Wikileaks says Wednesday is the End for Hillary.

[xorcist at sigaint.org]

> On Thu, 6 Oct 2016 02:22:16 -0000
> xorcist at 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.