CraigOhMyEggo

So it's almost the end of 2024 and many of us are still in the "New Atheist Movement" mindset (not dissing on atheism, just the movement).

I was in a conversation with someone recently and it made me think of the title question. We had an adventure in philosophy. The person said they were from Pitcairn, as in the country known as Pitcairn, the one with only fifty people living in it. I naturally responded with "uhhh yeah that's going to be a big pill to swallow."

"Where are you from" the person asked?

"I'm from so-and-so."

"Oh, that one village in the Southern US with only forty citizens? I'm going to take a while to register that."

"But you said you were from an island."

"Literally the only difference between where you're from and where I'm from is it's surrounded by water. Does the water affect the odds?"

The message she was getting across seemed clear. "Proof" is relative.

At another point, we spoke about religion.

"Can you prove Jesus existed?"

"No. Can you prove Genghis Khan existed?"

"No, but Jesus made some high claims."

"And look at what people said about Genghis Khan who was said to conquer a whole continent."

At one point, we spoke about God.

"Can you prove God exists?"

"Well... have you ever heard of the church of Google? Is it impossible for something to be considered a true god? Are some things not based on proof but rather criteria?"

"So basically you're saying anything can be a god if you try hard enough?"

We also spoke of dating at one point.

"You got these guys who say 'pics or it didn't happen' but here I am, belonging to a subgroup of humanity that consists of approximately fifty percent of the population if not more, and suddenly I'm held in suspicion because the demographic of the specific community I was in had my subgroup of humanity slightly outnumbered, yet you can say you have something rare like ELS syndrome and people take your word. Go to Lemmy and ask what separates a claim that calls for proof from a claim more fitting in peoples' minds to take their word for it."

"Maybe don't make claims then."

"Why not? On the world's largest source of knowledge I can't make descriptors?"

"I tend to think peoples' definitions of claims-that-need-proof to be subjective."

"Hence why you should ask. But... does each individual have a consistent sense of it? Can they describe in words why claim A can be taken in their mind as is while claim B requires proof? And while some will say it's a matter of knowing someone and trusting them, if someone came running through Walmart saying 'run for your lives, there's a bad entity on the loose', I'm sure people would panic even though they have no proof of anything."

So I'm asking you. What separates them?

I'm not sure if this is going to sound strange, but I'm so accustomed to the voices of different kinds of people that my mind at this point just registers the many different accents as different voices within one accent (as in my mind doesn't say "oh that's another accent" anymore, it doesn't register it) and I actually miss being able to appreciate peoples' accents as accents, which sucks when for example you're attracted to them.

Question inspired by looking through the photography collection of a very controversial figure, and at one point I spotted her reflection on a spoon at a dinner table, and I thought "wait, is that Anne Hathaway?"

It's always fascinating to know when you secretly have a celebrity in your social circle.

It's one thing that copyright/IP is such a matter of debate in the creative world, but a whole new layer is added onto that when people say that it only matters for a certain amount of time. You may have read all those articles a few months ago, the same ones telling us about how Mickey Mouse (technically Steamboat Willy) is now up for grabs 95 years after his creation.

There are those who say "as long as it's popular it shouldn't be pirated", those who say "as long as the creator is around", those who don't apply a set frame, etc. I've even seen people say they wouldn't dare redistribute paleolithic paintings because it was their spark on the world. What philosophy of statutes of limitation make the most sense to you when it comes to creative work?

Was wondering this in celebration of the fact dolphins have officially been confirmed to have their own translatable proto-language, a longtime speculation we kind of already knew and which fulfills a friend's prophecy. It's common to train animals to perceive and perform art, and/or for them to already have a sense of what it is. Give an elephant a brush and a canvas and they'll paint glyphs of other elephants, chimps can draw avant-garde "masterpieces", and pigeons can even be trained to recognize the difference between good and bad art.

Dolphins surpass all of these animals in intelligence. But there's just one problem, they live underwater. And water tends to destroy most art mediums. Paper canvases shrivel, residue washes and floats away, hammers made for sculpting tend to strike softer, sculpting ice floats, fashion requires sources of fabric you can't get underwater, you get the idea. A dolphin's life is Murphy's Law for an artist. But for an artist, if there's a will, there's a way, and humans are known to challenge what we expect to be ways in which art can be created, such as with crop circles, Nazca lines, shadow art, and soap sculptures made from microwaving soap into molds. What improvised method/means of artform would you coach dolphins to do who want to be artists if you had to do so in some way?