Well those things can be changed, my present set of high quality headphones only reproduce to about 35khz before it drops off to nothing. Amplifiers that deal with those sorts of frequencies do exist, but they of course cost extra.
While most people won't get that kind of gear because they don't care enough, a lot of people would be willing to sacrifice the extra data storage so that one day if the need arises they could listen to it in such quality.
Except... uncompressed or lossless digital audio is now superior to vinyl, since the master copy theses days is always digital.
It is recorded in digital... at much higher qualities than you are likely to get on a cd. You think they record 16-bit audio at 44.1khz? think 96khz or higher with 24-bit to 32-bit samples. Far better than cd quality. It is then downsampled etc to 16-bit 44.1khz. If the original digital source was used, the vinyl would of course include higher frequency resolution than the cd.
Cds do have their advantages, but so do vinyl, it's all a set of engineering trade-offs as everything is. DVD-audio is superior to both, where with a typical stereo soundtrack you can have 192khz 24-bit sampling. The trade-off there being of course the comparatively massive data size for the same length of sound.
Which would be useful... if they weren't mastered to a point where the total dynamic range used comes down to 3-6db... loudness wars huzzah.
To many frequency response matters more than dynamic range when you already have 80+db of dynamic range that is never typically fully utilized.
Personally I prefer 96khz 32bit float digital music samples, complete overkill of course but always better to have the least error to start with when mixing etc lest errors multiply. Then you can downsample it when finished later for people who don't care about it.
Funny, freedom for me is not to have to know how all the parts of my vehicle work in order to operate it.
Lots of people get by using android without knowing how it works... but you have the freedom to learn how it works if you wish, which you do not with iOS
You should just accept that freedom is a relative term, especially when it comes to commodity goods.
To have freedom is to be unrestricted, there are many ways in which people welcome restrictions, but to say a restriction itself is freedom is a bit silly.
I am no less free than you are.
You are less free to tinker, you may not care for that particular freedom, and that is your choice, but it is a restriction of freedom that android does not have.
There are many aspects of freedom, I agree you are welcome to vote with your wallet any time you like. But by choosing apple you are limiting your freedom to tinker and load arbitrary applications etc. Freedom is being restricted, but it might not necessarily be a freedom that some people want or need.
If LG didn't file a lawsuit, it's because they had no case whatsoever. Had they foreseen a potential gain, you can be sure they would have sued Apple to get it.
Everything is a set of trade-offs, by being so litigious apple have a lot of well deserved hatred. For the most part their users are too naive to care. Sometimes good will is worth more in money in the long run than money gained from lawyers in the short term.
Imagine if google tried pulling the same crap, the people who care would be the fastest to bail just like apple products, but those that don't give a crap and willfully take it stay, different demographics different values. Some people don't care for freedom or choice.
Yes, because producing a product and selling it is so similar to suing someone because they had the gall to use a touch screen interface. I think it's pretty clear who's doing the mugging here, it isn't android.
But it didn't support a video sharing program she HAD to have,
What program was it, and why was it specifically a requirement? Linux can handle the generic ability to share videos that every man and his dog has had since the ability for you to click *upload* in your browser, and http servers before that.
Sure, but that would be inconsistent with your value "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong". With that rule your set of values will always be inconsistent if includes basic logic and math, without that rule it is at least possible that your set of values is consistent.
Actually, I'd almost place this in the realm of "the only thing you can be sure of is that your own mind exists" that too is also not falsifiable but is dealt with by "I think therefore I am". How would you know your own mind exists if you were unable to think? if you could not separate things how would thinking be possible?
Rejecting your ability to compare is akin to rejecting that your own mind exists.....
Within philosophy, mathematics, science, the ability to compare things is simply assumed if it were not you couldn't think about it, it would all be one incoherent blur with an unclear separation of things.
I for one don't know anyone who lives like that or wishes to live like that. Do you?
Insane people rarely consider themselves insane.
Well... I'd say rather those people who do consider themselves insane don't last too long, when you can't be sure of your own mind people try to find a way out.. usually resulting in suicide.
You need to make some basic assumptions about the reality otherwise science would be pointless. If god, the universe, aliens, whatever would be constantly manipulating your experiments, then science couldn't work. You could never really falsify anything, because you couldn't trust any of your experimental results.
If god were manipulating your experiments.. how would you know? How do you know that isn't the case now? you don't. Thing is, the conjectures of science adapt to observed phenomena. Whatever we see is what goes down in a concisely notated form. We observe new things, old conjectures are broken, thrown out and new more falsifiable ones are made that fit the new observations.
When the conjectures always follow the observations, how would you ever know if a being whose existence itself is not falsifiable is playing with the results or not? We cannot completely define a phenomena, so how can you compare if something is manipulated or not if you cannot even define it?
There are always a lot of different conjecture, which can't be all right at the same time, but all of them are falsifiable. So scientists need other reasons why they prefer one conjecture over another.
This is why we prefer the _most_ falsifiable, whose tests have been completed at least once and have not failed. There is only one conjecture at any given time that is the most falsifiable and has had the most tests done and passed.
I would say there is a huge set of shared values where many people will agree with you, because they share the same feelings or agree that something is true a priori.
If you rely on that you can't guarantee it, all it takes for someone to be unable to be convinced is ask 'Why?' and have the person trying to do the convincing stumped because they don't have a reason other than they feel it's the case.
Actually even the smaller set of values "I need to be consistent" and "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" is inconsistent as soon as you included the basic rules of logic and math to it:
I'd agree even that you could not really know even if the comparison function of the human mind works, after all if it didn't how would you able to tell it wasn't? Few people would question this though, it's one of those not falsifiable things where if your mind is that horribly broken well there isn't really any recourse and you may as well just run with it either way.
Without the use of comparative logic consistency means nothing, the function of basic comparison is so primitive it is inbuilt into us but yet itself cannot be falsified as to whether it works.
Anyone who rejects their ability to compare things would generally consider themselves insane. And generally wouldn't be able to put an argument forward etc because none of that means anything and how could they even identify you as a sentient thing?
Uh, why that? If someone says: "2 is prime number", "3 is prime number", "5 is a prime number" ,... and "All prime numbers are odd." Then this set of statements is clearly inconsistent, but you wouldn't fix it by saying: "okay, then 2 can't be a prime number" but by adding an exception: "All prime numbers but 2 are odd."
Actually, you'd fix it by saying "prime numbers are those with factors of only one and itself". If someone did not know what the definition of a prime number was, they would be very right to question "why is 2 an exception to the rule, that rule of them being odd is inconsistent"
When the answers are all you are presenting and are known using a set as an identifier ruling out the ones that don't fit the criteria can be useful for brevity, but it is of no use in defining the criteria itself. The criteria, or the rules, are what we are hunting.
You don't add arbitrary specific exceptions, instead you fix the rule to describe the thing being described.
because when people make decision they usually need to make assumptions for stuff where they don't know the answer, even when they might never know the answer.
Do I need to definitively assume there is or is not a god when doing things of science? No
Same with reality being real or not, if it is or isn't does it change anything? not really. Whether I'm either fantasizing it all in my own mind or it is real I can still check out what is going on in this possible fantasy. Never making any assertions at all about it's legitimacy because entertaining such questions is pointless.
Okay, what you claiming here is: If X is unfalsifiable, then there is no reason to assume X is true, right?
There is no reason to assume anything is true (well.. except that your own mind exists, possibly the only statement for sure you can know is true). However, people would tend to like to have a reason to prefer the conjecture that they do, and the only reason to prefer one conjecture over another if you care about not preferring false things without recourse is that if it is wrong it is capable of being shown wrong.
This seems false to me, e.g.: If people believe X, because assuming X makes them feel better, they clearly have a reason why they prefer believe X over not X.
Comes to values with that, people can say 'I have an innate feeling x is true', if they go with that as a value they simply won't be able to convince others of it because they in all likelihood do not have that value. This would also conflict with any value of their own wanting to actually know the limitations of your own knowledge and to be able to tell when you are wrong (which are both very common).
If people lack the wish to be consistent, or the wish to know when they are wrong, they can believe whatever they wish and no-one will ever be able to tell them otherwise, but again they will be unable to convince anyone else on the matter because they cannot appeal to those values in people.
When was the last time you heard someone say "x is true, I simply know it, it feels good man" taken seriously in an intellectual debate?
But most of the time an value system with conflicting rules can be transformed quite easily into an system without conflicting rules or at least into a system with fewer conflicts by adding small restrictions to its rules, that will fix conflicts people noticed.
Could you please explain how a set of values such as "I need to be consistent", "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" could be combined with "I want to prefer the conjecture there is god" without being a contradiction?
As soon as you add the exception to the rule, you are no longer consistent. It's like x rule for y and z, but c which would normally be under that rule can be under this other one. Inconsistent.
Not really. People will never know the truth about unfalsifiable beliefs, no matter what strategy they choose to deal with something that is unfalsifiable. It doesn't matter if they hold unfalsifiable beliefs, actively reject them or try to stay undecided. Because of this, all of these strategies are consistent with a value of knowing what is true and what's not.
Being undecided is not a false belief. Saying something is true when it potentially is not is a false belief.
Someone saying 'I do not believe in god' is not saying there is no god, only that there is no reason to believe there is a god (precisely because, it is unfalsifiable). There is no reason to prefer that conjecture. So why use it? for people who value there being a reason to believe something over another, it is not reasonable.
This will only work if their value system is inconsistent. This doesn't need to be the case. There are many different consistent value systems and even if a value system isn't consistent it is often easy to fix the inconsistency by just adding a few additional restrictions.
And having conflicting rules isn't 'inconsistent' by your standards?
People have inconsistent value systems all the time through lack of analyzing it all the way. There are many 'moral realists' out there who believe there needs to be a reason for everything they believe, and yet because it is not falsifiable there is no reason to prefer that 'objective morals exist' (an aspect of both moral realism and absolutism)
This is but one example. You find me a person I will pick them apart.. they don't like me much for it though when I do, when people realize something they thought they had reason to believe does not they usually wind up either hating me or crying. You do find the occasional truly consistent person, but they are truly rare,
If the US had lost the war of independance, we'd be teaching that the rebels were a bunch of selfish thugs who just wanted to get out of paying taxes.
You mean to say they weren't? of all the colonies britain put around the world the US seems to be the only one where it resulted in a large war, the rest all progressed along peacefully. Lets not forget that the people of the US were the ones that started violence and hostilities. They wouldn't have even won without the french's support (since the english and the french were always at each others throats of the time, the enemy of my enemy is my friend etc)
The 'taxation without representation' Business could be construed as an after the fact justification. Initially very few americans even wanted to fight the english, they were fairly content. Only after the violent acts were done and britain came down hard on them was support gained. This could be likened to present day fighting in the middle east - a limited number of people cause a ruckus for another country, they overreact and create far more support for the initial cause by the reaction.
if you believe in a universal human rights, you are not acting reasonable?
You are acting within your own values, which everyone does. I'd put forth that being self-serving is one of the more common human values (it increases chances of survival, so people that have it are more likely to be here), to which agreeing to human rights means the likelihood of you yourself being put in an unwanted position decreases and so is in your interest.
But if someone were to say "Human rights are inherently good" I'd call bullshit, it may fit with your values, and even many others, but nothing is inherently 'good' or 'bad' as properties of the universe.
Okay, but following arbitrary goals can't be based on reason, otherwise they won't be arbitrary. So if we are following your definition of reason, there is no single action that is purely based on reason, every intentional action people do is always partly determined by unreasonable and arbitrary goals and values. So reason is at best a tool to reach arbitrary goals more easily.
Yep, reason is but a tool to help discover if things are consistent (which as humans we do tend have a fairly common psychological trait to want everything to be consistent), Reason cannot create your most valued values, it can simply make your value system consistent with itself thus prioritizing them with it.
When it comes to values when dealing with people at best you can use reason to appeal to another persons own values that they hold higher than the issue being discussed in order to convince them. You find inconsistencies and make them choose which value they hold more dear, since generally consistency is a very highly held value they will do this.
Sure, but if I follow your argument, this seems to be a just as unreasonable value as some other persons value of telling everyone about Jesus.
The thing is, those that claim that jesus is saviour tend to claim it to be the truth. Most of these people supposedly 'value' knowing what is and is not 'true'. Holding unfalsifiable beliefs is inconsistent in this manner. By the same token most of these people have a wish to be consistent.
If they don't value consistency, they won't give a damn about anything you say, logic/reason goes out the window and they won't be able to put an argument forward to convince you (or anyone else for that matter) based on that value of consistency. If they don't value figuring out what knowledge people can really have, the same deal.
It is an unreasonable position because it is inconsistent. To go back to your human rights example, that is only rational if it is consistent with your values.
I also have a slight feeling you haven't heard of the fact-value distinction it may interest you
And I should note on a random point, that by the strict epistemological use of the term 'knowledge' or 'fact' (that there is 100% certainty) only one exists that you can know for certain, and that is that your own mind exists. You cannot show anything else as true, but you can show it wrong. The typical use of the term 'fact' and what people consider them to be is a far way off the epistemology use of it.
for a number of reasons, that laws against acts that do no harm to others are bad laws,
This itself is a value, and a moral. Not to mention unenforcable. People will always have effects on others, we are not in a closed system, who determines what 'harm' is?
That is the biggest problem I have with both left leaning hippies and conservative christians. The tendency for them to go 'I am right because I am morally in the right"
Ethics deal with morals, morals are generally based off values/goals, both of those can be arbitrary. Sure certain morals can convey a survival benefit etc, but survival itself could be considered a goal. Morals are a human construct, not an inherent aspect of the universe like things such as gravity etc.
And so the instant rebuttle to 'x is ethical' is of course, to whose ethics?
I wish more people understood this. The best way to convince people of your point is to actually put it forward in a way that already agrees with their values, or has them not supporting it going against something they value. "I am right because I am morally right" is useless.
We both can easily agree that logic needs to be part of reason, but we still won't be able to prove this to someone who claims otherwise.
If they claim otherwise they can't provide an argument for what they are saying, nor does having an argument mean anything, so it's a self-solving problem in that regard.
Now prove that the golden rule "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself." or any other moral value is valid.
I wouldn't, I'm a moral nihilist in that morals are a human construct. Morals are a function of peoples values and goals, which can be arbitrary. Some can provide survival benefits but survival itself can be considered a goal. Some values are more common among people because of psychological (and thus biological) traits and influences, but even that is only part of it. Morals and ethics are a human construct and not an inherent part of the universe like gravity etc.
You can also use the other rules of logic and you can also use observations to falsify things. But even with all of these tools you still won't be able to prove or falsify any moral value valid.
I agree, which is why I find people arguing that their morals are inherently better than others to be idiotic, they can't show anything so why bring it up?.
Falsifiability is a very useful concept to decide if something is science or not, but it is not a criterion to decide whether something is meaningful or not. Values are important to people, but can't be falsified.
What people value is entirely up to the person, which is why morals can be arbitrary. I value the ability to tell if something I believe is false, because otherwise you can be left the entirety of your life believing false things without recourse. The easier to reject the belief if it is false without it having been shown false yet even after testing the more it should be preferred.
The moment you start believing unfalsifiable things, you can believe whatever you damn well like.
Others are welcome to entertain such fantasies if they like, but the moment they claim to have any actual basis is when i point out that they could be wrong the entirety of their lives and never possibly know they were wrong, so what is the point?
I cannot light half a pixel differently from the other half, so what is the point is having the greater precision if you just throw it all out when you actually display the new frame??
There is a lot of math between "draw z/y/v possition with this projection matrix" etc to "we have our 2d plane to project on to the screen". THAT is the math that is better suited by an fpu, which is the same on a DS or a desktop pc doing graphics.
Try doing some 3d programming.. on anything, and you will see what I mean.
When you dig down to it, the fundamental thing comes down to the ability to compare items, binary comparison whether 'x is z, or it is not' which is a very basic part of logic.
If you reject that, you pretty much reject absolutely everything, and nothing means anything.
Reject logic, and math, science, reason, all of that, means nothing at all. But that doesn't matter in that case, because trying to justify anything has no meaning or significance at all.
Without the ability to compare items (the 'this is not like the other' sort), people can't even _think_ let alone _do_ things. It's fairly fundamental. Hell even our senses do it for us in being able to distinguish between different wavelengths of light and different frequencies of sound.
Reason only allows anything if you allow inductive reasoning (which is heavily flawed, See: "the problem of induction")
The only theory of epistemology that deals with the problem of induction is critical rationalism, science survives this, god and other unfalsifiable claims do not.
People often mistakenly think science requires induction, it doesn't, and isn't affected by it's lack of use at all, it just turns your way of thinking how we acquire knowledge on it's head.
No, the issue with "pro life vs pro choice"ers is about whether people think abortion is morally right. What you have brought up is a court case whose purpose was to discover the legality under the present set of laws for people to have abortions. There is a difference between a set of judges saying "we interpret present law as x" and people trying to say 'I find y morally right because of z'
Appealing to peoples other likely held values is a nice way to convince people of a topic as people like to stay consistent. It does not however, change what the topic is, which in this case even in the supreme court case was ultimately about abortion (and the issues it raises).
Slashdot Mirror
Well those things can be changed, my present set of high quality headphones only reproduce to about 35khz before it drops off to nothing. Amplifiers that deal with those sorts of frequencies do exist, but they of course cost extra.
While most people won't get that kind of gear because they don't care enough, a lot of people would be willing to sacrifice the extra data storage so that one day if the need arises they could listen to it in such quality.
Except... uncompressed or lossless digital audio is now superior to vinyl, since the master copy theses days is always digital.
It is recorded in digital... at much higher qualities than you are likely to get on a cd. You think they record 16-bit audio at 44.1khz? think 96khz or higher with 24-bit to 32-bit samples. Far better than cd quality. It is then downsampled etc to 16-bit 44.1khz. If the original digital source was used, the vinyl would of course include higher frequency resolution than the cd.
Cds do have their advantages, but so do vinyl, it's all a set of engineering trade-offs as everything is. DVD-audio is superior to both, where with a typical stereo soundtrack you can have 192khz 24-bit sampling. The trade-off there being of course the comparatively massive data size for the same length of sound.
Which would be useful... if they weren't mastered to a point where the total dynamic range used comes down to 3-6db... loudness wars huzzah.
To many frequency response matters more than dynamic range when you already have 80+db of dynamic range that is never typically fully utilized.
Personally I prefer 96khz 32bit float digital music samples, complete overkill of course but always better to have the least error to start with when mixing etc lest errors multiply. Then you can downsample it when finished later for people who don't care about it.
Just because you can't consciously hear it does not mean it doesn't have effects on your perception of the audible portion of the sound.
Likewise this issue seems to have been well hidden.
Funny, freedom for me is not to have to know how all the parts of my vehicle work in order to operate it.
Lots of people get by using android without knowing how it works... but you have the freedom to learn how it works if you wish, which you do not with iOS
You should just accept that freedom is a relative term, especially when it comes to commodity goods.
To have freedom is to be unrestricted, there are many ways in which people welcome restrictions, but to say a restriction itself is freedom is a bit silly.
I am no less free than you are.
You are less free to tinker, you may not care for that particular freedom, and that is your choice, but it is a restriction of freedom that android does not have.
yep, the nokia n95 had excellent sip functionality built in, it was like making regular calls but to a sip address.
The phone was really popular everywhere except the us, likely because of said sip functionality, this was around 2007.
There are many aspects of freedom, I agree you are welcome to vote with your wallet any time you like. But by choosing apple you are limiting your freedom to tinker and load arbitrary applications etc. Freedom is being restricted, but it might not necessarily be a freedom that some people want or need.
Theft deprives someone of property, so it is not theft. You may consider it wrong, but it is a farce to call samsung producing phones theft.
However what apple is doing _is_ depriving people of physical property.... so why is it so acceptable?
If LG didn't file a lawsuit, it's because they had no case whatsoever. Had they foreseen a potential gain, you can be sure they would have sued Apple to get it.
Everything is a set of trade-offs, by being so litigious apple have a lot of well deserved hatred. For the most part their users are too naive to care. Sometimes good will is worth more in money in the long run than money gained from lawyers in the short term.
Imagine if google tried pulling the same crap, the people who care would be the fastest to bail just like apple products, but those that don't give a crap and willfully take it stay, different demographics different values. Some people don't care for freedom or choice.
Yes, because producing a product and selling it is so similar to suing someone because they had the gall to use a touch screen interface. I think it's pretty clear who's doing the mugging here, it isn't android.
But it didn't support a video sharing program she HAD to have,
What program was it, and why was it specifically a requirement? Linux can handle the generic ability to share videos that every man and his dog has had since the ability for you to click *upload* in your browser, and http servers before that.
Sure, but that would be inconsistent with your value "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong". With that rule your set of values will always be inconsistent if includes basic logic and math, without that rule it is at least possible that your set of values is consistent.
Actually, I'd almost place this in the realm of "the only thing you can be sure of is that your own mind exists" that too is also not falsifiable but is dealt with by "I think therefore I am". How would you know your own mind exists if you were unable to think? if you could not separate things how would thinking be possible?
Rejecting your ability to compare is akin to rejecting that your own mind exists.... .
Within philosophy, mathematics, science, the ability to compare things is simply assumed if it were not you couldn't think about it, it would all be one incoherent blur with an unclear separation of things.
I for one don't know anyone who lives like that or wishes to live like that. Do you?
Insane people rarely consider themselves insane.
Well... I'd say rather those people who do consider themselves insane don't last too long, when you can't be sure of your own mind people try to find a way out.. usually resulting in suicide.
You need to make some basic assumptions about the reality otherwise science would be pointless. If god, the universe, aliens, whatever would be constantly manipulating your experiments, then science couldn't work. You could never really falsify anything, because you couldn't trust any of your experimental results.
If god were manipulating your experiments.. how would you know? How do you know that isn't the case now? you don't. Thing is, the conjectures of science adapt to observed phenomena. Whatever we see is what goes down in a concisely notated form. We observe new things, old conjectures are broken, thrown out and new more falsifiable ones are made that fit the new observations.
When the conjectures always follow the observations, how would you ever know if a being whose existence itself is not falsifiable is playing with the results or not? We cannot completely define a phenomena, so how can you compare if something is manipulated or not if you cannot even define it?
There are always a lot of different conjecture, which can't be all right at the same time, but all of them are falsifiable. So scientists need other reasons why they prefer one conjecture over another.
This is why we prefer the _most_ falsifiable, whose tests have been completed at least once and have not failed. There is only one conjecture at any given time that is the most falsifiable and has had the most tests done and passed.
I would say there is a huge set of shared values where many people will agree with you, because they share the same feelings or agree that something is true a priori.
If you rely on that you can't guarantee it, all it takes for someone to be unable to be convinced is ask 'Why?' and have the person trying to do the convincing stumped because they don't have a reason other than they feel it's the case.
Actually even the smaller set of values "I need to be consistent" and "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" is inconsistent as soon as you included the basic rules of logic and math to it:
I'd agree even that you could not really know even if the comparison function of the human mind works, after all if it didn't how would you able to tell it wasn't? Few people would question this though, it's one of those not falsifiable things where if your mind is that horribly broken well there isn't really any recourse and you may as well just run with it either way.
Without the use of comparative logic consistency means nothing, the function of basic comparison is so primitive it is inbuilt into us but yet itself cannot be falsified as to whether it works.
Anyone who rejects their ability to compare things would generally consider themselves insane. And generally wouldn't be able to put an argument forward etc because none of that means anything and how could they even identify you as a sentient thing?
Uh, why that? If someone says: "2 is prime number", "3 is prime number", "5 is a prime number" , ... and "All prime numbers are odd." Then this set of statements is clearly inconsistent, but you wouldn't fix it by saying: "okay, then 2 can't be a prime number" but by adding an exception: "All prime numbers but 2 are odd."
Actually, you'd fix it by saying "prime numbers are those with factors of only one and itself". If someone did not know what the definition of a prime number was, they would be very right to question "why is 2 an exception to the rule, that rule of them being odd is inconsistent"
When the answers are all you are presenting and are known using a set as an identifier ruling out the ones that don't fit the criteria can be useful for brevity, but it is of no use in defining the criteria itself. The criteria, or the rules, are what we are hunting.
You don't add arbitrary specific exceptions, instead you fix the rule to describe the thing being described.
because when people make decision they usually need to make assumptions for stuff where they don't know the answer, even when they might never know the answer.
Do I need to definitively assume there is or is not a god when doing things of science? No
Same with reality being real or not, if it is or isn't does it change anything? not really. Whether I'm either fantasizing it all in my own mind or it is real I can still check out what is going on in this possible fantasy. Never making any assertions at all about it's legitimacy because entertaining such questions is pointless.
Okay, what you claiming here is: If X is unfalsifiable, then there is no reason to assume X is true, right?
There is no reason to assume anything is true (well.. except that your own mind exists, possibly the only statement for sure you can know is true). However, people would tend to like to have a reason to prefer the conjecture that they do, and the only reason to prefer one conjecture over another if you care about not preferring false things without recourse is that if it is wrong it is capable of being shown wrong.
This seems false to me, e.g.: If people believe X, because assuming X makes them feel better, they clearly have a reason why they prefer believe X over not X.
Comes to values with that, people can say 'I have an innate feeling x is true', if they go with that as a value they simply won't be able to convince others of it because they in all likelihood do not have that value. This would also conflict with any value of their own wanting to actually know the limitations of your own knowledge and to be able to tell when you are wrong (which are both very common).
If people lack the wish to be consistent, or the wish to know when they are wrong, they can believe whatever they wish and no-one will ever be able to tell them otherwise, but again they will be unable to convince anyone else on the matter because they cannot appeal to those values in people.
When was the last time you heard someone say "x is true, I simply know it, it feels good man" taken seriously in an intellectual debate?
But most of the time an value system with conflicting rules can be transformed quite easily into an system without conflicting rules or at least into a system with fewer conflicts by adding small restrictions to its rules, that will fix conflicts people noticed.
Could you please explain how a set of values such as "I need to be consistent", "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" could be combined with "I want to prefer the conjecture there is god" without being a contradiction?
As soon as you add the exception to the rule, you are no longer consistent. It's like x rule for y and z, but c which would normally be under that rule can be under this other one. Inconsistent.
Not really. People will never know the truth about unfalsifiable beliefs, no matter what strategy they choose to deal with something that is unfalsifiable. It doesn't matter if they hold unfalsifiable beliefs, actively reject them or try to stay undecided. Because of this, all of these strategies are consistent with a value of knowing what is true and what's not.
Being undecided is not a false belief. Saying something is true when it potentially is not is a false belief.
Someone saying 'I do not believe in god' is not saying there is no god, only that there is no reason to believe there is a god (precisely because, it is unfalsifiable). There is no reason to prefer that conjecture. So why use it? for people who value there being a reason to believe something over another, it is not reasonable.
This will only work if their value system is inconsistent. This doesn't need to be the case. There are many different consistent value systems and even if a value system isn't consistent it is often easy to fix the inconsistency by just adding a few additional restrictions.
And having conflicting rules isn't 'inconsistent' by your standards?
People have inconsistent value systems all the time through lack of analyzing it all the way. There are many 'moral realists' out there who believe there needs to be a reason for everything they believe, and yet because it is not falsifiable there is no reason to prefer that 'objective morals exist' (an aspect of both moral realism and absolutism)
This is but one example. You find me a person I will pick them apart.. they don't like me much for it though when I do, when people realize something they thought they had reason to believe does not they usually wind up either hating me or crying. You do find the occasional truly consistent person, but they are truly rare,
If the US had lost the war of independance, we'd be teaching that the rebels were a bunch of selfish thugs who just wanted to get out of paying taxes.
You mean to say they weren't? of all the colonies britain put around the world the US seems to be the only one where it resulted in a large war, the rest all progressed along peacefully. Lets not forget that the people of the US were the ones that started violence and hostilities. They wouldn't have even won without the french's support (since the english and the french were always at each others throats of the time, the enemy of my enemy is my friend etc)
The 'taxation without representation' Business could be construed as an after the fact justification. Initially very few americans even wanted to fight the english, they were fairly content. Only after the violent acts were done and britain came down hard on them was support gained. This could be likened to present day fighting in the middle east - a limited number of people cause a ruckus for another country, they overreact and create far more support for the initial cause by the reaction.
if you believe in a universal human rights, you are not acting reasonable?
You are acting within your own values, which everyone does. I'd put forth that being self-serving is one of the more common human values (it increases chances of survival, so people that have it are more likely to be here), to which agreeing to human rights means the likelihood of you yourself being put in an unwanted position decreases and so is in your interest.
But if someone were to say "Human rights are inherently good" I'd call bullshit, it may fit with your values, and even many others, but nothing is inherently 'good' or 'bad' as properties of the universe.
Okay, but following arbitrary goals can't be based on reason, otherwise they won't be arbitrary. So if we are following your definition of reason, there is no single action that is purely based on reason, every intentional action people do is always partly determined by unreasonable and arbitrary goals and values. So reason is at best a tool to reach arbitrary goals more easily.
Yep, reason is but a tool to help discover if things are consistent (which as humans we do tend have a fairly common psychological trait to want everything to be consistent), Reason cannot create your most valued values, it can simply make your value system consistent with itself thus prioritizing them with it.
When it comes to values when dealing with people at best you can use reason to appeal to another persons own values that they hold higher than the issue being discussed in order to convince them. You find inconsistencies and make them choose which value they hold more dear, since generally consistency is a very highly held value they will do this.
Sure, but if I follow your argument, this seems to be a just as unreasonable value as some other persons value of telling everyone about Jesus.
The thing is, those that claim that jesus is saviour tend to claim it to be the truth. Most of these people supposedly 'value' knowing what is and is not 'true'. Holding unfalsifiable beliefs is inconsistent in this manner. By the same token most of these people have a wish to be consistent.
If they don't value consistency, they won't give a damn about anything you say, logic/reason goes out the window and they won't be able to put an argument forward to convince you (or anyone else for that matter) based on that value of consistency. If they don't value figuring out what knowledge people can really have, the same deal.
It is an unreasonable position because it is inconsistent. To go back to your human rights example, that is only rational if it is consistent with your values.
I also have a slight feeling you haven't heard of the fact-value distinction it may interest you
And I should note on a random point, that by the strict epistemological use of the term 'knowledge' or 'fact' (that there is 100% certainty) only one exists that you can know for certain, and that is that your own mind exists. You cannot show anything else as true, but you can show it wrong. The typical use of the term 'fact' and what people consider them to be is a far way off the epistemology use of it.
for a number of reasons, that laws against acts that do no harm to others are bad laws,
This itself is a value, and a moral. Not to mention unenforcable. People will always have effects on others, we are not in a closed system, who determines what 'harm' is?
That is the biggest problem I have with both left leaning hippies and conservative christians. The tendency for them to go 'I am right because I am morally in the right"
Ethics deal with morals, morals are generally based off values/goals, both of those can be arbitrary. Sure certain morals can convey a survival benefit etc, but survival itself could be considered a goal. Morals are a human construct, not an inherent aspect of the universe like things such as gravity etc.
And so the instant rebuttle to 'x is ethical' is of course, to whose ethics?
I wish more people understood this. The best way to convince people of your point is to actually put it forward in a way that already agrees with their values, or has them not supporting it going against something they value. "I am right because I am morally right" is useless.
We both can easily agree that logic needs to be part of reason, but we still won't be able to prove this to someone who claims otherwise.
If they claim otherwise they can't provide an argument for what they are saying, nor does having an argument mean anything, so it's a self-solving problem in that regard.
Now prove that the golden rule "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself." or any other moral value is valid.
I wouldn't, I'm a moral nihilist in that morals are a human construct. Morals are a function of peoples values and goals, which can be arbitrary. Some can provide survival benefits but survival itself can be considered a goal. Some values are more common among people because of psychological (and thus biological) traits and influences, but even that is only part of it. Morals and ethics are a human construct and not an inherent part of the universe like gravity etc.
You can also use the other rules of logic and you can also use observations to falsify things. But even with all of these tools you still won't be able to prove or falsify any moral value valid.
I agree, which is why I find people arguing that their morals are inherently better than others to be idiotic, they can't show anything so why bring it up?.
Falsifiability is a very useful concept to decide if something is science or not, but it is not a criterion to decide whether something is meaningful or not. Values are important to people, but can't be falsified.
What people value is entirely up to the person, which is why morals can be arbitrary. I value the ability to tell if something I believe is false, because otherwise you can be left the entirety of your life believing false things without recourse. The easier to reject the belief if it is false without it having been shown false yet even after testing the more it should be preferred.
The moment you start believing unfalsifiable things, you can believe whatever you damn well like.
Others are welcome to entertain such fantasies if they like, but the moment they claim to have any actual basis is when i point out that they could be wrong the entirety of their lives and never possibly know they were wrong, so what is the point?
I cannot light half a pixel differently from the other half, so what is the point is having the greater precision if you just throw it all out when you actually display the new frame??
There is a lot of math between "draw z/y/v possition with this projection matrix" etc to "we have our 2d plane to project on to the screen". THAT is the math that is better suited by an fpu, which is the same on a DS or a desktop pc doing graphics.
Try doing some 3d programming.. on anything, and you will see what I mean.
When you dig down to it, the fundamental thing comes down to the ability to compare items, binary comparison whether 'x is z, or it is not' which is a very basic part of logic.
If you reject that, you pretty much reject absolutely everything, and nothing means anything.
Reject logic, and math, science, reason, all of that, means nothing at all. But that doesn't matter in that case, because trying to justify anything has no meaning or significance at all.
Without the ability to compare items (the 'this is not like the other' sort), people can't even _think_ let alone _do_ things. It's fairly fundamental. Hell even our senses do it for us in being able to distinguish between different wavelengths of light and different frequencies of sound.
Reason only allows anything if you allow inductive reasoning (which is heavily flawed, See: "the problem of induction")
The only theory of epistemology that deals with the problem of induction is critical rationalism, science survives this, god and other unfalsifiable claims do not.
People often mistakenly think science requires induction, it doesn't, and isn't affected by it's lack of use at all, it just turns your way of thinking how we acquire knowledge on it's head.
No, the issue with "pro life vs pro choice"ers is about whether people think abortion is morally right. What you have brought up is a court case whose purpose was to discover the legality under the present set of laws for people to have abortions. There is a difference between a set of judges saying "we interpret present law as x" and people trying to say 'I find y morally right because of z'
Appealing to peoples other likely held values is a nice way to convince people of a topic as people like to stay consistent. It does not however, change what the topic is, which in this case even in the supreme court case was ultimately about abortion (and the issues it raises).