Ha ha, yeah, rain is the result of divine pedophilia. Didn’t think that one through… I dunno, just playing with ideas. My point is that “sky spirits” as an explanation isn’t “incorrect”, just imprecise and prone to misinterpretation. I mean, there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon. for instance, the Hindu belief in “divine vibration” sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago. “the plants told us”. I’d expect a Curandero in the amazon to know more about the ecology there than any “rational” (quotes to highlight subjectivity) scientist… Even though they would probably use terms like “spirit” to describe it.
Holding a glass over a pot of water doesn’t explain condensation, it just demonstrates it. “why does water gather there?”
It’s very possible to intuit things about nature. Strange but it’s true. [As an aside, I know this isn’t on topic, but I’m multi-attentional, so it’s okay.] I’d recommend Jill Bolte Taylors’ talk on TED for a pretty good explanation of what I’m referring to; you don’t need to have a stroke to get to that state of consciousness. I guess what I’m getting at is, why is it so important to be “right” in the objective sense? If you’re trying to build some kind of precise machine, I can see the value. Otherwise, a pretty story is way more than good enough, especially if it conforms to universal archetype… IMHO
there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon.
That might be true …
for instance, the Hindu belief in “divine vibration” sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago.
… but all that is not true. There is a long list of distinctively modern concepts and discoveries—DNA, the Big Bang, black holes… - which are constantly being linked in spurious ways to ancient myth and scripture. It is actually a type of modern superstition that shamans already know all this, that God or aliens already told us about it in code, etc—in short, that the pre-scientific world already knew about what science has discovered.
Hinduism has nothing to do with string theory. A hundred years ago, you had spiritualists trying to link divine vibrations with the electromagnetic spectrum. In a few years they’ll be trying to link it with cortical brain rhythms. These connections are completely superficial. As for the Dogon, the match between myth and astronomy is far more equivocal than you might have thought.
It’s incredibly frustrating how all my comments get voted down so much… Anyway, how does that have nothing to do with string theory? I guess maybe I don’t understand anything about either of them. It’s not like I have a degree. That said, I believe string theory relates to the way that at a base level, all form is caused by vibration? (PLEASE correct me if this is wrong) I relate this to cymatics (google it if you’re unfamiliar). You’re saying that the concept of a universal creative vibration (om) doesn’t sound anything like the concept of vibration creating all form? Really? Even if it’s totally coincidence (whatever that means), it still works as an explanation. The concept of archetypes repeating themselves would possibly account for that… I think it’s irrational to rule that out instantly. With the Dogon, admittedly I could’ve done more research. The thing is, we’re all looking at the same whole. It’s amazing how many similarities there are between myths of different cultures- most of them revolving around the worship of “projective” and “receptive” principals (God and Goddess) which obviously exist in the form of sun and earth or man and woman or whatever. Do you see where I’m coming from?
You really need to go read the entire Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence before you comment again, because you sound like a flat-earther asking questions at an astronomy conference. :(
Yeah, well. You’re mother wears combat boots. LOL I can’t believe you’re stooping to name calling. I’m just promoting alternate views.. I really don’t give a damn which one is true. We just use the belief we find most useful. Beauty is truth. What does “objective” mean? My brain is clearly wired differently than yours. That’s okay! I hope I haven’t dropped below your “sanity threshold”… Pfft. I personally think I’m NOT mistaken and confused, even though there’s a choir of “rationalists” preaching at me. It’s not “rational” to subdue dialogue like that. The fact that a dogmatic comment like yours gets voted up while an open minded one like mine gets voted below the viewing threshold is part of the reason “rationalism” is still in the minority. You know what? I still love you. You should go outside more, and instead of explaining, just experience. No one has the slightest idea what’s going on, not even you. What explanation will you give me if I ask you “Why”? You’re succumbing to the worst parts of tribalism. I said something you think “rational people” don’t believe, so “we” think I’m “irrational”. Blah… I quickly lost faith (irony) in this website. Good articles, though.
I do give a damn which one is true. I have not been following the whole thread, but that sentence sure jumped out at me.
What is a way I can convince you that I am being open-minded? I am willing to read through the thread and add my thoughts but I want to know where your open-minded threshold begins and ends. If I don’t make the cut I won’t bother.
First define “truth”, and I’ll start to worry about that.
Just don’t start calling people names. It’s not helpful in any sense. I’m not trying to lower the quality of discussion here, quite the opposite (not that it isn’t high quality discussion). If we don’t disagree, it’s not cause I’m stupider than you (which is the implication in comparing me to a flat earther)… It’s cause our experiences lead us to different conclusions. Maybe I am stupider than you. even then is that a reason to exclude someone from a conversation? Maybe I want to talk about the relationship between “mythos” and “logos”. Maybe that makes me irrational? Why jump to the conclusion that I have no idea what I’m talking about? Why assume I’m attached to my ideas to the point where you can’t point out their flaws without ad hominem attacks?
really… You guys take everything so seriously.
Frankly, I’m not entirely sure myself where this “reality” business comes from. I can’t create my own reality in the lab, so I must not understand it yet. But occasionally I believe strongly that something is going to happen, and then something else happens instead. I need a name for whatever-it-is that determines my experimental results, so I call it “reality”. This “reality” is somehow separate from even my very best hypotheses. Even when I have a simple hypothesis, strongly supported by all the evidence I know, sometimes I’m still surprised. So I need different names for the thingies that determine my predictions and the thingy that determines my experimental results. I call the former thingies “belief”, and the latter thingy “reality”.
I’m sorry if I sounded like I was calling you names, but I’m not sure how to convey my meaning more politely. Is “You sound like a first-year student who walked into a fourth-year class by mistake” any better? You’re asking me to explain the difference between a fake explanation and a deep theory, and that’s something that can take an awful lot of words to explain. A whole book’s worth, even. The answer to your original question is short, but the reasoning behind the answer is really complicated if you don’t know it already.
If I said “Take my university course, and by the end of it, you’ll know the difference between a real understanding and a fake understanding and be good at coming up with correct answers to Confusing Questions that had stumped philosophers for centuries,” would you be up for it? Because, as far as I can tell from reading your posts so far, that’s the kind of effort it would take to get you on the same page as many of the other people here. I’m willing to be your tutor if you’re willing to be my student, but if you aren’t willing to start with the basics, neither of us should waste any more time.
Ha ha, yeah, rain is the result of divine pedophilia. Didn’t think that one through… I dunno, just playing with ideas. My point is that “sky spirits” as an explanation isn’t “incorrect”, just imprecise and prone to misinterpretation. I mean, there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon. for instance, the Hindu belief in “divine vibration” sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago. “the plants told us”. I’d expect a Curandero in the amazon to know more about the ecology there than any “rational” (quotes to highlight subjectivity) scientist… Even though they would probably use terms like “spirit” to describe it. Holding a glass over a pot of water doesn’t explain condensation, it just demonstrates it. “why does water gather there?” It’s very possible to intuit things about nature. Strange but it’s true. [As an aside, I know this isn’t on topic, but I’m multi-attentional, so it’s okay.] I’d recommend Jill Bolte Taylors’ talk on TED for a pretty good explanation of what I’m referring to; you don’t need to have a stroke to get to that state of consciousness. I guess what I’m getting at is, why is it so important to be “right” in the objective sense? If you’re trying to build some kind of precise machine, I can see the value. Otherwise, a pretty story is way more than good enough, especially if it conforms to universal archetype… IMHO
That might be true …
… but all that is not true. There is a long list of distinctively modern concepts and discoveries—DNA, the Big Bang, black holes… - which are constantly being linked in spurious ways to ancient myth and scripture. It is actually a type of modern superstition that shamans already know all this, that God or aliens already told us about it in code, etc—in short, that the pre-scientific world already knew about what science has discovered.
Hinduism has nothing to do with string theory. A hundred years ago, you had spiritualists trying to link divine vibrations with the electromagnetic spectrum. In a few years they’ll be trying to link it with cortical brain rhythms. These connections are completely superficial. As for the Dogon, the match between myth and astronomy is far more equivocal than you might have thought.
It’s incredibly frustrating how all my comments get voted down so much… Anyway, how does that have nothing to do with string theory? I guess maybe I don’t understand anything about either of them. It’s not like I have a degree. That said, I believe string theory relates to the way that at a base level, all form is caused by vibration? (PLEASE correct me if this is wrong) I relate this to cymatics (google it if you’re unfamiliar). You’re saying that the concept of a universal creative vibration (om) doesn’t sound anything like the concept of vibration creating all form? Really? Even if it’s totally coincidence (whatever that means), it still works as an explanation. The concept of archetypes repeating themselves would possibly account for that… I think it’s irrational to rule that out instantly. With the Dogon, admittedly I could’ve done more research. The thing is, we’re all looking at the same whole. It’s amazing how many similarities there are between myths of different cultures- most of them revolving around the worship of “projective” and “receptive” principals (God and Goddess) which obviously exist in the form of sun and earth or man and woman or whatever. Do you see where I’m coming from?
Yes, we do understand where you’re coming from. We just think you’re mistaken and confused.
You really need to go read the entire Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence before you comment again, because you sound like a flat-earther asking questions at an astronomy conference. :(
Yeah, well. You’re mother wears combat boots. LOL I can’t believe you’re stooping to name calling. I’m just promoting alternate views.. I really don’t give a damn which one is true. We just use the belief we find most useful. Beauty is truth. What does “objective” mean? My brain is clearly wired differently than yours. That’s okay! I hope I haven’t dropped below your “sanity threshold”… Pfft. I personally think I’m NOT mistaken and confused, even though there’s a choir of “rationalists” preaching at me. It’s not “rational” to subdue dialogue like that. The fact that a dogmatic comment like yours gets voted up while an open minded one like mine gets voted below the viewing threshold is part of the reason “rationalism” is still in the minority. You know what? I still love you. You should go outside more, and instead of explaining, just experience. No one has the slightest idea what’s going on, not even you. What explanation will you give me if I ask you “Why”? You’re succumbing to the worst parts of tribalism. I said something you think “rational people” don’t believe, so “we” think I’m “irrational”. Blah… I quickly lost faith (irony) in this website. Good articles, though.
I do give a damn which one is true. I have not been following the whole thread, but that sentence sure jumped out at me.
What is a way I can convince you that I am being open-minded? I am willing to read through the thread and add my thoughts but I want to know where your open-minded threshold begins and ends. If I don’t make the cut I won’t bother.
First define “truth”, and I’ll start to worry about that.
Just don’t start calling people names. It’s not helpful in any sense. I’m not trying to lower the quality of discussion here, quite the opposite (not that it isn’t high quality discussion). If we don’t disagree, it’s not cause I’m stupider than you (which is the implication in comparing me to a flat earther)… It’s cause our experiences lead us to different conclusions. Maybe I am stupider than you. even then is that a reason to exclude someone from a conversation? Maybe I want to talk about the relationship between “mythos” and “logos”. Maybe that makes me irrational? Why jump to the conclusion that I have no idea what I’m talking about? Why assume I’m attached to my ideas to the point where you can’t point out their flaws without ad hominem attacks? really… You guys take everything so seriously.
Truth: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth
Please take the hint on all the negative ratings and stop commenting here. Future comments from you will be removed.
It might be good to link “The Simple Truth” in What Do We Mean By Rationality?.
It is.
Ah, I missed it—thanks!
Truth is correspondence with reality. To quote the narrator:
I’m sorry if I sounded like I was calling you names, but I’m not sure how to convey my meaning more politely. Is “You sound like a first-year student who walked into a fourth-year class by mistake” any better? You’re asking me to explain the difference between a fake explanation and a deep theory, and that’s something that can take an awful lot of words to explain. A whole book’s worth, even. The answer to your original question is short, but the reasoning behind the answer is really complicated if you don’t know it already.
If I said “Take my university course, and by the end of it, you’ll know the difference between a real understanding and a fake understanding and be good at coming up with correct answers to Confusing Questions that had stumped philosophers for centuries,” would you be up for it? Because, as far as I can tell from reading your posts so far, that’s the kind of effort it would take to get you on the same page as many of the other people here. I’m willing to be your tutor if you’re willing to be my student, but if you aren’t willing to start with the basics, neither of us should waste any more time.
“You are mistaken” --> “you’re stooping to name calling similar to your mother having indicators of low status”
It isn’t surprising at all but it certainly illustrates how beliefs operate among groups of humans.
I could write a whole essay in response to that but it would be way off-topic. Mail me via mporter at gmail and I’ll respond.