Favorite brand of booze?

luck s generally used as an excuse..people die..sometimes because of some careless mistakes of the doctors...they blame it on "luck"
a student fails..he din study.. he will say.. " yaar kismat e khrab hai meri to.. "
some officer will be fired from his job...he'll say.. " i knew it..this job just was not for me.. its all destiny's play.. "

 

If you're going to get technical about it and try to get around the point I was making, I do believe a certain level of consciousness starts to develop within the womb.

Take another case, if you will. A friend of mine was kidnapped when he and I were 3 years old. He was found in a ditch not too far away from where I live, a few days later. What would your take be for him?

Also, don't get me wrong. My questions are sincere. I'm not trying to belittle you or try to force you to say that I have a point. Like I said, I believe in destiny because it helps me accept things that I cannot control (or sometimes can but did not). You, on the other hand, seem to believe that luck is but a poor excuse. I'm just curious as to how you accept things that happen around you. I'm using death because that is probably one of the root causes for belief in destiny.

Like you said, sometimes people die. You could blame it on the doctors sometimes. Other times, people just die. Before their time, before you expected them to, before they should have. You have that example that you quoted...of people who seem made for each other yet do not end up together?

 

I'm sure you get it in India? A pub here has a happy hour shot of absinthe that's about 400 ml. I think that would be quite monstrous?

 

@bjr..before i say anything i must ask..are you very angry.. ??
i mean i was jus tryin to make you see my side

and i don't have an answer to any of your questions..

i'll tell you something..i lost my dad..5 years ago.. and i still believe he could be saved.. i mean i actually do know that his hand did move when his so called corpse was in front of me..
no one believed me..whenevr i repeat this thing..they call me mad..or sympathise with me..trying to tell me..i was not in state of mind to see things clearly..but it was not so..!!!
and i dunno i should call it luck or not..i just dunno..
in short i must tell you..the only thing i'v thought regardin luck is that it is used as an excuse..perhaps that is why i don't like to believe in it..

 

400ml of absinthe? you sure ? and where did you find it?.. we get some local green fairy in karnataka i guess.. never had though

 

haha, no I'm not. It's just that the discussion side of me has suddenly woken up because I'm supposed to be working on a 40 page thesis and I'm trying to procrastinate. I do see your side. I'm just not very sure I understand how you feel in situations that seem beyond your control. For someone like me, I can quite easily blame it on fate and live a little easier. If you don't do that, I imagine your life seems harder.

and I'm sorry to hear about your father. Perhaps death wasn't the best example I could've come up with under the circumstances. Sorry if I made you relive experiences you'd rather not.

 

haha yes I'm sure! I haven't been there myself but my friends say that they normally start with that before moving on to something else- they're pretty heavy drinkers though.

as for where, I live in Berlin right now so maybe that's not such a great yardstick for you.

 

i personally don't believe in fate. every event has a probability of its own of happening. when these events combine and happen together, sometimes very unfortunate things happen while sometimes you win the jackpot. you can't blame it on anything but chance.

 

do not be sorry..its embarrasin to hear d word "sorry" from elders..
and about the situations beyond my control..i try not to think about them..
i mean acc. to me.. its better to avoid things rather than shifting the blames..

 

I think that's a very sound outlook. It is my own as well. However, how do you take into account branches of science such as astrology or astronomy? Sure, a lot of it can be dismissed as hogwash but do you genuinely believe that they evolved from nothing?

Giving you an example from Janm Kundli's....my father's said that he will not have the love of his maternal uncle. It was made within the first week of his being born. 14 days after his birth, his uncle died. I'm sure other people have similar examples as well. While a lot of traits, characteristics etc. can be generalized....predicting incidents like this successfully seem to shake my faith in the outlook that you have.

 

yeah i guess that can be sort of shaking..there might even be a pinch of truth in it but i think there are other factors that should be considered. for example, what is the success rate of these kundlis? mine said i would have a very "tough childhood" but i don't think i could consider mine tough by any means..lonely and boring, maybe but not tough.
also it says i'll be rich and successful :grin: we'll just have to wait and see about that

but i see your point. there are people who have scarily accurate kundlis while some's just don't come true. things like these make it tough to just form your own belief and stick by it, and i hate that.

if i die and find out there really is heaven and hell..man i am going to burst out laughing

 

well i must tell you something..according to my janam kundli.. i should have died when i was 12...im 17..and i guess im alive..

 

here im not trying to get into the sciences...it was jus a general outlook towards luck and destiny..u beleive in it..infact i would like to say..like others you just use it to define things that you can't cntrol..and i don't work that ways..
maybe i myself am not sure bout it..!! ummm ..!! bass meko explain krna nahi aata.. >_<

its jus your view and my not so correctly form view..so we'll discuss it when i am sureabout my view.. and then v'll spark of a goood debate.. u r in?

 

What is there to debate about?
We are not alone in this whole world.
If I can control the events, so can billions of other ppl, and they do - and therefore nothing can be predicted to 100% accuracy.
And of course we cannot predict the natural forces.

And person next to me sneezes and I catch cold.
Could I stop that? Was that under my control? (Yes, perhaps I should stop breathing when I go out of my house ...)

There is an earthquake tomorrow.
And the building where I live comes crashing down.
Would I walk out cursing myself that it was under my control?

Before polio vaccination there were millions of kids who used to get polio and stay crippled rest of their lives.
They surely had that event under their control!

Japanese with their most advanced technologies - surely can control a Tsunami ...


On a very simple note - there is a match. I am captain of my team. We go for a toss. I chose Heads. Tails lands up. I lose the toss.
Suppose I had chosen Tails, are you sure the coin would still up as Tails, and I would've won?


What is there to debate on?

 

You know there is a unique phenomena observed in human beings.
If you wish to believe in something, you will always observe and records things/events/facts that corroborate your belief.
And ignore those that didn't.

What we need is to demonstrate that the astrological predictions are statistically significant.
Till now they haven't been proven. (Which means they only slightly better than guess work).

 

it is all about opinions..!!!
not about situations that are under our control or not..!! simple..why to make it this complicated..!!
you hold you view point..i hold mine..others hold theirs..!!
that is it..

 

a) I wonder where you get that it's unique from?

b) To try and prove predictions is foolish. I'm just fascinated by them. Like you say, they're a little better than guesses and that little (no matter how little) does prove that there is something to it. Is it foolproof? generalizable? extendable? No, you'd have to prove statistical significance for that.

Taking it the numbers way (even though I'm horrible at math, you may have to correct me but let that not be the point of argument), let's give it this line of thought:

Assuming it's a guess, the astrologer has a near infinite number of possibilities and events to choose from and the probability of each event is not equal (my theory. surely you'd agree?)...let's assume that the probability of an event that he picked of occurring was x. The probability of him picking this event out of a million others was y. Therefore, the probability of both happening one after the other is x into y where both x and y are themselves very small numbers. This makes the probability of the prediction coming true even smaller than either of the two probabilities x and y. Yet, if you look at the number of accurate predictions, they might actually be larger than this number which indicates something amiss (I have no basis here to say this but surely you can agree that I have something?)

My take on this is:

Since all events in this world do not have an equal probability of occurring, astrology and astronomy deal with the art of reading probability of future events in a way micro and macro economics do. All 4 branches are predictive sciences which often eat humble pie. We have a far better understanding of economics than astrology. However, I believe astrology can only read the probability of the occurrence of certain events and if the probability is high, it gets put down as a prediction. However, there is no stopping anyone from loading the probability against the occurrence of the event. For example, if someone predicts that I will die tomorrow, I might get myself checked into a safe environment like a hospital and choose to be monitored for sickness. It'll load chances against my death. Of course, I might suddenly die of a massive heart-attack but I have significantly reduced the chances of the event occurring (or tried to). There is also a chance of the event not occurring and that would be considered a false prediction which is unfair because the prediction wasn't for a 100% chance in the first place.

Of course, let's not get into the pointlessness of astrology. I do believe it's fun as a retrospective tool but still not something I'd choose to live by.

 

I don't have any qualms about ppl holding on to their opinions. But they need to be told that their opinions are wrongly formed.

 

On a simpler note - I just wanted to know what percentage of all deaths or disaster predicted by astrology have come true.
On tossing an unbiased coin - you expect to get heads or tails equally.
So if there have been 10 consecutive heads - can you say conclusively that the coin is unbiased?

No.

Because even the 10 consecutive heads have a chance of occurring, albeit very small.
But the chances of coin being biased is greater than chances of unbiased coin landing 10 consecutive heads.

Hence, you cannot really disprove astrology. Unless it makes wrong predictions ALL the time.

Second thing which is peculiar to most Indian arts/sciences is that you just have to follow the tradition. No questions on why. no questions on how. Hence no one came up with answers.

So say someone wise and elder came up with an observation that all ppl who came to birth at exact 12 o clock in Delhi - they become some sort of military leaders. And so it was written in the astrology encyclopedia.
Now why did NO ONE from our great and esteemed past of learned ppl ever came up with an explanation HOW & WHY it happens?

Till that answer comes its just a coincidence - logically, rationally and scientifically speaking.
Statistical significance comes into picture once logical significance exists. There has to be a cause and effect relationship!

***

Another aspect which you have brought about in the last para - if I know my future - its no longer my future.
Because I know - I have means to change/avoid it!

 

even if they are wrong..they would realize it ..appe appe se..others don't need to tell them..