A New Political Concept

Originally posted by burdman30ott6

Originally posted by Amaterasu
First, virtually all creatures can inbreed for generations before abnormalities spring up. All except humans. Why would it be that evolution awkwardly constructed one species to have the highest awareness (by far!) than any other and yet have such restrictions in inbreeding, with good probability of issues in the first generation, and high odds in the second?

I am going to have to spend some time digesting the entire post, and I hate to pluck a single paragraph from it for a comment, but I need to do it here. If all life were equal in measures of finite details, then what you are saying here would have merit. However, this isn't the case in any way. A dog, for example, can potentially be the canine equivalent of retarded and yet few people would notice it. The dog would be considered stubborn, hard headed, or just plain goofy... but then again, how many of us haven't seen a dog that fits these descriptions?

Humanity is very different. Developmental milestones have been set by so-called "experts" and if a child doesn't hit them, they are quickly considered as having some form of defect. Humans are essentially the only creatures on Earth who can have this applied to them. While animals can inbreed and appear to produce "normal" offspring, with humans even a tiny glitch in the system is quickly observable... be it a retardation, minor physical defect, or other developmental issue. I think Hollywood has largely contributed to this falacy that one generation of inbreeding humans will magically produce The Hills Have Eyes mutants with humpbacks, stubb arms, and 5 lb tongues. It is only because of how fine our motor skills and appearance is on average that the minor defects seen within that single generation of shared genetics are so noticable.

I want to point out that it takes many generations for physical deformities to appear in animals such as dogs. I’m not speaking merely of mental capacity. In humans, the physical manifestations are warped in relatively high percentages in as little as two generations, with higher percentages manifesting with each successive generation. Hundreds of generations have led to hip issues in certain breeds of dogs, for example, though many breeds still have no issues after an equal number of generations.

Humans alone manifest such issues in small numbers of generations.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

hours and hours, sounds good!
then i can pick your brain some more about terra papers.

I look forward!

Second line just in case.

I woke to a new paradigm yesterday.
Everywhere I look it is a different situation.

Prop 8 was repealed!!!
(OMG I dream of freedom for all...........every human body endowed with the exact same rights straight across the board)

Some random (Bill Gates) Go-Bazillionairs have promised to 'give away' half of their fortune....
The world is suddenly a kinder more caring place YAY!

MANIFEST!


There MIGHT BE for the first time an equal number of woman to men sitting on the supreme court!! (W@W I hope this happens!)

Utah has decided to allocate more money for education! W@@T!


I feel like I have just stepped into a world that I like a whole lot better

Letting go of expectations is KEY

I PROMISE to read all of your proposal soon, but for now this day my son comes home, and time is so short.....pop in pop out.....
MUCH LOVE!





[edit on 6-8-2010 by theRiverGoddess]

reply to post by theRiverGoddess


Glad your world is getting better! Enjoy your son!

I look forward to hearing your comments when you have finished reading.

Free Energy - Free Planet - Free People

We are Energy

when energy on the planet is suppressed, so it is in the people

!the system of burning (petroleum) is one of consuming, and so it is decaying!

*once revealed, Pure State Energy will Transform our connection within Creation - to planet, animal, plant and self*

We will free ourselves and planet Earth, with a free energy, and we will heal ourselves and planet Earth freely with energy.

Internal influences external-
External affects internal~

Free Energy ~ Free Planet ~ Free People


∞LOVE∞

reply to post by Amaterasu

Negativity? Caution!

you may have misunderstood my comments. I for one would love to see all the world, unhampered, unrestrained, following the golden rule. And yes I practice freedom of choice as much as possible and would love to see others with as much liberty as humanly possible.

But when you speak of "free" as the cure all for humanity, it reminds me of the 60s where free love caused more pain and suffering than even the system did.

Free means superior responsibilities and I just don't believe the current human population is up for it. We are human beings prone to error, but with a divine attribute of forgiveness. But if you deny the little spark of divinity within yourself then I would question your intentions.

Everyone carry their own little recording device? How about making a law requiring our public officials to be fitted with one rather than the general public.

And, who would monitor this system? How would they gain such a position? elected? Appointed? Would moral values enter into your vision? And who's version of moral values would you adopt?

And in the case of not agreeing with your vision of a utopia, then what? Would you banished them from the village, garden (Again)? Would you pass a law disallowing others to hear the viewpoints of those banished? Would you segregate to the point of becoming just a myth, or fiction to those who were banished?

Would you then start to banish the "Sub Geniuses", and anyone else who might suggest more, or less? Would you start banishing those who question the wisdom of the system?

No you say, all you have to do is agree to carry your personal recorder. By the way, is this personal recorder something you can accidentally leave at home, or is it something more in line with the NBIC Report?

(Converging Technologies
for Improving Human Performance
NANOTECHNOLOGY, BIOTECHNOLOGY,
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND COGNITIVE
SCIENCE) and be hard wired to your recording device?

reply to post by Amaterasu
My comment was more towards stoping greedy people from being in a position

of power .

Originally posted by the2ofusr1
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

My comment was more towards stoping greedy people from being in a position

of power .

Ah. Well that's accomplished by intending to bring change towards abundance.

When we can see that we will have what we want - and everyone else can too - intending the change becomes easy... If it's not easy, it hasn't hit you in the gut yet.

reply to post by Amaterasu

Hmm. The OPs post are too long for me to cover everything. I'll cover money and hardship.

If money lost its value then this game wouldn't be fun anymore for those who play it. You don't understand very well. The people who play this game don't do it because they HAVE TO. They do it because of the rewarding feeling they receive from playing. The sense of accomplishment. When they achieve something, the money reward they get acknowledges their contribution. Then and only then does their contribution have meaning. If you removed money from it and just allowed everyone to have what they wanted then nobody would want to do anything!

The reason people want to do things is because: a) they get money for doing it b) because people are suffering all around them, and they want to help them. If no one was suffering and money was meaningless then life would be a pointless place to live. We NEED money and hardship.

If all our desires were met, there would be no needs, and thusly, nothing to accomplish!

Seeing that there's NO free energy in the universe, opposite of what you say, it's apparent to me that whatever created this universe created it so that humans would WANT to play this game!

Need comes first before everything else. Hardship and conservation make us need things.

The Evil F#’s are likely extraterrestrial, given that no human heart I know of would make choices as I see made in the experience around me. Who would rush a huge amount of toxic “dispersant” into the waters of a large body on this planet, when the far better choice would be to do all one could to stop the flow, showing everything and hearing any suggestions, and allowing nature to run its course?

They don't do that because it's evil, they do it because they don't know any better. Believe it or not, but many people are so stubborn and hard-headed that they will believe that poison is medicine until the day they die. It's needless to explain something as driven by evil when sheer stupidity and stubbornness is a far simpler reason for it. I know it's hard to believe, but it's the truth.

That's why I don't hate people anymore. I can't hate stupid. The fact that me and the stoopid are both human just makes me feel equally as stupid and lame for being a human just like them.

I believe we need government because we need the collective wisdom and intelligence of all people to self-correct our innate stupidness and stubbornness. This also means that each single individual will disagree with the government. We must have some measure of faith or government will collapse. The question is whether evolution will make us a hive-mind or not to benefit from mass IQ.

Is individualism dependent on sacrificing mass IQ (intelligence of all people) at the altar? Or can there be a middleground - a compromise between self-consciousness and mass-consciousness?

Originally posted by jonnywhite
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

Hmm. The OPs post are too long for me to cover everything. I'll cover money and hardship.

If money lost its value then this game wouldn't be fun anymore for those who play it. You don't understand very well. The people who play this game don't do it because they HAVE TO. They do it because of the rewarding feeling they receive from playing. The sense of accomplishment. When they achieve something, the money reward they get acknowledges their contribution. Then and only then does their contribution have meaning. If you removed money from it and just allowed everyone to have what they wanted then nobody would want to do anything!

Let me introduce you to some of my more recent work and perhaps you will undertand the difference between the scarcity paradigm we presently live in and the abundance paradigm I suggest...

The End of Entropy is the foundation piece, best read first. The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform is built upon it. Both are linked in my sig.

reply to post by Amaterasu

I'm about a year late on this thread so I won't try to be long winded. But what I see from going through the original post in this: The intention is good, but there comes a time when action is required. So you add up your probabilities and take the top one - or whatever you decision process might consist of, and you act.

Now, in the arena of the affairs of Mankind, this is rough. We're dealing with a lot of "facts" where probabilities aren't too high. So, how do you push through and push some probabilities up? You have to test the "facts."

Let's step back to the arena of the physical world. It's a little easier to get certainties in this arena because the physical world is a lot more automated than the human world is. Once you've discovered a pattern in the physical world you can rely on it pretty heavily. This only starts to break down when you start messing around with what you might call the "human" side of matter. In other words, on some level matter begins to lose its automaticity and gets to decide a few things for itself. Or at least something is making a decision that introduces some uncertainty into the situation.

But in the physical world we can develop a technology, or a set of technologies, like electronics (one I'm more familiar with) and you can get very consistent results with it. The technology predicts that if you construct a circuit in such and such a way, a light will turn on. And sure enough, it happens just about every time. That's certainty. So if you are confronted with the problem of lighting a dark space, you have a technical solution that you are pretty certain about. And that gives you a basis for action.

In the human world we are having problems developing technologies with that much certainty. It seems like an obvious problem: people are self-determined. So you can tell some people to do something or believe something, and some of them will while others won't. But there's got to be more to it than that. Because while the uncertainty is a bit higher, it's not off the chart. The average person does not cower in his house because he's too afraid of what someone else might do to go outside. There is some sort of resistance to increasing our certainty about ourselves, and it could only possibly come from us, or from something we created.

New physical technologies and new human technologies can meet with resistance when they are introduced. But in spite of that it seems that we have come a lot farther in understanding our environments than we have in understanding ourselves.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the basic methodology that has been used to advance our certainty about the physical world could also be used to advance our certainty about people.

To simplify it a little: You test an hypothesis to see if it works. If it does, you ask others to try to duplicate what you did (validate it). If it doesn't then you revise it based on what you learned and you try it again.

I'm going to stop right about here. Just a few final comments. As a person with an engineering background, I value technology that works way above technology that is merely logical. In fact, if you have a reliable enough technology in your hands, you don't even have to know the first thing about why it works. You just need to know how to make it do what you expect it to do. What I see in endless streams in so many posts are attempts to apply reason, belief, or dogma to resolve the problems of people. My only "belief" is that it should be possible to develop technologies that work for people in a very similar way that technologies have been developed that work in the physical world. So when someone asserts that their data is true, what I want to know is: Does it work?

If we start with that viewpoint about how to best handle the various situations we've gotten ourselves into, then I think we have a chance of finding some workable answers and pulling through somehow. The challenge to anyone advocating a certain point of view is: Has this been tested and found to be workable?

Originally posted by l_e_cox
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

I'm about a year late on this thread so I won't try to be long winded. But what I see from going through the original post in this: The intention is good, but there comes a time when action is required. So you add up your probabilities and take the top one - or whatever you decision process might consist of, and you act.

And I do act. The most important action is to spread ideas of abundance. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have gone on to distill my ideas into two pieces I have posted here: The End of Entropy ( www.abovetopsecret.com... ), which is the foundational piece, and The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform ( www.abovetopsecret.com... ) which is the structural piece. And I hype it everywhere it is related to a problem we can solve with these ideas. I am posting these works on other forums, as well. Again...

The most important action is to spread ideas of abundance.

If we start with that viewpoint about how to best handle the various situations we've gotten ourselves into, then I think we have a chance of finding some workable answers and pulling through somehow. The challenge to anyone advocating a certain point of view is: Has this been tested and found to be workable?

How would you propose to test the concept of abundance without the need for money? It has not happened on this planet before, and (so ironically) would require lots of money to test. Rather, I say what we can do ius examine areas we presently see (such as the phenomenon of Linux) and how people behave when money is useless (such as cases found in natural disaster - read A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit), and use the behaviors to model expectations.

EDIT to add: One problem in technology is that there has been suppression of very important tech, and much is yet hidden.

reply to post by Amaterasu


Appologies for not reading past your first post, which was certainly well written and entertaining to read. But I found a few of your first principals to be slightly confusing and was wondering if you could clarify.

Basically what I wondering is if you reject a pure true/false epistemology and instead insist that reality is essentially unknowable, (if reality is knowable then its 100%) is this assertion itself subject to this rule? It may seem like Im knitpicking, but since this is your first principal of reasoning, it bears exploring.

What I mean by the above question is this - if you come to me and say 'you cannot know anything for certain' you are making a statement of certainty. If your rule of uncertainty only applies to concepts outside of your rule, it ceases to be a universal rule and simply becomes a contradictary opinion. If Your rule of uncertainty applies to your certain claim, how can we be certain that your claim of uncertainty is true? Certainly, everything is uncertain? To me, its a little like coming to me and saying 'your ears do not work' or 'language is meaningless'. Both are self denotating, inherently contratictary claims that need no further investigation, as they fail on their face due to their inherent paradoxical nature.

So I'm wondering, what probability of true/flase would you assign to my statement that '2 + 2 = 4'? Is it conceivable, in any way, that this is false? If there is a sliver of a chance that this is false, on what information do you base this on? If it is certain that 2 + 2 does indeed = 4, always and without exception, you might have to adjust your basic philisophical premise.

Originally posted by Neo_Serf
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

Appologies for not reading past your first post, which was certainly well written and entertaining to read. But I found a few of your first principals to be slightly confusing and was wondering if you could clarify.

Basically what I wondering is if you reject a pure true/false epistemology and instead insist that reality is essentially unknowable, (if reality is knowable then its 100%) is this assertion itself subject to this rule? It may seem like Im knitpicking, but since this is your first principal of reasoning, it bears exploring.

What I mean by the above question is this - if you come to me and say 'you cannot know anything for certain' you are making a statement of certainty. If your rule of uncertainty only applies to concepts outside of your rule, it ceases to be a universal rule and simply becomes a contradictary opinion. If Your rule of uncertainty applies to your certain claim, how can we be certain that your claim of uncertainty is true? Certainly, everything is uncertain? To me, its a little like coming to me and saying 'your ears do not work' or 'language is meaningless'. Both are self denotating, inherently contratictary claims that need no further investigation, as they fail on their face due to their inherent paradoxical nature.

So I'm wondering, what probability of true/flase would you assign to my statement that '2 + 2 = 4'? Is it conceivable, in any way, that this is false? If there is a sliver of a chance that this is false, on what information do you base this on? If it is certain that 2 + 2 does indeed = 4, always and without exception, you might have to adjust your basic philisophical premise.

[smile] Of course my approach is subject to the same questioning... There is some probability that I CAN know something 100%. I am unsure where to place that probability, because I have no data upon which to base my assessments. And I assert that though 2+2=4 in every case we can conceive of, I also must hold some probability of there being a case we can't conceive of wherein 2+2(/=)4 (sorry, I don't know how to access the "not equal" sign). Ergo, I assign some probability (however excruciatingly small) that there may be a case where 2+2(/=)4 and cannot give it 100%.

reply to post by Amaterasu


There is a massive and fundamental difference between 99.99999 and 100. One includes the possibility of an alternative and one does not. If youre in the 99.99999 camp, then nothing can be true, as truth means certainty. If this is the case, you can state absolutely nothing with certainty, including the statement that nothing is certain. (or that your certain you potentially could be certain)

You say that your estimation on the unknowable truth is based on potential alternate possibilities, but you logically admit that 2+2 basically always = 4. On what basis, or on what information do you conclude that 2+2 could indeed = 5? (however small the possibility?) If you have no information, and instead just a hunch or opinion, on what potentially flawed thinking (99.9999)is this based?

If a million mathmaticians calculated 2+2 = ? for eternity, would there be even the slightest chance that one of them (0.000000000001) would eventually come up with 2+2 = 5, and be correct?

What are the odds that I'm sitting here typing this?

Originally posted by Neo_Serf
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

There is a massive and fundamental difference between 99.99999 and 100. One includes the possibility of an alternative and one does not. If youre in the 99.99999 camp, then nothing can be true, as truth means certainty. If this is the case, you can state absolutely nothing with certainty, including the statement that nothing is certain. (or that your certain you potentially could be certain)

I am Human. I err. I could be totally off in fantasy land and TOTALLY have no grasp of the matrix I am in... Ergo, nothing is 100%. (And yes, there is a vast difference between 99.9....)

You say that your estimation on the unknowable truth is based on potential alternate possibilities, but you logically admit that 2+2 basically always = 4.

No.... I say I logically admit that IN ALL CONCEIVABLE cases, 2+2=4. This is not the same as basically always. I could be totally off in fantasy land and TOTALLY have no grasp of the matrix I am in...and only THINK that 2+2=4 in all conceivable cases...

On what basis, or on what information do you conclude that 2+2 could indeed = 5? (however small the possibility?) If you have no information, and instead just a hunch or opinion, on what potentially flawed thinking (99.9999)is this based?

I have no basis to conclude 2+2=5 per se. Just that in some inconceivable case it may NOT =4.

If a million mathmaticians calculated 2+2 = ? for eternity, would there be even the slightest chance that one of them (0.000000000001) would eventually come up with 2+2 = 5, and be correct?

No. But all those cases are conceivable. Every one of them.

What are the odds that I'm sitting here typing this?

At the moment I type THIS? Extremely slim - 99.9... against.

Originally posted by Amaterasu

Originally posted by Neo_Serf
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

First of all, sorry for derailing your political thread into the 'what is truth' thread, but since all political ideas are conclusions based on prior truths/falsehoods, its worth discussion.

I am Human. I err. I could be totally off in fantasy land and TOTALLY have no grasp of the matrix I am in... Ergo, nothing is 100%. (And yes, there is a vast difference between 99.9....)

Then it is equally possible that I'm agreeing with everything youre saying, and if that is the case, well done~

No.... I say I logically admit that IN ALL CONCEIVABLE cases, 2+2=4. This is not the same as basically always. I could be totally off in fantasy land and TOTALLY have no grasp of the matrix I am in...and only THINK that 2+2=4 in all conceivable cases...

Either your senses are valid, or they arent. I just fail to see what value or insight it is that you gain in conceding that you may, indeed, be a brain in a tank.

Under the 99.9999 thinking, I could be a single atom in the pinky toe of Zombie Jesus' right foot. Allowing for this possibilty, however, offers me no insights, and indeed is a net loss in time investment, as I could be thinking about more productive, 100% real things, instead of possible, insane and impossible realities.

I have no basis to conclude 2+2=5 per se. Just that in some inconceivable case it may NOT =4.

And, similarly, im some 'inconceivable way', pink and green unicorns could exist on the dark side of the moon, who both are pink and green at the same time, and live in space and under the moons green cheese surface simultaniously, inside a cavern that is both a square and a circle. But it is totally invisible, undetectable and cannot be observed by us in any way.

If the above seems absurd to you, this is exactly how i feel when you claim that self contradictary properties can exist. And frankly it puts all your others words under a bit of deserved scrutiny.

If you were to read some tombe of mathmatical wisdom that went on in tangents and formulas for thousands of pages, but on the first page is stated '2 + 2 = 4...but once in a while, it = 5' would you seriously bother wasting your time reading further, if not for the sheer amusement of observing the thoughts of a madman?

No. But all those cases are conceivable. Every one of them.

Something that is unknowable, undectectable, and does not effect us in any conceivable way is exactly the same as non existence. If you dont believe this, ask yourself: how could we know that something does not exist? Answer: It would be unknowable, undetectable, and would not effect us in any conceivable way.

What are the odds that I'm sitting here typing this?

At the moment I type THIS? Extremely slim - 99.9... against.

lol well I knew my rants were boring, but I didnt expect them to dip into non detectability...touche...maybe I dont exist...

edit on 19-3-2011 by Neo_Serf because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by Neo_Serf
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

First of all, sorry for derailing your political thread into the 'what is truth' thread, but since all political ideas are conclusions based on prior truths/falsehoods, its worth discussion.

I am Human. I err. I could be totally off in fantasy land and TOTALLY have no grasp of the matrix I am in... Ergo, nothing is 100%. (And yes, there is a vast difference between 99.9....)

Then it is equally possible that I'm agreeing with everything youre saying, and if that is the case, well done~

My point is that, though the probabilities for many things approaches 1, based on personal observation, it is wise to leave room for a failure in understanding. And though our discussion has been about the esoterica of this approach, the usefulness of this approach becomes apparent when evaluating any claim. Rather than label something impossible or absolute (and ignoring all future data on the subject of that something), this allows for future adjustment on a scale as data arrive. The end result offers a better overall picture of the universe because all data are used.

No.... I say I logically admit that IN ALL CONCEIVABLE cases, 2+2=4. This is not the same as basically always. I could be totally off in fantasy land and TOTALLY have no grasp of the matrix I am in...and only THINK that 2+2=4 in all conceivable cases...

Either your senses are valid, or they arent. I just fail to see what value or insight it is that you gain in conceding that you may, indeed, be a brain in a tank.

And there is no way of telling whether they are or they aren't. One can only presume that they are to a high degree of certainty - but again, this addresses the esoterica and not the practical application.

Under the 99.9999 thinking, I could be a single atom in the pinky toe of Zombie Jesus' right foot. Allowing for this possibilty, however, offers me no insights, and indeed is a net loss in time investment, as I could be thinking about more productive, 100% real things, instead of possible, insane and impossible realities.

Indeed, you could be, and indeed, this esoterica is virtually moot.

I have no basis to conclude 2+2=5 per se. Just that in some inconceivable case it may NOT =4.

And, similarly, im some 'inconceivable way', pink and green unicorns could exist on the dark side of the moon, who both are pink and green at the same time, and live in space and under the moons green cheese surface simultaniously, inside a cavern that is both a square and a circle. But it is totally invisible, undetectable and cannot be observed by us in any way.

If the above seems absurd to you, this is exactly how i feel when you claim that self contradictary properties can exist. And frankly it puts all your others words under a bit of deserved scrutiny.

I did not claim that self contradictory properties exist. I claimed that something contradictory to what I THINK is real may actually be the case. But for any case where probability approaches 1, I can feel confident in discarding the vanishingly small possibilities. This is not about exploring these minute possibilities; it's about evaluating things in the "gray" area of life.

If you were to read some tombe of mathmatical wisdom that went on in tangents and formulas for thousands of pages, but on the first page is stated '2 + 2 = 4...but once in a while, it = 5' would you seriously bother wasting your time reading further, if not for the sheer amusement of observing the thoughts of a madman?

If it was stated as you put forth, I would be dubious of such a work - but if it was stated that there is a vanishingly small probability that 2+2(/=)4 in ALL cases, I might even be intrigued and jump in eagerly to understand the reasoning the author offers.

No. But all those cases are conceivable. Every one of them.

Something that is unknowable, undectectable, and does not effect us in any conceivable way is exactly the same as non existence. If you dont believe this, ask yourself: how could we know that something does not exist? Answer: It would be unknowable, undetectable, and would not effect us in any conceivable way.

Yes... I'm failing to see what the point of this is though. And really, again, we are delving into the esoterica and not the practical applications of the approach.

What are the odds that I'm sitting here typing this?

At the moment I type THIS? Extremely slim - 99.9... against.

lol well I knew my rants were boring, but I didnt expect them to dip into non detectability...touche...maybe I dont exist...

LOL! Not so much boring as mental exercise having little to no application in the practical aspects of the approach. My point above, of course, was not that you don't exist but that you had (probability approaching 1) typed your line of text BEFORE I responded. Ergo, as I was typing my response, you were not (probability approaching 1) sitting "here" typing the line I was responding to.

reply to post by Amaterasu


The metaphysics (what is true and what is false) that you refer to as esoterics (arcane and unknowable) are foundational to any practical applications you wish to draw from them, and thus cannot be discarded as of secondary importance. Since practicality is just applied metaphysics, to dismiss foundational principals in favour of utility is to build a house on a foundation of quicksand. Practical applications of contradicary systems are necessarily incorrect, just as any mathmatical system based on 2+2=5 must be incorrect, if words are to have any meaning, or any correlation to actual reality.

If 2+2 can indeed = 5, or even the potential of such is considered valid in any way, the symbols themselves lose all meaning, as their truthful function is to represent non contradictary reality, in which 2 atoms grouped with 2 other atoms must always equal 4 atoms. If this basic premise can in any way be considered questionable, or open for debate, the words and symbols themselves lose all meaning, as does any extrapolation based them.

This does not disallow the limitations of human perception, which is of course a vast grey area. But it does, and *must*, validate our senses in at least this most basic and important way.

Originally posted by Neo_Serf
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

The metaphysics (what is true and what is false) that you refer to as esoterics (arcane and unknowable) are foundational to any practical applications you wish to draw from them, and thus cannot be discarded as of secondary importance. Since practicality is just applied metaphysics, to dismiss foundational principals in favour of utility is to build a house on a foundation of quicksand. Practical applications of contradicary systems are necessarily incorrect, just as any mathmatical system based on 2+2=5 must be incorrect, if words are to have any meaning, or any correlation to actual reality.

If 2+2 can indeed = 5, or even the potential of such is considered valid in any way, the symbols themselves lose all meaning, as their truthful function is to represent non contradictary reality, in which 2 atoms grouped with 2 other atoms must always equal 4 atoms. If this basic premise can in any way be considered questionable, or open for debate, the words and symbols themselves lose all meaning, as does any extrapolation based them.

This does not disallow the limitations of human perception, which is of course a vast grey area. But it does, and *must*, validate our senses in at least this most basic and important way.

I think the point you are missing is that, though I cannot assign 100% to 2+2=4, on a practical level, I function as if 2+2 always = 4. Because I tend to function as if anything that gets 90% or more in my estimation is reliable.

But this is really moot. The point is comparing an approach of hearing something and disbelieving, assigning an "off" (not true) switch to the concept, and disregarding any further data that come along, regardless of how much they show that the switch should be in the "on" (true) setting - which is what most people do - and assigning probabilities, reevaluating as new data come in, and therefore changing the category I place concepts into if the probabilities shift enough.

That is the point. Not nitpicking terminology and validation of senses.