Asklemmy

46266 readers

2566 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

-26

I believe in ghosts and aliens because of statistics. What do you think? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 week ago by razorozx@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When people ask whether or not they believe ghosts or aliens exist, they typically point to something that is somewhat tangible as proof such as "the government says it is real" or "this video explains it all". I think these responses are valid, but with low confidence in what they're trying to prove. A government can simply be making stuff up and a video explaining it could of simply been misinformed into some false truth.

On the contrary, I think they exist because of statistical improbability. I see that there are an uncountable amount of videos claiming to have recorded proof for ghosts and aliens. Assuming that 99% of them are hoaxes, clout chasers, or misidentified phenomena, that still leaves 1% of all those videos to be true. As long as the percentage is not 100%, it means that there is solid proof out there, weak in confidence or not, it's a lead to the truth.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mr_jaaay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

No no no, with gods, you can kind of shop around, most of them won't mind much, at least not in the 'send a lightning bolt down to fry Mothra@mander.xyz' kind of way. Essentially, gods need people to believe in them (so they can exist), and people need someone to blame. Offler, the crocodile-headed god, is quite popular, as is Blind Io, chief of the gods.

I work in IT, so in my headcannon, I pray to the gods of DNS. Put into a classical context, I imagine this is Hermes from Greek mythology (messenger of the gods), Thoth from Egyption mythology, etc.

Completely honestly though - I think faith is similar to energy, in the 'conservation of energy' type of way. So the total amount of faith humanity holds has stayed the same, but instead of praying to gods, we now have faith in things like... Ryzen processors. DNS. Manual transmissions. Black coffee. Subaru. These are just some of the things I have faith in, if you asked my daughter, the answers would probably be Peppa Pig, mom & dad, Everest the Paw Patrol character, a blue baloon, cheesecake is best cake, her stuffed animal squid, etc. Both answers are completely valid :-)