Are you superstitious?

You tell me

If My car had 13 on the license plate, I wouldn't care. I'm not necessarily afraid of the number 13 or 666.

However, I'm scared of flying on planes, so I would probably be a little bothered if I was getting on boarding dock 13.

So, the only reason 13 would bother me, is if it was something I was already nervous about. Like, I wouldn't want to be deathly ill, lying on my bed in hospital room #13.

I'm not scared of cats, or black cats, or the number 13, but If I opened my front door one day and there was a black cat sitting there staring up at me with a collar that had the number 13 written on it. Yeah, i think I'd be a little bothered.


and toaster, that is so cute that you didn't want your jelly to be jealous and feel left out.
 
Remus said:
I dare you to break a mirror! 100 years bad luck!
Click to expand...

I broke a mirror once; snapped it clean in half. I can't remember how long ago it was but I certainly don't recall having numerous years of bad luck following the breakage!!! :D

Oh, and, BTW Remus, it's seven years bad luck traditionally. I suppose it might be different where you're from but in the tradition it's seven. :)
 
The hotel building I stayed in in Hawaii had no 13th floor, went up 11-12-14-15 etc
 
I broke 13 mirrors. So yeah. I'm pretty much ****ed.

(i'm serious)


Sometimes I wonder if I'm ... nevermind.
 
I'm not superstitious, no. I do, however, believe that there are limits to what science can find out about the world. That's a weaker statement that what is usually meant by "superstitious".

For all things, science suggests using the simplest model among those with maximal predictive power. Necessarily, the need to make measurements makes it difficult to compare the predictive power of models beyond a certain precision, and the simplest model is the most useful and perhaps even most likely to be true, but isn't necessarily the truth.
 
I think it's pointless in numbering things like houses, airport terminal, etc. from 12 to 14 because there are still technically 13 so it makes no difference. It's just retarded.
 
toaster-chan said:
When I was little, and I wanted a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich, I would get out the peanut butter and the grape jelly. Then I'd get out the strawberry jelly and the blackberry jelly, even though I wasn't going to use them, I just wanted them to know that they were appreciated and that I didn't hate them just because I was using the grape jelly that time. I could never sleep with just one stuffed animal at a time, because I was afraid the other stuffed animals would be sad.

I've mostly gotten over it, but I still have tendencies. I just... don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. JUST IN CASE INANIMATE OBJECTS HAVE FEELINGS.
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My God you're me!
 
Funny thing is, here in Hong Kong, virtually all apartment buildings are without the following numbers:

4, 13, 14, 24, 34, 41, 42, 4x ...

Basically any combination of 4 - which is associated with "death" in cantonese because of how closely related they sound - are removed. There are few exceptions though, in that some buildings may include the numbers 13 or keep some combinations of the 40th floor.

However, the number 8 here is almost revered because again, it sounds very close a certain word, which in this case is 'fortune or wealth'. Car license plates here that feature that number are auctioned off at ridiculous price levels since the government hasn't allowed customized license plates... although this might have changed just recently. I remember the number 18 was sold at the price of $1 million USD months ago because the number 10 sounds like 'must' whereas 8 is 'wealth'. Therefore, when you put them together it sounds like "Will get wealthy".

---

Personally, I don't believe in any of this bullshit.
 
Qhartb said:
I'm not superstitious, no. I do, however, believe that there are limits to what science can find out about the world. That's a weaker statement that what is usually meant by "superstitious".

For all things, science suggests using the simplest model among those with maximal predictive power. Necessarily, the need to make measurements makes it difficult to compare the predictive power of models beyond a certain precision, and the simplest model is the most useful and perhaps even most likely to be true, but isn't necessarily the truth.
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lol wut
 
I'm wondering what precisely you could find out about the world by not observing that you couldn't discover by observing.
 
toaster-chan said:
This is me, exactly. Though it's not terrible guilt, it's just... well. How do I describe this. I'll give an example.

When I was little, and I wanted a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich, I would get out the peanut butter and the grape jelly. Then I'd get out the strawberry jelly and the blackberry jelly, even though I wasn't going to use them, I just wanted them to know that they were appreciated and that I didn't hate them just because I was using the grape jelly that time. I could never sleep with just one stuffed animal at a time, because I was afraid the other stuffed animals would be sad.

I've mostly gotten over it, but I still have tendencies. I just... don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. JUST IN CASE INANIMATE OBJECTS HAVE FEELINGS.

Edit: Though I'd like to point out that whenever someone asks me for a random number, I always blurt out thirteen.
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You kick ass
 
I had an umbrella that I was told to not open inside. So I opened it, did a little dance and asked repeatedly to be struck by lightning. So no, I'm not superstitious.
 
Sulkdodds said:
I'm wondering what precisely you could find out about the world by not observing that you couldn't discover by observing.
Click to expand...

Who said anything about finding things out by not observing? I said I believe there are limits to what science can find out about the world. I did not claim existence of a system which finds out what science cannot. You make the assumption that for any question it is possible to find the answer, and I do not.

I don't claim non-existence of such a system either.
 
zombieturtle01 said:
Sometimes when I do not do certain pointless things I get this terrible guilt and feel as though something bad is going to happen even though I know it will not.
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That too. But for other reasons.

I actually believe that everything that happens in my life is based on sod's law... If you want something to happen, be prepared for the opposite! :p
 
Qhartb said:
Who said anything about finding things out by not observing? I said I believe there are limits to what science can find out about the world. I did not claim existence of a system which finds out what science cannot. You make the assumption that for any question it is possible to find the answer, and I do not.

I don't claim non-existence of such a system either.
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Godels incompleteness theorm proves we can never know everything there is too know. Is that all you were trying to communicate?
 
...exploiting this for profit would be both enriching and fun.

In answer to the question, I'm not superstitious. I had a wall mirror that I had to throw away once, and at the transfer station everyone was slack jawed and aghast when I tossed it into the station to smash into little pieces. I wanted to do some kind of mock hex around their cars when I was done to put the icing on the cake.
 
My pencil case is full of broken old mechanical pencils that I just don't have the heart to throw away. I think it's just sentimentallity really, but I used to try my utmost to save little bits of LEGO from the vacuum cleaner, lest they think their master didn't care about them. I don't really imbue inanimate objects with feelings like I used to, but I tend to get sentimental about anything older than a few weeks.

EDIT: No, I'm not superstitious.
 
Qhartb said:
Who said anything about finding things out by not observing? I said I believe there are limits to what science can find out about the world. I did not claim existence of a system which finds out what science cannot. You make the assumption that for any question it is possible to find the answer, and I do not.

I don't claim non-existence of such a system either.
Click to expand...
Saying that there a limits to what science can find out about the world implies there there might be another system that can find out more about the world. People who use the word 'science' in this way tend to figure it as merely one perspective on reality.

If you simply meant to say that one cannot ultimately know everything, and that nothing can be totally proved, then...well, yeah.

By claiming that the act of measurement itself puts a barrier on our knowledge, aren't you essentially saying 'we can only find out what we can find out'? Which is rather a tautology, and not really useful to anyone. There might be things out there which we don't and can't ever know? Great.
 
Solaris said:
Godels incompleteness theorm proves we can never know everything there is too know. Is that all you were trying to communicate?
Click to expand...

I actually erased my comment on Godel before posting, but since you bring it up I'll talk about it a bit.

Of course we can never know all there is to know. The information content of the universe is obviously greater than that of the brains of the human race. No Incompleteness Theorem required. With the Incompleteness Theorem, the universe isn't even necessary to prove that we can't know everything. No science, just logic.

Your saying that we can't know everything is different than my saying that there are things we can't know. (Much like how given an arbitrarily long amount of time, I could count to any natural number, but I wouldn't ever count all of them, if that makes sense.)

The IT proves that given an axiomatic system (of sufficient strength), one can construct a proposition which is neither provable nor disprovable within that system. In math, no one cares about unprovable propositions constructed in this way other than that they exist, because they don't tend to say anything very meaningful or useful. When an unprovable proposition is found, however, like the Axiom of Choice or Euclid's 5th axiom, all paths are explored (though usually not equally). That is, they accept that proposition as a new axiom and see where it goes, and accept its negation and see where that goes too.

Science is different, because it's not an axiomatic system. A mathematical model produced by the scientific method may be, but science throws out that mathematical model as soon as a better one comes along. Measuring the universe is a bottomless well of new information. If you have a proposition that is unprovable using an existing mathematical model, you try it out, see what happens, reconcile new observations with old ones, and extend or replace the model.

Sulkdodds said:
Saying that there a limits to what science can find out about the world implies there there might be another system that can find out more about the world. People who use the word 'science' in this way tend to figure it as merely one perspective on reality.
Click to expand...

Not what I was trying to say at all. By "science," I mean application of the scientific method to model the world with ever increasing conformity with new observations. I hope you don't disagree that reality exists apart from our conclusions and observations about it.

I wasn't comparing a scienfic perspective to any other perspective. I was saying that even the most reasonable conclusions we can make about the world aren't necessarily likely to be the actual way the world works.

If you simply meant to say that one cannot ultimately know everything, and that nothing can be totally proved, then...well, yeah.
Click to expand...

I don't really care much about the fact that science is not provable in the mathematical sense so much as I think it's odd that so many people accept each latest scientific theory as the "gospel truth" until a better theory comes along and people slowly migrate over to thinking the new theory is absolutely true. The inconsistency of relativity and quantum mechanics helped a little bit with keeping people appropriately skeptical. Alternative interpretations of quantum theory helped, too. After all, we have no way of observing quantum mechanisms, only the results.

By claiming that the act of measurement itself puts a barrier on our knowledge, aren't you essentially saying 'we can only find out what we can find out'? Which is rather a tautology, and not really useful to anyone. There might be things out there which we don't and can't ever know? Great.
Click to expand...

How exactly is a discussion on whether I'm superstitious supposed to be useful to anyone?

Yes, I believe that there might be things out there which we don't and can't ever know. I also believe that, among all the many things that science gives models for, it's likely that for some of them the simplest model is not in fact true. I am comfortable accepting a sizable gap between human understanding (and even potential human understanding) and truth. In that sense, at least, I'm superstitious.

I'm not going to respond further, as I consider it bad luck to have more that 3 posts in a single thread. :)
 
I don't believe in any of the superstitions, but I sometimes still honor them, just in case. anyone else?

Like, I avoid breaking a mirror, etc. Just in case this shit is REAL. OMG
 
Shift said:
People scared of a number have issues.
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This. 13 is not unlucky. I know several people who were born on the 13th. 13ths of months are no different than any other day.

Anyone is convinced that they should be superstitious by that wiki article is retarded. So Bill Gates lost his position after 13 years...if the topic hadn't been about superstitions I wouldn't have thought twice.
 
No, I'm not superstitious.
I don't believe in luck or bad luck, or any other such things of that nature. Luck/bad luck is almost entirely self inflicted or coincidential.

I'm not naive enough to say there's no such thing as ghosts or parallel entities either though, nor am I naive enough to say they exist because of some silly TV show or internet article.
Take the media concerning hauntings with a grain of salt. They want ratings. :p

I haven't really explored the world enough to know the truth about ghosts or other such things I know little about.
For the record, I never once experienced a haunting in my life, and I've been all over the Southern U.S., a region know for various famous hauntings.
Maybe I could have better luck in say, Vlad Dracul's castle?
 
Atomic_Piggy said:
13 is not unlucky. I know several people who were born on the 13th. 13ths of months are no different than any other day.
Click to expand...

My friend Alex was born on 13th August and as far as I know he's never had a bad birthday because of it, so it is really pretty crap to think that anyone would have a bad day just because it's a Friday 13th.
 
I lived on the 13th floor of a building for like what, 11 years? Never really had any problem with luck.
 
14 or any other number could be unlucky if people paid attention to bad shit that happens involving those numbers like they do 13... just a case of seeing what you want to see (or what you're told to see). Hey wasn't there a movie about that? The Number 23!
 
Superstition is for awesomes. Just look at Irksome. He got to 666 posts and just left. Forever.
 
The only thing I can say I'm in the least bit superstitious about is my internet connection. I always try to keep the phone line as untangled as possible and I never use my browser's dial-up connection box thingy to connect.
 
Yes.....expecially during my kart racing days.
 
Nope.
Except how the shit do my wires get so tangled... wtf
ghosty wire tangler? D:
 
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