Given the rate of change over the past 50 years, I find it hard to believe that current events have set us on an unavoidable course to nuclear apocalypse 50 years from now.
It may well not take that long- and the change started happening 40 years ago.
A lot of things can and will change between now and then.
True. But what will happen in the next 10 years in the United States? That's the real question.
Besides, I can think of at least one obvious solution to this problem: "Restructure our debt or we'll nuke you silly. After all, it's not like you've left us anything to lose."
It won't be that kind of group that is in control at that point- but rather, an internal group of revolutionaries in the United States tired of the slavery we're begining to labor under.
Anyway, are you seriously saying that armageddon is inevitable, and that the great powers of the world, the leaders of the U.S., China, the WTO, and the United Nations have all completely overlooked this, and that where they have failed you have been clever enough to see it all?
They want it. Or rather, they want what they have gotten from it- the beginings of one world government, and the ability of the rich to enslave specific populations.
And are you, in fact, claiming that not only are you so much cleverer than the Chinese and U.S. leadership who signed us up for this unavoidable apocalypse, but that since you in all your cleverness are completely unable to figure out any way to save ourselves, it must be the case that nobody else is going to be clever enough to save us either?
Such people are not allowed to have control- the old men with vested interests have a vested interest in not allowing them to have control. *Profit* is the only motivation they care about, the only motivation they see- and short term profit at that.
Because it really does sound like you're claiming both that you are possibly the smartest person on the planet, and that not even smartitude of your caliber can solve this problem.
Actually, it's more the law of unintended consequences again- those who are smarter than I have focused their talents on turning the world against itself to their profit, and as long as they are focused on that task, they can't see the destruction that it will cause. At least, not until the United States falls into the second civil war.
You'd think that someone with this kind of power in their subjective reality would prefer to believe in a world full of love and peace. Yet you seem to have a fetish for grim and depressing subjective truths instead. Have you ever wondered if the problem isn't the trade deficit at all, but rather your perception of the trade deficit?
I wondered if you'd try to join the two conversations. But yes, that's precisely the problem- a country with a strong mythos of independance has given up that independance to an outside body with no loyalty at all to the population. A second country with a strong mythos of supporting it's population through imperialistic actions is coming up from behind taking the opportunity to turn itself into a superpower. It's men like me, not neccessarily me but it is possible, who will pick up our guns and fight when our ability to feed our families is ripped away by the multinational corporations and by China, Inc. It's our subjective perception of the trade deficit, and the problems it will cause in the next few years, that will shape our rebellion against those powers. And it's exactly that group that will cause the problem- people that the Chinese believe are pesants, that the WTO believe are consumers, and that the US politicians believe don't have campaign contributions and therefore aren't worth listening to.
Meanwhile, if there is such a thing as "objective reality",
Mighty big assumption to make there- that the universe exists.
then our various subjective realities don't make objective reality any less objective;
True, just more unknowable.
on the contrary, objective reality just makes our subjective realities "wrong".
Wrongness is a subjective concept, it's not an objective qualifier. And due to the subjective realities, we've got no real way of knowing which objective reality is correct.
If we both encounter an Objective Elephant, you believing it's actually a Lion doesn't make the Elephant any less absolute or true. It just makes your subjective reality an imperfect approximation of what is truly real.
Correct- but because we're all human and approximately equal, there's also a chance that it's not an objective elephant at all, but rather an objective fourth-dimensional mountain range projecting into our space as an objective elephant in three dimensions. Thus making *both* subjective realities equally wrong.
You can't negate objective reality simply by believing something else instead. Nor can you negate my perception of objective reality simply by perceiving it differently than I do.
Until you can actually prove that you are perceiving objective reality- of which you really have no way to do it, because all perception is by definition subjective- then the problem simply doesn't really exist. Any objectivity you happen to percieve comes to you through subjective senses- thus damaging it's objectivity irrevocably. And that's what I'm refering as ignorance- you have *no* way of knowing what you perceive is correct. Ultimately, all we really have is a collection of myths- some of which mirror reality better than others, but all of which are valuable as insight into the reality that is bigger than all the myths combined.
The Middle Kingdom's own master strategist, Sun Tzu himself, taught that putting your enemy on death ground was bad strategy. Any policy that makes nuclear war cheaper than the alternatives for the U.S. is a policy the Chinese government will not adopt. Why would a committee of old men with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo enact a policy that added up to a nuke in the face?
The law of unintended consequences is my guess- they just don't realize how unstable Americans are. Either that- or the Chinese Government feels that they have a vested interest not in maintaining the status quo, but rather in finishing their life work of the revolution.
Either way, they've already enacted the policies that make this situation unavoidable- sometime in the next 50 years, we will have a nuclear war over the trade deficits, and I don't see ANY way out of it. The last bit is falling into place as the US Congress gives up control over all labor and immigration rules to the WTO.
For all you know, the rest of us may very well live and thrive in a reality replete with absolute truths and objective viewpoints. At the very least, you cannot possibly know for sure that we *don't*.
Exactly right. And in some ways, I envy you the ignorance. But if even one person is thriving in a different reality than you do, your truth is no longer absolute for anybody but you, and that makes your objective viewpoint subjective.
That's very interesting- you've not only made my statements meaningless, you've made your own reality an oxymoron.
They aren't meant to exhaust the list. They aren't meant to excite. They're simply meant to prove that man doesn't know everything. And that's all they prove. It's basically just an extension of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.
I'd also point out that there are two ways to grow up in this fashion: the first is to understand that we're only working with models, and reality is both far more complex and far simpler than any model we can possibly create. The second is to retreat *back* into childhood and insist that the axioms are always true and therefore anybody insisting something outside of those axioms exists must either be lying or wrong. What I'm battling against is the second- and for that solipsism is just a steping stone on the journey.
Well, the main issues I see that you've been having are that you jump out and make assertions without any original basis. Thus, provoking anger and frustration.
Which is kind of the point originally- but what you're pointing out is that strategy is wrong.
Perhaps one of the reasons why I'm the first person to see any validity in your statements is that I wasn't mad about what you were saying;)
Or lack of validity, as the case may be....:-)
Either way, this all started off with "wikipedia is full of false information." With no indication that you feel rather than wikipedia is full of an established mythos that society perpetuates, and cannot be fundamentally proven in most cases.
Or disproven. In fact, the only thing we have really proven is that wikipedia a very useful repository of established mythos.
Actually... one would be asserting myth-values to things, not truth-values. Of course a myth-value has only one value, "mythic". So it's almost pointless to even talk about it, except to say that one can assign the myth-value of something to be "true" or "false" within their own system.
All myths are versions of the truth, from different points of view. And thus I come upon the biggest contradiction of all- Wikipedia is useless for proving anything (just like any other authority) but it's VERY valuable in showing us alternate myths from our own. Facts may not exist- but we've found something infinitely more valuable to replace them.
Damn, it's big in here.....
Yep- 7 billion + infinities, all intersecting and intertwining, and that's just human knowledge alone.
There are a lot of countries who would love to be "losing" the way we are. Both Iran and China would fit on that list.
It's a comfortable soft landing for now- but when our children and grandchildren are in chains trying to pay off our loans paying for our current soft landing, it won't feel as soft.
Our strategy is a brilliant one, and one that goes back more than a Century: "The business of America is business."
The problem isn't the century- it's the last 40 years or so. You can only run a business on red ink for so long. America, Inc hasn't been profitable since Nixon opened up the East.
Prior to the break-up of Yugoslavia, no nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it had ever gone to war with another nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it. Prosperity, contentment, and outright sloth is the surest way to make people not want to get up off the futon and shoot at each other anymore.
True enough- but we don't have Prosperity anymore, contentment is slowly leaving as well. All that is left keeping the United States from having a hot class warfare is sloth- and meth addiction is slowly taking care of that problem.
Not sure what you mean by "peer control", but certainly
Wikipedia has one form of peer control. If by this you
mean the academic process of submitting to domain experts
or editors for review, this also has its share of drawbacks.
True enough, which I pointed out elsewhere in the discussion.
For one thing, this process can be slow, and for the kind
of content that appears to lend itself well to a wiki-based
"encyclopedia", timeliness can go a long way both towards
content accuracy and usefulness.
Oh man- I didn't expect to have to break my own rules and CITE something in this discussion. But you're practically forcing me to. RTFA, the Register article. That's EXACTLY what they're complaining about- that Wikipedia's system FAILED to be timely in a case of libel!
You have a problem with contradictory ideas? Your education must not be very advanced then! You are completely correct by the way- within the religion of Euclid known as logic, this is a fallacy- but not OUTSIDE of that religion. This is just another appeal to authority, and since authority does not exist...
As a member of that community... what on earth are you talking about?
Every discipline of the mind has basic axioms and assumptions that the model is based on. These axioms are only "proven" by their usefulness- otherwise they are just truthless statements put forth as fact, no different from the dogma of any other religion. Within the basic axioms, Taylor's series is true- but if a few of those basic axioms are false in a given situation, say that 1+3=1 due to a problem with the descrete definition of what we are adding together, Taylor's series actually reverses- error compounding upon error.
Nothing is accurate outside of the model it was designed for. This should be obvious, but due to the religious nature of axioms, it usually isn't.
Whether or not that's going to be enough to meet their population's growing food and power needs is a question that will make the next fifty years or so very interesting.
It doesn't have to- the economy of the United States has such a huge trade deficit with China now that they can simply demand the food and fuel as interest payments on the loans.
That's the real story behind China becoming the manufacturing base of the world- trade deficits are the new economic warfare. And the lack of payment of those trade deficits will result in nuclear war.
Same kind of thing as above. No, I cannot prove (to you at least) with any satisfaction that 1 + 1 = 2 but such vacuous axioms are the foundation for the science and mathematics that have built us a world in which we can discuss the accuracy of such a basic concept instantaneously over vast distances - proving their accuracy suitably for me and I can see no way to reconcile our differing viewpoints on this.
This was the first thing reasonable to discuss at this point due to your unwillingness to admit to possibly being wrong in what you sense. Suitable accuracy is not total accuracy- and should NEVER be put forth as such. The day we do is the day we stop learning.
What I am saying is not that we should rehash old ideas, quite the opposite in fact. We should instead take existing knowledge and use it to formulate new ideas. If someone had not first discovered that light could be refracted through lenses of shaped glass to produce a magnified image, would Galileo have discovered the orbits of several other planets, giving more support for a heliocentric model of the solar system? Would it be possible for one person to have done both? Sure but such extraordinary people are also extraordinarily rare and even they will have in some way built their new knowledge on the foundation of another's. Few can claim to have made an impact on science and mathematics like Isaac Newton and what is his most famous quote? "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants."
Wouldn't we be better off, though, by creating the other type of genius? The one who CAN do both? The one who can take two discrete and contradictory mythos and create a third model that comes closer to reality? That's what I want to encourage- that's what we should be encouraging. The other is a trap; it denies creativity.
Something we finally agree (well mostly) on. Citing one source and declaring the matter proved is usually foolish. I can link to a Flat Earth Society page but that certainly does not prove a damn thing. I do think the source is important however. If I instead were to cite a publication reviewed by many experts that the Earth is indeed spherical and has an equitorial radius of ~6300km, I feel I would be justified saying that proves it is near that distance and not 10,000km instead. Where we differ is on the importance of the citation in the first place. Where you see it as harmful, I see it as beneficial. Not only have you provided evidence for your belief (that is, other than "because I say so") and given the credit to those who have experimentally proven it, you can put aside the debate about the radius and instead move on to something more useful like computing the surface area of the Earth (a somewhat contrived example, I know).
For some purposes though, it's a better starting point to think of the Earth as a flat table- rather than a sphere. Both are equaly useful, despite one being considered "false" and the other being considered "true".
In the end I would say that while new models of thought may occasionally spring out of oblivion, it is much more often that they come as an advancement on a previous idea. And you can't build upon an idea if you exclude it from your research for fear of it closing your mind to other possibilities. You should be careful about citing sources and make sure you know why you are citing them but to not study and accept the reasonable findings of others at all seems to me to be a surefire way to halt advancement in any field of study.
Ah, correct. Excluding it entirely is wrong. INCLUDING IT ALL is better. It's the exclusion that I have a problem with.
Dogmatic nonsense. In my experience, plenty of human beings are capable of being objective within specific realms of knowledge. You can ask them to be objective about "is it day or night" at noon; but perhaps not at astronomical twilight.
You can ask- but all you'll get is more dogmatic nonsense, because it's all just truthless statments.
Here's how "authority" works: an authority is someone who tells you things that check out. Over time, you trust them to continue to tell you things on the same subject that check out. If you are curious about an aspect of a subject on which your "authority" has tended to tell you things that seem to have worked out, you are more likely to consult that authority.
And I've never known *anybody* who can do that without making a mistake. Thus authority does not exist. The closest you can get is dogmatic authority- people who are authorities on the models they have created. But those models, while they may mimic reality, are NOT reality, and therefore cannot be trusted.
Academic authority is merely an attempt to create a web-of-trust relationship that models that kind of authority, so you can trust people whom you have never previously consulted and had an opportunity to verify. That's what a degree is: a bunch of folks who have previously been certified (with their degrees) to know what they're talking about agree to certify that yet another person knows what he's talking about. You could say that it's a house of cards; but the point is that these folks are subjected to tests of their reliability throughout their careers. The more unreliable they are, the less often they are relied upon, and ultimately, the less likely that they will be in a position to certify others as authorities.
In other words, a model that supports a model- doubling the inability to trust. Degrees are completely worthless for the most part- all they are is proof of an ability to take tests and parrot what we already think we know. Zero real creativity.
Works for me- I like the truthless statement idea. Though it doesn't hit at what I see is the core of the matter- the American political separation of Church And State bleeding into science in an irrational manner.
I would avoid the "relgigious" in mythos. While one could equate ones entire axiomatic belief system to be a religion, that's not fundamentally necessary. Simply calling it a "mythos" should be sufficient.
Thank you for the idea. I'm unsure as to how others will react- so I try to provoke anger so that I know how they will react. But since you're the only individual that's ever worked on, you're right, I do need to refine my own methods. Also, my methods are very amerio-centric.....religious probably wouldn't bother anybody in the third world....
Careful now! Because you're asserting your meta-model mythos as better than my meta-model mythos.
No- actually at this point I'm saying YOUR meta-model mythos is very close to mine and might actually be more accurate.
I'm willing to debate with you on your grounds, because as you stated, Intelligence is the ability to think quickly, and I can quickly adapt to relate to one's point of view.
Which is excellent- you're the first person I've tried this discussion on who has broken through the barrier of solipsism to come to that point.
While I see the merit of your position, and the working nature of it, you have to be careful to not push it to the point of hypocracy where you start asserting that your mythos is the only valid one, because at that point you are making a truth statement.
No need to worry there- it simply isn't.
It's a narrow rope you've chosen to walk, be careful!
Yes, it is- but on the other side is what you're giving me right now- a reason to have faith in humanity again for the first time in 6 years.
I'm at least willing to make such an assertion myself. Your meta-model is valid, and sound... but your implementation needs some work. In the future I may even use your meta-model to lead someone to consider things that they would not have otherwise considered.
And the same to you- I love that "stateless knowledge" idea.
But I still choose to argue within the mythos of generally accepted fact.
What the hell does that mean? If three people all see two apples sitting on a table independently of each other and then later form a group and decide the same fact, is it suddenly inaccurate by the mystical properties of a group decision? I think I've caught a glimpse of several other posts you've made on this topic and I think you are trying to say that it is impossible for human beings, singly or otherwise, to be entirely accurate about anything. If we take this as being true for a moment, then the best we can hope to do as mere mortals is go with the best answer - that is the one most widely accepted by people with the greatest understanding of the subject. If we don't, all we have is chaos and while you and a select few others of our species may enjoy that, the rest of us do not.
"Best answer" would require a judgement that no human being is qualified to make. Enjoyment of the chaos is at best, irrelevant.
Of course, by your standards you are wrong so it is impossible for Wikipedia (or any other source of knowledge for that matter) to be correct. In which case, you haven't done much to compromise the integrity of the information and your inaccurate change is likely to draw more attention to the already hopelessly incorrect information. In a world where it is possible to be correct this would be a good thing. Part of the Wikipedia process is that people make changes, even incorrect changes. If an article exists that is somewhat accurate but is missing some more intricate details, that may go unnoticed. If some moron comes along and makes some glaring error in his edit, that increases the chance that someone with more expertise in the subject matter will notice this massive error and will not only fix the mistake but will pass on some additional knowledge thereby increasing the overall accuracy.
Unfortuneately it's based on the axiom that accuracy is possible to begin with- far better would be to retain *all* the edits and let people decide for themselves.
Take a Taylor series expansion for example. If you calculate the Taylor series expansion of the sin trigonometric function for example, you get a bunch of terms of a polynomial that approximates the value of the sin function. The farther out you expand the series, that is the more terms you add to the polynomial, the more accurate the result. Taken to infinity you get the final solution, sin. Oh and I've got 2 Calculus books that agree with Wikipedia on this so I suppose I should contact the authors about their mistakes, the various trigonometry and calculus professors I've had in the past too. Too bad Taylor himself is no longer with us, we could all have a good chuckle about his inacuracies. The point is that we learn by expanding on the works of other and incorporating them into our own successes, and failures too, and thereby increase the accuracy of our statements.
Accuracy is not possible- only refinements of the mythos. Taylor is quite accurate within his basic axiomatic mythos- but outside of that mythos he becomes inaccurate.
Again, just what are you trying to say here, that we should never turn to other, more knowledgeable sources of information and should instead learn everything by ourselves from scratch? Is it not a good method to take an existing idea and bring it in to a debate to be re-examined and used to build more knowledge? Should every budding mathematician have to start from nothing and come up with even the most basic things like algebra and geometry on his own?
Those that do not, cannot actually build new knowledge- they can only refine their own religious mythos. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for that- there most certainly is. What I am saying is that NEW knowledge comes from NEW models- not from rehashing the old ones.
If so I must say that an idea like that is utter bullshit. That we are able to build upon the knowledge gained and given by others is a defining quality of our species, or perhaps higher intelligence in genera
Bravo! I think we are done here. I might go back and look for other AC comments, but you've stated my position perfectly well. I don't contest anything- I just know that they are all "maybes", stateless propositions.
Actually, I think the other thread became more profitable! I completely agree with this by the way- you need to evaluate the correctness of the metamodel for yourself, and I respect your right to do so. Just don't sell yourself short at either creating models, or evaluating them. Don't rely on authority- rely on your own intelligence, because you are smart as well.
Maybe it's just a myth that everything is a myth, and that perhaps there is actually a real Truth out there, that we can truely get closer to.
I can believe there's a real Truth out there- but nothing in my 35+ years on this planet has proven me that human beings are capable of getting close to it.
If you take the position that "November 9th" is a constructed human meaning and element, then to say that Kristallnacht (the myth or otherwise) happened on November 9th (the myth or otherwise) is valid, and logical, as that is the established date for the occurance of Kirstallnacht.
Yes- in as far as constructed human meanings and elements are valid and logical to begin with.
I've had this issue with Solipsism. I took a philosophy class, and the teacher once used reducum ad absurdium to disprove something by showing it to be Solipsism. "And that's just ridiculous". But in reality, that doesn't work in philosophy. You're making the assumption that the world can't have a solipsistic nature, and that to assert so is an "arrogant" point of view. But people often view people more intelligent than they as arrogant, without that person even showing any arrogant actions, simply because those people feel threatened by the other's intelligence, and thus feel a need to declare them as "arrogant".
Quite true- when in reality there's no reason to feel threatened at all. Intelligence is just the ability to think *quickly*, not the ability to think *accurately*. Arrogance is more in the attitude of the authority and the insecurity of the listener than any reality.
As with anything, there are socially constructed meanings and established conventions. If I were to use a word incorrectly or egretibly or just invent something that you wouldn't understand then there would be no advancement of either of our "learnings". We establish a fundamental running point from which we can communicate, and that is the established English usage in this case. If I were to attempt to argue with you in German, then we very likely would not be able to get anywhere as both of us would be working in different spheres of communication.
To the contrary, I'd have a lot of fun using Babelfish to play games with you- and we'd both learn something about communication itself, which is far more important than arguing.
In the same way, we establish authorities for points of argument where upon we can begin to formulate an argument. If everything is myth, then RUN WITH IT. As long as I'm staying factually and logically consistent with in my mythos then everything's good. Just I choose to call my "mythos" "fact", where as you refuse to make any such assertion.
Very good! You're finally begining to make progress- facts are always mythos, and assertions are merely opinion, regardless of what authorities we establish. That's how you keep debate open, instead of closing it!
The point of the matter here is you're arguing the meta-nature of fact. In the same way this is related to arguing metaphysics. Any obvservation you make about metaphysics functionally relates to a moot point in physics itself. To bring back to the point of Solipsism; whether I choose to see this world from a Solipsistic view point, or from a realist standpoint (that everything is real as science understands it, and my senses are not simply a figment of my imagination) has little bearing upon my actions in this world.
True enough- the point is that one should always be unsure- of everything.
Just because I may believe that cars don't exist, doesn't mean that I believe I can walk across the street without looking both ways, nor would I risk that.
Which is far safer than being arrogant about it, and stepping into the street without looking because you're sure cars don't exist!
Essentially, I establish as an axiom that there exists a "mythos" as you would call it, that is actually related to reality better than any other possible mytho
OH WAIT A SECOND... that's right... you're arguing that NO ONE can be an authority on ANYTHING. Because no one can be objective about anything.
Correct. People can be considered authorities- by other people who have yet to outgrow being wrong.
Sorry, for a second there I thought I was arguing with someone who was willing to accept and an expert source, sorry again.
And you thought dictionary.reference.com would be such an expert source?
You know what? You have no authority to say that Wikipedia is even wrong. Is it actually as full of factual misrepresentations as you would like to establish?
Unknown and unknowable. Facts don't exist to begin with, only opinions, so "factual misrepresentations" is at best redundant.
I find it convenient that you're nihilistic views of authority and Ethos allow you to win any arguement, simply by saying that no source is credible. I mean, listen to what you're arguing. "Everyone is wrong about something."
You've missed the point- I can't win any arguments either, because I don't argue. I'm as equally wrong as everybody else. And not "Everyone is wrong about something"; "Everyone is wrong about everything". We've got these models that those tied emotionally to being "right" and "wrong" put forth as facts, but that's as close as we can get to reality. Some models have more insight than others- but none are accurate.
How do I know you're not wrong about that?
You don't. You have to think it through for yourself, decide whether the meta-model I present can be incorporated into your worldview, or more accurately, whether your worldview can be incoporated into it. I'm not putting it forth as being right- or wrong- just yet another competing worldview in a reality that seems to encompass all possible worldviews.
You know what. I've come to the conclusion that you're wrong about Wikipedia. You obviously have far too great of a bias against Wikipedia, and rather than choosing to attack that source of reasonable factuality, you'd rather just argue that nothing and no one is an authority on anything.
Then, sadly, you've missed the entire point.
I cannot debate with you, as we cannot agree upon common grounds with which to argue.
Debate need not include argument, and common grounds are not neccessary. What is neccessary is a willingness to be open to see other points of view. And understand the limitations of humanity in accuracy and bias.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the rate of change over the past 50 years, I find it hard to believe that current events have set us on an unavoidable course to nuclear apocalypse 50 years from now.
It may well not take that long- and the change started happening 40 years ago.
A lot of things can and will change between now and then.
True. But what will happen in the next 10 years in the United States? That's the real question.
Besides, I can think of at least one obvious solution to this problem: "Restructure our debt or we'll nuke you silly. After all, it's not like you've left us anything to lose."
It won't be that kind of group that is in control at that point- but rather, an internal group of revolutionaries in the United States tired of the slavery we're begining to labor under.
Anyway, are you seriously saying that armageddon is inevitable, and that the great powers of the world, the leaders of the U.S., China, the WTO, and the United Nations have all completely overlooked this, and that where they have failed you have been clever enough to see it all?
They want it. Or rather, they want what they have gotten from it- the beginings of one world government, and the ability of the rich to enslave specific populations.
And are you, in fact, claiming that not only are you so much cleverer than the Chinese and U.S. leadership who signed us up for this unavoidable apocalypse, but that since you in all your cleverness are completely unable to figure out any way to save ourselves, it must be the case that nobody else is going to be clever enough to save us either?
Such people are not allowed to have control- the old men with vested interests have a vested interest in not allowing them to have control. *Profit* is the only motivation they care about, the only motivation they see- and short term profit at that.
Because it really does sound like you're claiming both that you are possibly the smartest person on the planet, and that not even smartitude of your caliber can solve this problem.
Actually, it's more the law of unintended consequences again- those who are smarter than I have focused their talents on turning the world against itself to their profit, and as long as they are focused on that task, they can't see the destruction that it will cause. At least, not until the United States falls into the second civil war.
You'd think that someone with this kind of power in their subjective reality would prefer to believe in a world full of love and peace. Yet you seem to have a fetish for grim and depressing subjective truths instead. Have you ever wondered if the problem isn't the trade deficit at all, but rather your perception of the trade deficit?
I wondered if you'd try to join the two conversations. But yes, that's precisely the problem- a country with a strong mythos of independance has given up that independance to an outside body with no loyalty at all to the population. A second country with a strong mythos of supporting it's population through imperialistic actions is coming up from behind taking the opportunity to turn itself into a superpower. It's men like me, not neccessarily me but it is possible, who will pick up our guns and fight when our ability to feed our families is ripped away by the multinational corporations and by China, Inc. It's our subjective perception of the trade deficit, and the problems it will cause in the next few years, that will shape our rebellion against those powers. And it's exactly that group that will cause the problem- people that the Chinese believe are pesants, that the WTO believe are consumers, and that the US politicians believe don't have campaign contributions and therefore aren't worth listening to.
Meanwhile, if there is such a thing as "objective reality",
Mighty big assumption to make there- that the universe exists.
then our various subjective realities don't make objective reality any less objective;
True, just more unknowable.
on the contrary, objective reality just makes our subjective realities "wrong".
Wrongness is a subjective concept, it's not an objective qualifier. And due to the subjective realities, we've got no real way of knowing which objective reality is correct.
If we both encounter an Objective Elephant, you believing it's actually a Lion doesn't make the Elephant any less absolute or true. It just makes your subjective reality an imperfect approximation of what is truly real.
Correct- but because we're all human and approximately equal, there's also a chance that it's not an objective elephant at all, but rather an objective fourth-dimensional mountain range projecting into our space as an objective elephant in three dimensions. Thus making *both* subjective realities equally wrong.
You can't negate objective reality simply by believing something else instead. Nor can you negate my perception of objective reality simply by perceiving it differently than I do.
Until you can actually prove that you are perceiving objective reality- of which you really have no way to do it, because all perception is by definition subjective- then the problem simply doesn't really exist. Any objectivity you happen to percieve comes to you through subjective senses- thus damaging it's objectivity irrevocably. And that's what I'm refering as ignorance- you have *no* way of knowing what you perceive is correct. Ultimately, all we really have is a collection of myths- some of which mirror reality better than others, but all of which are valuable as insight into the reality that is bigger than all the myths combined.
The Middle Kingdom's own master strategist, Sun Tzu himself, taught that putting your enemy on death ground was bad strategy. Any policy that makes nuclear war cheaper than the alternatives for the U.S. is a policy the Chinese government will not adopt. Why would a committee of old men with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo enact a policy that added up to a nuke in the face?
The law of unintended consequences is my guess- they just don't realize how unstable Americans are. Either that- or the Chinese Government feels that they have a vested interest not in maintaining the status quo, but rather in finishing their life work of the revolution.
Either way, they've already enacted the policies that make this situation unavoidable- sometime in the next 50 years, we will have a nuclear war over the trade deficits, and I don't see ANY way out of it. The last bit is falling into place as the US Congress gives up control over all labor and immigration rules to the WTO.
For all you know, the rest of us may very well live and thrive in a reality replete with absolute truths and objective viewpoints. At the very least, you cannot possibly know for sure that we *don't*.
Exactly right. And in some ways, I envy you the ignorance. But if even one person is thriving in a different reality than you do, your truth is no longer absolute for anybody but you, and that makes your objective viewpoint subjective.
That's very interesting- you've not only made my statements meaningless, you've made your own reality an oxymoron.
Nuclear war is much more likely to get started by ideological extremists with nothing to lose.
Such as maybe, US workers facing >60% underemployment and no way to pay back the loan other than to blow up the bank?
They aren't meant to exhaust the list. They aren't meant to excite. They're simply meant to prove that man doesn't know everything. And that's all they prove. It's basically just an extension of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.
I'd also point out that there are two ways to grow up in this fashion: the first is to understand that we're only working with models, and reality is both far more complex and far simpler than any model we can possibly create. The second is to retreat *back* into childhood and insist that the axioms are always true and therefore anybody insisting something outside of those axioms exists must either be lying or wrong. What I'm battling against is the second- and for that solipsism is just a steping stone on the journey.
Well, the main issues I see that you've been having are that you jump out and make assertions without any original basis. Thus, provoking anger and frustration.
;)
Which is kind of the point originally- but what you're pointing out is that strategy is wrong.
Perhaps one of the reasons why I'm the first person to see any validity in your statements is that I wasn't mad about what you were saying
Or lack of validity, as the case may be....:-)
Either way, this all started off with "wikipedia is full of false information." With no indication that you feel rather than wikipedia is full of an established mythos that society perpetuates, and cannot be fundamentally proven in most cases.
Or disproven. In fact, the only thing we have really proven is that wikipedia a very useful repository of established mythos.
Actually... one would be asserting myth-values to things, not truth-values. Of course a myth-value has only one value, "mythic". So it's almost pointless to even talk about it, except to say that one can assign the myth-value of something to be "true" or "false" within their own system.
All myths are versions of the truth, from different points of view. And thus I come upon the biggest contradiction of all- Wikipedia is useless for proving anything (just like any other authority) but it's VERY valuable in showing us alternate myths from our own. Facts may not exist- but we've found something infinitely more valuable to replace them.
Damn, it's big in here.....
Yep- 7 billion + infinities, all intersecting and intertwining, and that's just human knowledge alone.
There are a lot of countries who would love to be "losing" the way we are. Both Iran and China would fit on that list.
It's a comfortable soft landing for now- but when our children and grandchildren are in chains trying to pay off our loans paying for our current soft landing, it won't feel as soft.
Our strategy is a brilliant one, and one that goes back more than a Century: "The business of America is business."
The problem isn't the century- it's the last 40 years or so. You can only run a business on red ink for so long. America, Inc hasn't been profitable since Nixon opened up the East.
Prior to the break-up of Yugoslavia, no nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it had ever gone to war with another nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it. Prosperity, contentment, and outright sloth is the surest way to make people not want to get up off the futon and shoot at each other anymore.
True enough- but we don't have Prosperity anymore, contentment is slowly leaving as well. All that is left keeping the United States from having a hot class warfare is sloth- and meth addiction is slowly taking care of that problem.
Not sure what you mean by "peer control", but certainly Wikipedia has one form of peer control. If by this you mean the academic process of submitting to domain experts or editors for review, this also has its share of drawbacks.
True enough, which I pointed out elsewhere in the discussion.
For one thing, this process can be slow, and for the kind of content that appears to lend itself well to a wiki-based "encyclopedia", timeliness can go a long way both towards content accuracy and usefulness.
Oh man- I didn't expect to have to break my own rules and CITE something in this discussion. But you're practically forcing me to. RTFA, the Register article. That's EXACTLY what they're complaining about- that Wikipedia's system FAILED to be timely in a case of libel!
No, this idea is completely subjective. As is everything else.
You have a problem with contradictory ideas? Your education must not be very advanced then! You are completely correct by the way- within the religion of Euclid known as logic, this is a fallacy- but not OUTSIDE of that religion. This is just another appeal to authority, and since authority does not exist...
May we assume that you have an objective source for this alleged "truth"?
No, in fact, we can't assume that- because objective sources cannot possibly exist in this space-time frame. At all. Assumptions are *always* bad.
As a member of that community... what on earth are you talking about?
Every discipline of the mind has basic axioms and assumptions that the model is based on. These axioms are only "proven" by their usefulness- otherwise they are just truthless statements put forth as fact, no different from the dogma of any other religion. Within the basic axioms, Taylor's series is true- but if a few of those basic axioms are false in a given situation, say that 1+3=1 due to a problem with the descrete definition of what we are adding together, Taylor's series actually reverses- error compounding upon error.
Nothing is accurate outside of the model it was designed for. This should be obvious, but due to the religious nature of axioms, it usually isn't.
Whether or not that's going to be enough to meet their population's growing food and power needs is a question that will make the next fifty years or so very interesting.
It doesn't have to- the economy of the United States has such a huge trade deficit with China now that they can simply demand the food and fuel as interest payments on the loans.
That's the real story behind China becoming the manufacturing base of the world- trade deficits are the new economic warfare. And the lack of payment of those trade deficits will result in nuclear war.
Same kind of thing as above. No, I cannot prove (to you at least) with any satisfaction that 1 + 1 = 2 but such vacuous axioms are the foundation for the science and mathematics that have built us a world in which we can discuss the accuracy of such a basic concept instantaneously over vast distances - proving their accuracy suitably for me and I can see no way to reconcile our differing viewpoints on this.
This was the first thing reasonable to discuss at this point due to your unwillingness to admit to possibly being wrong in what you sense. Suitable accuracy is not total accuracy- and should NEVER be put forth as such. The day we do is the day we stop learning.
What I am saying is not that we should rehash old ideas, quite the opposite in fact. We should instead take existing knowledge and use it to formulate new ideas. If someone had not first discovered that light could be refracted through lenses of shaped glass to produce a magnified image, would Galileo have discovered the orbits of several other planets, giving more support for a heliocentric model of the solar system? Would it be possible for one person to have done both? Sure but such extraordinary people are also extraordinarily rare and even they will have in some way built their new knowledge on the foundation of another's. Few can claim to have made an impact on science and mathematics like Isaac Newton and what is his most famous quote? "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants."
Wouldn't we be better off, though, by creating the other type of genius? The one who CAN do both? The one who can take two discrete and contradictory mythos and create a third model that comes closer to reality? That's what I want to encourage- that's what we should be encouraging. The other is a trap; it denies creativity.
Something we finally agree (well mostly) on. Citing one source and declaring the matter proved is usually foolish. I can link to a Flat Earth Society page but that certainly does not prove a damn thing. I do think the source is important however. If I instead were to cite a publication reviewed by many experts that the Earth is indeed spherical and has an equitorial radius of ~6300km, I feel I would be justified saying that proves it is near that distance and not 10,000km instead. Where we differ is on the importance of the citation in the first place. Where you see it as harmful, I see it as beneficial. Not only have you provided evidence for your belief (that is, other than "because I say so") and given the credit to those who have experimentally proven it, you can put aside the debate about the radius and instead move on to something more useful like computing the surface area of the Earth (a somewhat contrived example, I know).
For some purposes though, it's a better starting point to think of the Earth as a flat table- rather than a sphere. Both are equaly useful, despite one being considered "false" and the other being considered "true".
In the end I would say that while new models of thought may occasionally spring out of oblivion, it is much more often that they come as an advancement on a previous idea. And you can't build upon an idea if you exclude it from your research for fear of it closing your mind to other possibilities. You should be careful about citing sources and make sure you know why you are citing them but to not study and accept the reasonable findings of others at all seems to me to be a surefire way to halt advancement in any field of study.
Ah, correct. Excluding it entirely is wrong. INCLUDING IT ALL is better. It's the exclusion that I have a problem with.
Dogmatic nonsense. In my experience, plenty of human beings are capable of being objective within specific realms of knowledge. You can ask them to be objective about "is it day or night" at noon; but perhaps not at astronomical twilight.
You can ask- but all you'll get is more dogmatic nonsense, because it's all just truthless statments.
Here's how "authority" works: an authority is someone who tells you things that check out. Over time, you trust them to continue to tell you things on the same subject that check out. If you are curious about an aspect of a subject on which your "authority" has tended to tell you things that seem to have worked out, you are more likely to consult that authority.
And I've never known *anybody* who can do that without making a mistake. Thus authority does not exist. The closest you can get is dogmatic authority- people who are authorities on the models they have created. But those models, while they may mimic reality, are NOT reality, and therefore cannot be trusted.
Academic authority is merely an attempt to create a web-of-trust relationship that models that kind of authority, so you can trust people whom you have never previously consulted and had an opportunity to verify. That's what a degree is: a bunch of folks who have previously been certified (with their degrees) to know what they're talking about agree to certify that yet another person knows what he's talking about. You could say that it's a house of cards; but the point is that these folks are subjected to tests of their reliability throughout their careers. The more unreliable they are, the less often they are relied upon, and ultimately, the less likely that they will be in a position to certify others as authorities.
In other words, a model that supports a model- doubling the inability to trust. Degrees are completely worthless for the most part- all they are is proof of an ability to take tests and parrot what we already think we know. Zero real creativity.
Works for me- I like the truthless statement idea. Though it doesn't hit at what I see is the core of the matter- the American political separation of Church And State bleeding into science in an irrational manner.
I would avoid the "relgigious" in mythos. While one could equate ones entire axiomatic belief system to be a religion, that's not fundamentally necessary. Simply calling it a "mythos" should be sufficient.
Thank you for the idea. I'm unsure as to how others will react- so I try to provoke anger so that I know how they will react. But since you're the only individual that's ever worked on, you're right, I do need to refine my own methods. Also, my methods are very amerio-centric.....religious probably wouldn't bother anybody in the third world....
Careful now! Because you're asserting your meta-model mythos as better than my meta-model mythos.
No- actually at this point I'm saying YOUR meta-model mythos is very close to mine and might actually be more accurate.
I'm willing to debate with you on your grounds, because as you stated, Intelligence is the ability to think quickly, and I can quickly adapt to relate to one's point of view.
Which is excellent- you're the first person I've tried this discussion on who has broken through the barrier of solipsism to come to that point.
While I see the merit of your position, and the working nature of it, you have to be careful to not push it to the point of hypocracy where you start asserting that your mythos is the only valid one, because at that point you are making a truth statement.
No need to worry there- it simply isn't.
It's a narrow rope you've chosen to walk, be careful!
Yes, it is- but on the other side is what you're giving me right now- a reason to have faith in humanity again for the first time in 6 years.
I'm at least willing to make such an assertion myself. Your meta-model is valid, and sound... but your implementation needs some work. In the future I may even use your meta-model to lead someone to consider things that they would not have otherwise considered.
And the same to you- I love that "stateless knowledge" idea.
But I still choose to argue within the mythos of generally accepted fact.
Your choice on that one!
What the hell does that mean? If three people all see two apples sitting on a table independently of each other and then later form a group and decide the same fact, is it suddenly inaccurate by the mystical properties of a group decision? I think I've caught a glimpse of several other posts you've made on this topic and I think you are trying to say that it is impossible for human beings, singly or otherwise, to be entirely accurate about anything. If we take this as being true for a moment, then the best we can hope to do as mere mortals is go with the best answer - that is the one most widely accepted by people with the greatest understanding of the subject. If we don't, all we have is chaos and while you and a select few others of our species may enjoy that, the rest of us do not.
"Best answer" would require a judgement that no human being is qualified to make. Enjoyment of the chaos is at best, irrelevant.
Of course, by your standards you are wrong so it is impossible for Wikipedia (or any other source of knowledge for that matter) to be correct. In which case, you haven't done much to compromise the integrity of the information and your inaccurate change is likely to draw more attention to the already hopelessly incorrect information. In a world where it is possible to be correct this would be a good thing. Part of the Wikipedia process is that people make changes, even incorrect changes. If an article exists that is somewhat accurate but is missing some more intricate details, that may go unnoticed. If some moron comes along and makes some glaring error in his edit, that increases the chance that someone with more expertise in the subject matter will notice this massive error and will not only fix the mistake but will pass on some additional knowledge thereby increasing the overall accuracy.
Unfortuneately it's based on the axiom that accuracy is possible to begin with- far better would be to retain *all* the edits and let people decide for themselves.
Take a Taylor series expansion for example. If you calculate the Taylor series expansion of the sin trigonometric function for example, you get a bunch of terms of a polynomial that approximates the value of the sin function. The farther out you expand the series, that is the more terms you add to the polynomial, the more accurate the result. Taken to infinity you get the final solution, sin. Oh and I've got 2 Calculus books that agree with Wikipedia on this so I suppose I should contact the authors about their mistakes, the various trigonometry and calculus professors I've had in the past too. Too bad Taylor himself is no longer with us, we could all have a good chuckle about his inacuracies. The point is that we learn by expanding on the works of other and incorporating them into our own successes, and failures too, and thereby increase the accuracy of our statements.
Accuracy is not possible- only refinements of the mythos. Taylor is quite accurate within his basic axiomatic mythos- but outside of that mythos he becomes inaccurate.
Again, just what are you trying to say here, that we should never turn to other, more knowledgeable sources of information and should instead learn everything by ourselves from scratch? Is it not a good method to take an existing idea and bring it in to a debate to be re-examined and used to build more knowledge? Should every budding mathematician have to start from nothing and come up with even the most basic things like algebra and geometry on his own?
Those that do not, cannot actually build new knowledge- they can only refine their own religious mythos. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for that- there most certainly is. What I am saying is that NEW knowledge comes from NEW models- not from rehashing the old ones.
If so I must say that an idea like that is utter bullshit. That we are able to build upon the knowledge gained and given by others is a defining quality of our species, or perhaps higher intelligence in genera
Bravo! I think we are done here. I might go back and look for other AC comments, but you've stated my position perfectly well. I don't contest anything- I just know that they are all "maybes", stateless propositions.
Actually, I think the other thread became more profitable! I completely agree with this by the way- you need to evaluate the correctness of the metamodel for yourself, and I respect your right to do so. Just don't sell yourself short at either creating models, or evaluating them. Don't rely on authority- rely on your own intelligence, because you are smart as well.
Maybe it's just a myth that everything is a myth, and that perhaps there is actually a real Truth out there, that we can truely get closer to.
I can believe there's a real Truth out there- but nothing in my 35+ years on this planet has proven me that human beings are capable of getting close to it.
If you take the position that "November 9th" is a constructed human meaning and element, then to say that Kristallnacht (the myth or otherwise) happened on November 9th (the myth or otherwise) is valid, and logical, as that is the established date for the occurance of Kirstallnacht.
Yes- in as far as constructed human meanings and elements are valid and logical to begin with.
I've had this issue with Solipsism. I took a philosophy class, and the teacher once used reducum ad absurdium to disprove something by showing it to be Solipsism. "And that's just ridiculous". But in reality, that doesn't work in philosophy. You're making the assumption that the world can't have a solipsistic nature, and that to assert so is an "arrogant" point of view. But people often view people more intelligent than they as arrogant, without that person even showing any arrogant actions, simply because those people feel threatened by the other's intelligence, and thus feel a need to declare them as "arrogant".
Quite true- when in reality there's no reason to feel threatened at all. Intelligence is just the ability to think *quickly*, not the ability to think *accurately*. Arrogance is more in the attitude of the authority and the insecurity of the listener than any reality.
As with anything, there are socially constructed meanings and established conventions. If I were to use a word incorrectly or egretibly or just invent something that you wouldn't understand then there would be no advancement of either of our "learnings". We establish a fundamental running point from which we can communicate, and that is the established English usage in this case. If I were to attempt to argue with you in German, then we very likely would not be able to get anywhere as both of us would be working in different spheres of communication.
To the contrary, I'd have a lot of fun using Babelfish to play games with you- and we'd both learn something about communication itself, which is far more important than arguing.
In the same way, we establish authorities for points of argument where upon we can begin to formulate an argument. If everything is myth, then RUN WITH IT. As long as I'm staying factually and logically consistent with in my mythos then everything's good. Just I choose to call my "mythos" "fact", where as you refuse to make any such assertion.
Very good! You're finally begining to make progress- facts are always mythos, and assertions are merely opinion, regardless of what authorities we establish. That's how you keep debate open, instead of closing it!
The point of the matter here is you're arguing the meta-nature of fact. In the same way this is related to arguing metaphysics. Any obvservation you make about metaphysics functionally relates to a moot point in physics itself. To bring back to the point of Solipsism; whether I choose to see this world from a Solipsistic view point, or from a realist standpoint (that everything is real as science understands it, and my senses are not simply a figment of my imagination) has little bearing upon my actions in this world.
True enough- the point is that one should always be unsure- of everything.
Just because I may believe that cars don't exist, doesn't mean that I believe I can walk across the street without looking both ways, nor would I risk that.
Which is far safer than being arrogant about it, and stepping into the street without looking because you're sure cars don't exist!
Essentially, I establish as an axiom that there exists a "mythos" as you would call it, that is actually related to reality better than any other possible mytho
OH WAIT A SECOND... that's right... you're arguing that NO ONE can be an authority on ANYTHING. Because no one can be objective about anything.
Correct. People can be considered authorities- by other people who have yet to outgrow being wrong.
Sorry, for a second there I thought I was arguing with someone who was willing to accept and an expert source, sorry again.
And you thought dictionary.reference.com would be such an expert source?
You know what? You have no authority to say that Wikipedia is even wrong. Is it actually as full of factual misrepresentations as you would like to establish?
Unknown and unknowable. Facts don't exist to begin with, only opinions, so "factual misrepresentations" is at best redundant.
I find it convenient that you're nihilistic views of authority and Ethos allow you to win any arguement, simply by saying that no source is credible. I mean, listen to what you're arguing. "Everyone is wrong about something."
You've missed the point- I can't win any arguments either, because I don't argue. I'm as equally wrong as everybody else. And not "Everyone is wrong about something"; "Everyone is wrong about everything". We've got these models that those tied emotionally to being "right" and "wrong" put forth as facts, but that's as close as we can get to reality. Some models have more insight than others- but none are accurate.
How do I know you're not wrong about that?
You don't. You have to think it through for yourself, decide whether the meta-model I present can be incorporated into your worldview, or more accurately, whether your worldview can be incoporated into it. I'm not putting it forth as being right- or wrong- just yet another competing worldview in a reality that seems to encompass all possible worldviews.
You know what. I've come to the conclusion that you're wrong about Wikipedia. You obviously have far too great of a bias against Wikipedia, and rather than choosing to attack that source of reasonable factuality, you'd rather just argue that nothing and no one is an authority on anything.
Then, sadly, you've missed the entire point.
I cannot debate with you, as we cannot agree upon common grounds with which to argue.
Debate need not include argument, and common grounds are not neccessary. What is neccessary is a willingness to be open to see other points of view. And understand the limitations of humanity in accuracy and bias.