To: K-list
Recieved: 1999/11/27 01:37
Subject: Re: [K-list] Re: Sckeptics* Anonymous
From: Martin Thompson
On 1999/11/27 01:37, Martin Thompson posted thus to the K-list:
13:31:23 Fri, 26 Nov 1999
Wim Borsboom at Wim Borsboom <aurasphereATnospamhome.com> writes:
>Dear Martin,
>I do hope you get my sense of humour in addition to my seriousness. I don't
>seem to have been able to to untwist your warps yet.
We Brits don't have a sense of humour. ;-)
>It seems that you understand that what you know already.
[x]
> You may see the world without glare and it may look very
>consistent and tidy, but that tidiness is only the result of the filter.
>
I let my logical side deal with evidence in the style it prefers, but I
also operate on a more inclusive level, because I am aware of the
philosophical difficulties of accepting even hard reality as absolutely
correct. Paradoxes either mean that something is nonsense or wrong, or
they mean that I have something to learn to make the paradox seem
consistent: we have thesis and antithesis, and we may or may not derive
a synthesis to transcend them.
>Evidence? When you look for consistency you will not find evidence. A
>criminal or trickster is very aware of that.
>Evidence has to be gathered, you have to be willing to enter chaos, enter
>the amazon forest, you find it in non-consistent places, the places that the
>criminal overlooked, or the trickster knew you would not look.
>
I still prefer to bash what looks like nonsense, and see if it persists.
This isn't closed-mindedness: it is testing the phenomenon to see how it
might be explained. If a straightforward rational explanation fails to
cover the perceived facts, then I start looking elsewhere. A final
explanation, however, would have to be broad enough to cover all known
facts without contradiction.
>BTW. It will not be too long before that thing about left and right brain
>functionality will be debunked. Now, you say you that you are a skeptic, you
>should have been be a skeptic when you first read about that ....Hehehehe?
Yes; I know the theory is considered to be obsolete, as indeed is the
stuff about reptilian/mammalian/human brains. I treat them as useful
metaphors at present; I will probably have to drop them eventually.
Probably what will take over is Marvin Minsky's "Society of Mind," his
idea in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that our minds are
essentially an ensemble of subsystems working together. My logical
subsystems expect good evidence, while my wisdom subsystems know that
the definition of "good" is in doubt. They work best when they work
together.
--
Martin Thompson martinATnospamtucana.demon.co.uk
London, UK
Home Page: http://www.tucana.demon.co.uk
Free Regular Income: http://www.virtualis.com/vr/mthomps4/vrp.html
"Everything I do and say with anyone makes a difference." Gita Bellin
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