lekatts-beliefs/535273.md?page=7)