I am sorry I have not been quick in responding to this thread but Christmas/ New Years is a busy time and I don't really see a lot of benefit to responding. However, having a little spare time I will provide you all with another of my long and wasted posts. I am still hoping someone out there will comprehend what I am talking about. Perhaps my view is just too alien. In the middle of December there was a very interesting article in Science News:
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Originally Posted by Science News
The 12/17/05 cover story, The Pirahã Challenge.
By 1980, the two outsiders spoke the native tongue well enough to field an intriguing proposal from villagers: to teach them to count and to read. So for the next few months, Daniel Everett—a linguist affiliated with the University of Manchester in England and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany—and Keren Everett, a missionary with linguistic training, ran evening classes in math and literacy for the forest dwellers. However, although the Pirahã know volumes about hunting and jungle survival, the group flunked both courses. None of the roughly 30 people who regularly attended classes learned to count to 10. None learned to add 3+1, or even 1+1.
Reading lessons ended abruptly when, after weeks of painstaking work, the students managed to read a Pirahã word aloud and in unison. Everyone laughed. Daniel Everett asked what was so funny, and his students responded that what they had just said sounded like their word for sky. That's correct, Everett replied. The Pirahã immediately became agitated and asked to stop the lessons.
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Cultural mandates to express only one's immediate experience and to shun outsiders' knowledge have kept the Pirahã population, which now amounts to around 200 people, from learning other languages despite more than 200 years of regular contact with Brazilians and various Amazonian groups, he adds. Yet despite the simplicity of its grammar, the Pirahã language matches other languages in complexity.
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Apparently they are not blocked by intelligence, but are instead culturally blocked from comprehending many abstract concepts common to, what we consider, modern civilization.
After having noticed the great impetus everyone has to change the subject every time I get close to communicating a significant fact, I am beginning to acquire the opinion that a cultural bias very similar to that of the Pirahã is effectively blocking what I am trying to communicate here.
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Originally Posted by questor
i have been reading your posts for a few weeks now and i am perplexed by your attack on Turtle, who has been trying to understand your progression of thoughts with patience and politeness. a personal attack will not engender interest or understanding, so you have probably lost Turtle as a foil.
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Did you read what I wrote?
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Originally Posted by Doctordick
From the fact that I claim A (what is possible to be known) is not contained in C (what is actually known) Turtle concludes I require you must "deny you exist" (which he proves with a Venn diagram).
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Anyone who would accept his logic as well developed must have the IQ of Gerbil.
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That is not a personal attack on Turtle. I certainly do not believe Turtle has put his argument forward as a rational logical response (he could not possibly believe such an argument holds any water at all). He has made it quite obvious that he has no interest at all in what I am saying and would rather "chew the nut" for the delight of it. His real desire is to get off the subject as quickly as is possible.
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Originally Posted by questor
if you are the only person who understands the information you are trying to impart, you should understand it will be impossible for those less heavily endowed with gray matter to follow your pronouncements.
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I think you must be joking! What part of what I say can't you understand? I don't believe it has anything to do with inability to understand; rather it is no more than simple refusal to even think about what I say. The problem is, you don't want to admit it to yourself.
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Originally Posted by questor
i do not wish to converse with someone who has no patience or civility.
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The lack of patience and civility is not a problem I have. I sometimes think I have the patience of Job himself. And calling a spade a spade is not lack of civility, it's called honesty.
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Originally Posted by questor
if you had presented your conclusions first and then wanted to discuss the mental process to arive at that conclusion, i think you would have had more participants in the discussion.
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My experience over the last fifty years is exactly the opposite. Absolutely nothing will turn away attention from competent people quicker than telling them where this leads. The uniform reaction is invariably, "that cannot possibly be true!" Once I disclose where this leads, my audience is immediately reduced to the "quacks are us" collection of pseudo intellects. And I have utterly no interest in talking to people who cannot even comprehend common logical arguments. (It seems I manage to attract them anyway!)
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Originally Posted by questor
as it is now, this seems to be a long -winded discourse for a nebulous result.
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I personally think this is a rather overt misuse of the word "nebulous". In my mind, the fault in most of the posts on the hypography site is "nebulous" assertions with negligible support. I have just proved that the total derivative of the mathematical function which yields your rational expectations with regard to any explanation conceivable must vanish for any internally consistent explanation (whether the explanation is right or wrong). And you assert that is a "nebulous" result. It seems more reasonable that you just put that title on it because you don't want to face the possibility that it's a true statement.
I personally think it is a very definite statement with far reaching consequences. I can also show a few other very basic truths about that function (the one which yields your rational expectations with regard to any explanation conceivable). Put together, those truths suggest a very simple way of seeing the universe (a way of looking at the universe which guarantees you will not make the mistake of violating those particular truths). There is nothing "nebulous" about my presentation at all. Perhaps that is the real problem here; most people prefer "nebulous" pontificating because there is nothing to understand.
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Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
DoctorDick, I liked your initial post and it made sense to me.
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I presume you are talking about my assertion concerning the importance of recognizing the two distinctly different mechanisms for coming to conclusions
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Originally Posted by Doctordick
I believe that it is very important that these two different phenomena should be carefully identified and kept in mind whenever rational discussion is attempted.
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However, from reading your comment, I feel you have slightly misinterpreted the division I proposed. The central issue of my division is to separate abstract exact logic (which always includes the concept of "proof") from the inductive mechanisms behind all the rest of what is often referred to as intelligent (or rational) action. The central requirement of the classification as "squirrel action/thought" is not exactly repetition but rather, the failure to be the direct result of abstract logical deduction. That is to say, activities based on abstract logical deduction can be repeated as easily as can any other activity. They can also be given to others as "squirrel" constructs: i.e., "take it on faith and don't worry about proving it yourself".
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Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
Writing this response involves both squirel thought and logical thought.
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The only evidence that any logical thought is involved would be a direct statement of the exact logical steps which were required. I believe your view is considerably askew of what I was trying to communicate. I will try once more to clarify my view.
Having failed with every other presentation, I will try a visual metaphor although I suspect this will be as hard to communicate to the crowd here as mathematics was to the Pirahã. Try to picture all we know and believe as a mountain range of information. Seen as a whole, it is the vast span of a mountain range but examined in detail it is a massive collection of specific knowledge and beliefs; each and every aspect of it is a defined concept or relationship. This is the world we find ourselves in. Every living thing finds itself in such a world; it is the basis from which all of their actions of any kind stem. Certainly human intelligence is not required in order to have such a construct. Many animals live quite complex lives without any ability to objectively understand the basis of their actions. It should be clear that they nonetheless possess some sort of such a basis for those actions (I think one could say a squirrel believes a branch is there when they jump for it). Though very few people would want to use the word "belief", even a plant is influenced by its environment via incoming information which we could define as "where the sunlight is coming from" or "where the water is". Though of course the abstract concept itself is certainly beyond the plants capability, it still forms the basis of some very definite actions by that plant.
Human beings are unique in their ability to examine that mountain range of information and think about the situation they find themselves in. The great majority of what they find are the gray rocks of intuitive knowledge; the well established foundation on which everything they think and do is based. (It is reasonable to presume the animals also find themselves in a similar circumstance.) Most of which they are so sure of that there is absolutely no doubt as to its veracity. I suspect animals in general lack doubt entirely, (as do some humans by the way). But it should be clear that this terrain is not reality, it is actually no more than what we
think reality is. It is a mental construct; something quite different from reality itself. It is very different from "reality" in that it can be wrong whereas "reality" cannot possibility be wrong (note that animal concepts of reality can also be wrong; in fact, we use their proclivity for certain errors to trap and kill them).
But the world view of human beings (that vast realm of knowledge and belief under discussion) differs in a unique way from those other animals (at least it appears that some humans are different). Within our world views there exists, occasionally, small deposits of gold in among those gray rocks of intuitive knowledge. What I am talking about are the pieces of information in that world view which are connected by formal deductive logic. These nuggets connect two pieces of otherwise unrelated knowledge (or beliefs). If one is true (the axioms), then so must the other be true (the logical consequences).
Thus it is that I see our world view as being constructed of two very different components, one of which probably does not exist in the absence of intellect. In any case, both components arise by the power of those organs we call brains. I have put forth an adjective "squirrel" to denote that vast construct of gray rock which goes to make up our world view (a world view in the absence of those golden nuggets). I did that because I have a serious belief that squirrels lack that component in their concept of the world. I put things the way I did because I am trying to bring forth the great disparity between these two, very different, components of our understanding of the universe (what we believe reality to be). Try reading the opening post to this thread again.
Most scientists concern themselves with expanding and extending those nuggets of formal logic. From their perspective (and the central interest of their lives), those golden nuggets form the basis of their understanding of the universe and loom large and overpowering. In actual fact, the realm of exact science almost negligibly small compared to that vast squirrel construct of our beliefs. They may be able to accomplished great deeds of magic inconceivable from the perspective of most men but, in reality they understand very little of what they know. From my opening post on this thread:
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Originally Posted by Doctordick
What I am getting at is the fact that logical thought is actually a rather worthless endeavor when it comes to life and death decisions. It is often much better to "go with your gut"; let it be a squirrel decision. In fact, in the absence of mathematics, logical decisions are so limited as to be almost entirely inapplicable to any day to day activities. This is why many students can not understand a purpose to learning mathematics. Actually they are quite right, neither math nor logic serve much of a purpose to important problems. I have known very successful people who have never made a logical decision in their entire life.
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But I also was swayed by the power and authority of the scientists (I'm no brighter than anyone else!) That is exactly why I ended up with a Ph.D. in physics and exactly why I found myself questioning the foundations of Physics. Those questions together with my training in physics and mathematics led me to the discovery I am trying to bring to your attention. This "squirrel"/"logic" thing is nothing except a mechanism for recognizing
exactly what we are presuming (in case you haven't picked up on it, we are presuming those "squirrel" decisions are correct) without requiring the information itself be ignored.
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Originally Posted by C1ay
I understand your thoughts but haven't really had time to jump into the discussion.
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Perhaps you do but your comments amount to a change in subject. When I said that I felt that it was important to be aware of these two violently different components, I was thinking of the characteristics and constraints on the two different elements, not on how they came to be. To paraphrase questor, the issue you bring up is an interesting subject which could possibly be the foundation of an extensive discussion; however, it seems to me that, in the end, the discussion could only be seen as nebulous since you are bringing up issues with little if any probability of being settled.
What I am trying to get across is quite easily settled: either my logic is erroneous or my conclusions are valid. I will try to put it another way. You can find a lot of fluff about TOE (Theory of Everything) all over the web. (A really nebulous subject as discussed by "the experts".) There are a number of problems with such an idea which keeps the concept nebulous. The scientists approach is to extend the range and impact of those golden nuggets of logic I mentioned. They lose sight of the fact that the great majority of their beliefs are based on a foundation defendable only via "squirrel" support (which is to say, "undefendable"). I am fully accepting the undefendability of that "squirrel" support and, for that reason, reduced it to the absolute minimum: the definition of an explanation and the essential ground support of that great vein of gold called mathematics.
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Originally Posted by Pyrotex
No, you are not a bad writer. Not in the sense that you are unclear, anyway. However, trying to "cover all the bases" when your audience contains a variety of readers who span the spectrum between educated scientist and "squirrel" makes the effort somewhat futile.
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Thank you; I guess.
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Originally Posted by Pyrotex
It is also possible (he said with caution) that there may be readers whose singular and only purpose may be to misinterpret and muddy the water. IMHO. |
Perhaps; but I strongly suspect some kind of Pirahãic phenomena is behind it.
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Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
DoctorDick:I'm not sure I agree with this.
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I think your disagreement stems from your misunderstanding of what I mean by my categories "squirrel" and "logical". Perhaps my discourse above will do something to clarify that. And, yes, I think 'falling through the cracks' exactly defines my predicament. Years ago I used to tell people that I had discovered a new science. I even made up a name for it, "analytical philosophy"; but some philosophers have since staked out a claim to that designation.
Lastly, from my perspective computer programs are pure constructs of "logic" gold. That is why AI has proved to be so difficult; they omit the problem of creating that "squirrel" construct so fundamental to any "logic" construct. And "self induced blindness" is exactly the problem displayed by the Pirahã.
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Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
...boink. I just flew up my own arse. (I know. At least it's familiar territory.)
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Seriously, what you have just pointed out is the essential need for that "squirrel" construct; for local navigation if nothing else.
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Originally Posted by questor
at last! after almost a hundred posts, we have finally gotten to the nugget of this thread:
'' The issue I am trying to get attention to is the fact that any internally self consistent explanation of anything can be seen as mathematics. It is that primary requirement that all explanations must be internally self consistent which I felt needed examination. I have done that examination and found some very interesting consequences which are apparently of little interest to anyone. ''
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Not really, you have just jumped right across the most important issue in your quote:
"All explanations must be internally self consistent!" That fact has far reaching logical consequences which need to be seriously examined and everyone seems to make tremendous efforts to avoid doing so. Instead of asking how such an examination could help, why not ask why it seems to hurt so much?
I just read InfiniteNow's thread and have many things to say about it that would really be a waste of time here. If anyone is interested, they might read something I wrote a number of years ago. Take a look at
"Resolution of the Relativity/Quantum Mechanics Conflict" and/or a defense of some of my statements on time to
"Hurkyl" on physicsforums.
Meanwhile, I note that no one has made comment #1 on my proof that the total derivative of the mathematical function which yields your rational expectations with regard to any explanation conceivable must vanish for any internally consistent explanation. What purpose is there to going on so long as I have no evidence at all as to whether or not the statement was even understood? Until some response occurs, I can only conclude I am talking to myself.
Have fun -- Dick
"The simplest and most necessary truths are the very last to be believed."
by Anonymous
