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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2018 - 06:20pm PT
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Why do you say no one has ever found their way to the bottom of anything?
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Anything in the Natural world. People recoil at the idea. That's what's behind 99% of all posts on this thread, IMO. And whatever we have not "explained," we will in time -- given new data.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 20, 2018 - 08:16pm PT
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JL: "People recoil at the idea."
More likely, they simply chuckle as you hang that dead rat out there for bait once more, while thinking: When will this guy get over his metaphysical fixation with emptiness?
But it seems to give you pleasure and that's what this thread is all about. We'll hold our noses.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 20, 2018 - 08:40pm PT
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When will this guy get over his metaphysical fixation with emptiness?
And finality and certainty.
About the Natural World. Checkers gets an exception.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 21, 2018 - 09:19am PT
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Yanqui,
Take apart the term, “anything” in my declaration. Any . . . “thing.”
You’ve chosen “checkers,” and you’ve said that playing and winning the game means that a player has discovered the bottom of what “checkers” is, I suppose. I think this is the same tact that a typical scientist would take: the proof of what a thing is, is one’s ability to predict replication, or being able to use it. In other words: instrumentalism: “If I can properly or fruitfully use a thing, then I know what it is.” I’ll say that I don’t agree.
I’ve seen game theory applied to many competitive situations in business and corporate strategy (which is what I used to teach), and they all look simplistic and loaded with assumptions about how people think, feel, and act. Game theory can be used to think through moves, but any irrational (read, passionate) actor can clear a table with new rules in any game if they can get others to go along. “Changing the game” was what Silicon Valley was all about.
Pick any “thing” and say what that “thing” *is* completely, accurately, and finally. I don’t believe that’s ever been done, no matter if the thing is visible / material, or invisible / immaterial. What’s wood? What’s trust? What’s a game? What’s a plant? What’s leather? What’s a computer? What’s Mind? What’s living? What’s love? What’s a post on the internet? In an attempt to come to any final answers for any of those questions, we’d no doubt start talking about the ability of language to communicate sooner or later. I think you might be aware just what a briar patch that might become. (There is a host of smart people who’ve been trying to tell us just how problematical those issue are—Wittgenstein, Saussure, Pierce, Barthes, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, immediately come to mind.)
However, it’s not just language that appears to be problematical or weak. It’s the beliefs that we actually *do* get to the bottom of things empirically, or conceptually with any approach. Once taken as fact, the belief leads to the same thinking about everything else.
As with game theory, the assumptions that one could ever get to the bottom of anything cannot be satisfied even in good faith. Those “things” would have to be independent of causes and conditions to be a thing that we could finally say with accuracy and completeness what it is. It appears that there is nothing that satisfies that requirement because everything appears to be changing or morphing from one thing to another thing (e.g., acorns to oak trees). It is only in the most general sense (categories) that things appear to remain the same, but generalizations don’t hold up well, either. There are always extraordinary data points that leak out. Whether one is employing exemplar theory, prototype theory, or family resemblances, science cannot create airtight categorizations or taxonomies. They point, but they do not say what all “things” are in a category or class. For example, every named or defined species category is arbitrarily constructed intellectually. They are all reasonable, but so is any consensus.
There are more complaints about the wont to be definite, certain, and unambiguous with reality, but I’ll leave it here for now.
BTW, I enjoyed reading the article in the Atlantic. It was written to make us a bit sad, don’t you think? “Ah, the genius of Man . . . he’s heroic, but pitiful.”
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 21, 2018 - 11:30am PT
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What’s wood? What’s trust? What’s a game? What’s a plant? What’s leather? What’s a computer? What’s Mind? What’s living? What’s love?
Those are words.
We apply them to events we perceive, imperfectly, arbitrarily, and ambiguously. They seem to work pretty well for many situations. When I ask for an apple I am usually not given a computer, but it could happen.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Jul 21, 2018 - 02:23pm PT
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Let's keep this simple. I have a hot tub on Euclid. I am having a group release party on December 28th. Everybody is welcome (last time was all men which was fun but I would really like to get some women this time).
Here's how it works: Five people get into my 400 gallon redwood hot tub. The temperature is a challenging 125 degrees. After a few minutes, everybody "evacuates" (voids their bowels in the tub). We see what floats to the surface.
This "letting go" stage is followed by a "coming together" stage in which each person helps the person to their left reach satisfaction (handsex). Simple and wonderful.
Some ground rules:
1) No footwear of any kind in the tub! Leave your flip flops on the deck!
2) Do not go into the house.
3) Scents are okay but please, NO GREASY HAIR PRODUCTS.
4) Please refrain from smoking.
5) Once everybody is in the tub, its silent time. No talking until everybody is out.
6) If you do not like what is "going down" (or coming up) step out of the tub. You do not need to make it everybody else's problem.
7) Please commit before showing up. Don't come out to the backyard, check out the "scene" and then decide to leave. This disrupts the experience for everybody.
8) Please no laughing or frivolity. Its not that it has to be "dead serious" but we don't want it to turn into a joke. For many people a group release party is a vulnerable psychosexual experience and your laughter can be shaming.
9) PLEASE NO LOUD TALKING AFTER THE SESSION. MY NEIGHBORS HAVE COMPLAINED SEVERAL TIMES AND HAVE THREATENED TO CALL THE POLICE.
10) If you are over two hundred pounds it is fine, but please let me know in advance.
11) PLEASE NO DIABETICS, PREGNANT WOMEN OR PEOPLE WITH HEALTH CONDITIONS WHICH MAY BE AFFECTED BY A LONG AND UNUSUALLY HIGH TEMPERATURE HOT TUB SITUATION.
12) NO DRUGS OF ANY KIND!!!!
13) Please make sure that you have eaten well and NOT EXCRETED FOR AT LEAST TWELVE HOURS before coming.
14) No food in the hot tub or on the deck. If you must eat, finish your food in your car.
15) You can park directly out front or along the street. PLEASE DO NOT PARK IN THE DRIVEWAY. If parking is limited park on POPLAR st.
16) Do not turn on the airration jets under any circumstances. This makes the party impossible to clean up afterwards and also disrupts the atmosphere in the tub.
17) Please show up on time for the session. The orientation period is extremely important and helps to insure that the party will be a success for all participants.
18) NO CAMERAS OF ANY KIND INCLUDING CAMERA PHONES. For many, the session is a "discreet" experience and respect for individual privacy concerns is of utmost importance.
19) If you have a health concern which you believe may be transmittable through personal waste material please wait for at least two weeks after the matter has cleared up before attending a session.
20) You are welcome to bring a friend PROVIDED I KNOW IN ADVANCE. Please do not show up with an extra participant. Thank you for your interest and contact me if you wish to participate.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 27, 2018 - 08:34pm PT
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That no one has found their way to the bottom of anything establishes a grand fact in my view.
Yesterday I found my way to the bottom of a jar of peanut butter.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 28, 2018 - 09:29am PT
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Jim,
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Psilocyborg’s post above was so creative and tasteless that it stunned readers into a state of emptiness.
:-)
(Besides, I suspect that many people want this thread to be over. I think I do.)
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jul 28, 2018 - 11:52am PT
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Andrea Schroeder - Ghosts Of Berlin
"She brings you flowers.
Everyday.
Can‘t you see them?
They‘re tinted grey."
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 28, 2018 - 01:36pm PT
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From my standpoint, this thread sometimes continues to be interesting when the science-minded post new ideas. The fact is, we science-minded types realize that there are a lot of aspects of consciousness that are not sufficiently understood, and insights and breakthroughs happen from time to time. When it bogs down is when Largo or MikeL interjects some, tired, "anti-scientism" points that we have hashed through a million times already.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jul 28, 2018 - 02:50pm PT
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"scientism" the religion where it is believed that science will solve all our problems. But science without wisdom is like a toddler with a gun. So what is wisdom? We all know it when we see it; and why do we often do things counter to wisdom even though we know better.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 28, 2018 - 04:21pm PT
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science without wisdom is like a toddler with a gun.
Yes!
So what is wisdom?
Wisdom is pure intelligence from the source far higher than the defective traces of materialism.
The gross materialists are all permanently under the grasp of incompleteness, illusion, and defects.
Thus all their end result always leads downward to destruction all while they masquerade themselves as advanced due to their dovetailed actions with illusion itself created within their uncontrolled minds ......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 28, 2018 - 04:38pm PT
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"scientism" the religion where it is believed that science will solve all our problems. But science without wisdom is like a toddler with a gun. So what is wisdom? We all know it when we see it; and why do we often do things counter to wisdom even though we know better.
"Scientism" works something like this; every time I step off of that cliff, I fall to the ground. Every time!
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 28, 2018 - 04:40pm PT
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That's because you FAILED to use the pure rope of intelligence ......
The "rope" is NOT and never only limited to the material plane!
The gross material rope is tied into the anchor of impermanence .....
(The consciousness of real absolute climbing)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 28, 2018 - 06:06pm PT
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"Scientism" works something like this; every time I step off of that cliff, I fall to the ground. Every time!
Not quite. You've defaulted back to a linear/physical causation model. Problem is, if you use standard reductionistic logic you find you can't say WHY we fall without going with inherent qualities at some time. Our inborn tendency to see "causes" out there is part of our makeup, but they don't actually explain anything at all. They merely describe, and we can work with that.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 28, 2018 - 08:04pm PT
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they don't actually explain anything at all. They merely describe, and we can work with that.
What would an explanation accomplish that a description cannot?
You may be guilty of sophistry.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 28, 2018 - 08:25pm PT
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What would an explanation accomplish that a description cannot?
The explanation will be completely scientific and show why you are operating in complete illusion .......
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jul 29, 2018 - 12:30am PT
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Then give an example of an explanation as different from a description in the way you see it.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 29, 2018 - 08:43am PT
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eeyonkee: . . . "anti-scientism" points that we have hashed through a million times already.
(You could read a bit more and a bit more closely.)
Marlow: Then give an example of an explanation as different from a description in the way you see it.
I think Largo is referring mostly to the wont to ascribe causality as inherent in any description. Werner is saying the same thing (I’d say): “The explanation will be completely scientific . . . .” It’s possible to describe without reference to causality.
Here’s an explanation without causality: “Manifestations are showing up in front of you.” We could describe those manifestations forever (infinitely variegated), and we’d not have to say why or how they happen, right? Look at any piece of art. Saying what any artifact’s “cause” is, leads nowhere definitive or final or complete.
(Pardon me Werner or Largo for putting words into your mouths. I know it’s unsanitary.)
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