On Thu, 6 Oct 2016 02:22:16 -0000 xorcist@sigaint.org wrote:
The fact that ignoring it leads to nonsense is good enough proof. But if you don't like that proof, so-fucking-what. The 'law' remains valid.
Only according to your opinion, and the opinion of the majority.
Whereas all your Enlightened Superior Knowledge is 'true' according to 'your opinion'.
I never claimed I am enlightened, or possess superior knowledge. This whole thing started merely by you taking issue with certain inconsistencies that derive from my reasoning from multiple, conflicting assumptions, simultaneously. I'll return to this below. I then simply pointed out I don't have a problem with this, as I keep in mind the limitation of logic, and rationality. But yes - my opinion is my own. It is not inherently any better than anyone else's. To the extent that your opinions, and approaches work for you, quite good. I don't require you to agree with me. I never have. I've simply sought to explain things that you ask about.
Shorter still: <anthing>
And then : Nothing.
Mu.
Hope you enjoy your floating room.
I got a kick out of this because, in fact, one Zen adherent once described enlightenment as just like ordinary experience, except about 2 inches off the floor. So, about reasoning from conflicting ideas. Imagine a 30's mafioso type, obviously engaged in crime, who also is dealing drugs against his 'family's' wishes. He keeps a piece of tape or something on his door to verify if someone got into his apartment. He comes home one day to find the tape disturbed. He then reasons this way: 1. It could have been the cops. 2. It could have been my competition. 3. It could have been Don Corleone 4. I could have failed to set the tape right. 5. It could be something else I've failed to consider. He can assign probabilities that he deems reasonable to these different assumptions, but he has no way to verify those probabilities. He can't verify any of them directly, can't just go to the cops or his competition and ask, and son. In reasoning about his best course of action, he may decide to do something that seems counter-intuitive, or "irrational" from the outside, like approaching his competition and selling his existing stash at a loss, and then even doing repeat business. From the outside, it might look insane -- but really he's reasoning this way: if #1, I can lead the cops away from my supplier and maybe make the cops think I'm doing business with my competition instead. I take a loss, but if #4 I keep my connect and I'm in business still. Simultaneously, if #2, I may have the opportunity to pick up a read on if it was them, so getting contact might be good. I might be fucked no matter what if it was #3, but doing business sets me up for a potential alibi, as I can claim my primary motivation was intelligence gathering, or sniffing out defectors, or whatever. Or, he may choose two seemingly inconsistent courses of action simultaneously, to hedge and so on. By reasoning from incomplete, uncertain information - as we often must, tolerance for inconsistency becomes important, and enables discriminating among available courses of action, or available beliefs. Now, I'm quite sure you'll have nothing to say about this except something stupid about my choice of a mafioso for an example. That's why I tried to give an example of a mafioso, in fact. I actually tried coming up with some examples about how Winston may have reasoned if he had a tip off about the Thought Police, but that scenario is more difficult because of the essential fact that Big Brother is watching you, and already knows.