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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Technical jobs generally make for a good living --while most artists and writers continue to starve in their ages long struggle against obscurity.
Which path is more rewarding/fulfilling? Or does it really make any difference? Is it all dependent on the individual? What directs some to an interest in science and technology and some to the arts? The mind is an interesting thing, no doubt.
Seems there are many climbers who are drawn to the scientific and technical and yet are out pursuing the absolutely useless and impractical goal of getting to the top of some rock... a little like artists perhaps celebrating something that has no practical use..
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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I'm a lucky one I guess - drawn to the intersection of them all - the sciences, arts, humanities and, last but not least, sports. Woo hoo!!!!
"a little like artists perhaps celebrating something that has no practical use"
Applies to some arts, I suppose; certainly not all.
.....
The only form of literature I don't really enjoy - poetry. Although I do understand it has its place (like crochet or calligraphy) and a few lines to come my way are pretty good. Eg, "caught between two worlds, one dead the other powerless to be born" - that's pretty good.
No interest in opera either. Although I'd probably feel differently if I spoke Italian or I lived in NYC or Chicago and the opera were in English. Maybe.
From a historical perspective, perhaps poetry would have more interest nowadays (opera too) if music (esp empowered by today's electronics) weren't the juggernaut it is.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Seems there are many climbers who are drawn to the scientific and technical and yet are out pursuing the absolutely useless and impractical goal of getting to the top of some rock... a little like artists perhaps celebrating something that has no practical use.
The pursuit of the useless. Love it!
That's what being retired is all about.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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No interest in opera either. Although I'd probably feel differently if I spoke Italian or I lived in NYC or Chicago and the opera were in English. Maybe.
These days plenty of local opera companies. San Jose has a terrific one. Local movie theaters often present performances live from New York, at least they were doing that fairly recently. Most opera companies now use a system of subtitles (super titles) above the stage so you can follow the dialogue easily. Good to read the libretto before hand. The artificiality of opera presents human emotion in a way that is incredibly powerful. Go see La Boheme when you get a chance and I'll bet your "mind" changes.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Rigoletto, Pagliacci, La Traviata, La Boheme, Carmen, Tosca, Il Trovatore, all great operas.
My wife took me to one or two and I and grew to love it, although it was definitely an acquired taste. A completely different scene than I found with most of the adventure sports crowd, somewhat like the symphony, only better in many ways...like a circus.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Anawwhatchamean
Finally was able to put into words something about the limits of scientific inquiry. It's not a complicated or deep thought but it helped me clarify something I understood for my own thinking purposes.
The scientific method is not very applicable to events observable once by a single observer.
That is a lot of stuff. Ties into trial law a great deal.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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The scientific method is not very applicable to events observable once by a single observer
Paranormal? Visitation by angels?
Opera: I'd go with Wagner, with Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 6, 2015 - 04:24am PT
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Does "events observed once by a single observer" also mean "wu." Are the two one and the same? And if so, why?
One time down at Middle Cathedral I was there all alone in the morning and a big rock fell down the DNB. Was this wu?
And Dingus said:
numerical representation, and that nothing real is beyond or outside its purview.
Silly strawman arguments, tired by any measure.
So Dingus, kindly list that which you believe is totally outside the purview of numerical representation. If you can't, said strawman stands.
JL
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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totally outside the purview of numerical representation.
totally outside the purview of numerical representation.
totally outside the purview of numerical representation.
????????????????????????????????????????????
Three Cheers,
The love*(value) I have for life
The loveI*(Value)I have . . .
The Love*(Value) For wife and Family as it is. . .
FOR THE VALUE OF CLIMBIN' totally outside the purview of numerical representation.
I THINK IT FITS AS TO WHAT YOU ASKED OF DINGUS, no?
(I know, a vague definition, of value compared to what?)
said the good YoYo, oops Yogi.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 6, 2015 - 07:38am PT
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Dingus, if you have followed this thread for years, as most of us have, a repeated belief from many staunch quantifiers is that nothing in reality lies outside of scientific inquiry, that numerical proof is the highest form of knowledge since it is testable, and that whatever we can talk about is owing to antecedent material causes which "sourced" or even "created" that in question.
It follows that any genuine truth can be scientifically represented, and since the language of science is measurements, if Faust, or the poems of Wallace Stevens, for example, contains true knowledge, than said truth can be scientifically rendered - perhaps into an even more coherent forms - by way of numbers or formulai. After all, what truth did Stevens chase down when he said, "The palm at the end of the mind, beyond the last thought, rises in the bronze decor." Do you REALLY believe there is any actual truth in that, or is it just feelings and subjective tones rendered into words?
Now if you are saying that I am being ridiculous, then kindly tell the group WHAT, exactly, DOES lie beyond scientific inquiry, and what manner of truth is beyond measuring?
JL
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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re: dealing in bullshit / dealers in bullsh#t
It seems no level of the human condition is exempt.
From bullshit and its dealers, that is.
Thank goodness for science and its everyday, everywhere proof of validity in the arts of engineering.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sully!!!1
Your 6-hour drive today...
brought to you by science principles and engineering arts... your drive capitalizing on relentless, unerring causation start to finish... your drive manifesting in material hardware and software from the get-go... your drive made possible by way of a very many minds and hands of experts, their expertise hard-won through lots of hard work (eg, heavy lifting in the sciences / engineering sciences).
Enjoy!
.....
"an Elizabethan formula with quatrains in iambic pentameter ending with a couplet..." -Sul
Awesome!
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WBraun
climber
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your drive made possible by way of a very many minds and hands of experts,
No it wasn't.
The original gross materials within the earth to actually build and manipulate the gross physical energies to build the vehicles was already there.
The consciousness to manipulate the gross physical material energies was already there.
Thinly veiled plagiarism is all you have since mankind is never fully independent.
All knowledge ultimately descends.
The modern gross materialists use the inferior ascending process of gaining knowledge and thus remain ultimately in poor fund of knowledge ....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 6, 2015 - 09:03am PT
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Those are your words, its your windmill to tilt, not mine.
You just defaulted out of a perfectly lucid question. Those are my words, but not my beliefs - whatsoever. For example, ask a lunker like Fruity what lies outside of scientific quantification, or "what is not material." And if it defies numerical representation, it is unreal and cannot be spoken of in terms of being "true."
A more interesting question concerns the idea of objective truths about subjective matters.
JL
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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O Puerile Rube / Silly Wabbit!!!1
what is physical, ie energy-material, and (b) what is quantifiable (or numerical) are two very different things.
But I get the fact that this is a pt of confusion for you and others. NBD.
.....
btw,
What the view from Earth would look like if we had Saturn's rings...
Here's a pretty good lecture by physicist "Mad Max" Tegmark at the 2011 Singularity Summit. Not the best video audio but he raises at least three distinct, really cool thought-provoking ideas all concerning the future of life long-term.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GctnYAYcMhI
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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HFCS: The only form of literature I don't really enjoy - poetry. Although I do understand it has its place (like crochet or calligraphy) and a few lines to come my way are pretty good.
In the end, there can be no argument with any idea, inference, or evaluation such as this in principle. There is no final accounting for taste.
Poetry gives us descriptions with language in its own ways that is hardly dissimilar to what prose, any field of science, or wu provides. None of them describe any object of experience accurately or completely. Everything is a tentative expression of one ever-changing seamless reality. Any and all descriptions of IT rely upon the forms of example, similes, metaphors, sounds, rhythmics, symbolisms, and others. But none of those forms present concrete and final determinations.
No moment is exactly the same; so, each can be savored for what occurs at that precise time. All phenomena are equal in that they are all unique. All unique, all phenomena have one taste to them.
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WBraun
climber
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example, similes, metaphors, sounds, rhythmics, symbolisms, and others. But none of those forms present concrete and final determinations.
Sound can if properly made.
There are certain sound vibrations that are not material.
This knowledge is far far beyond fruitcakes and DMT's realm .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dingus, if you have followed this thread for years, as most of us have, a repeated belief from many staunch quantifiers is that nothing in reality lies outside of scientific inquiry, that numerical proof is the highest form of knowledge since it is testable, and that whatever we can talk about is owing to antecedent material causes which "sourced" or even "created" that in question.
I think I've been following a different thread... if I am among the "staunch quantifiers" I don't believe that I've ever stated "... that numerical proof is the highest form of knowledge since it is testable...". Further, while I do believe that we apply all of our ways of knowing to understand "reality," I for one, apply science to many such attempts at understanding.
As a method it has a lot to recommend it.
However, Largo continually harps on the point that since he believes somethings cannot be so studied, that the method is demonstrably incapable of answering the questions he is demanding an answer to, that is prima facie evidence that science cannot answer those questions.
It is Largo's literary affectations to draw caricatures and then claim them to be fully featured fact that has this thread going on so long.
But that my readings on "experimental philosophy" have given me another interesting idea, and one that resonates with the oft used "evolution" card that gets played (but often not at a level of detail that makes it much more than any of the other cards that get played).
To wit, when the "philosophical" positions of many people are "tested" (usually in surveys, and the usual audiences are undergraduate introductory philosophy classes) the "common sense" that Largo, and other, philosophers claim seems not to be supported. While there are many details available (see my links up-thread, you won't but I'm not going to bother finding them, having done it once already) one intriguing conclusion is that we might actually inherit ideas.
So our predisposition to a particular way of thought might have features that are inherited.
Upon being faced with this "conclusion" from the studies it seems obvious. Not only that, but one can understand the "evolutionary logic" of such a mechanism, and it is a mechanism mediated through our genetic inheritance. While anathema to those who would posit that "mind" cannot have a material origin, a consequence of it having material origin, and that thought conveys any evolutionary advantage (as many have stated here, both in jest and in seriousness, scientists and artists) then we would find "mind" as a part of that evolutionary process.
A process that provides a causal chain from life early in the history of Earth to present times. A process not requiring anything other than the physical "laws" to happen.
So making the conjecture that "ideas" are inheritable, one finds that trying to convince someone of something other than what they've been wired to think would be a daunting, and perhaps fruitless, task. Being convinced of your own "free will" is an example, and if you were wired with such convictions how would you ever be convinced otherwise?
A fine irony.
The utility, in evolutionary terms, would be to have a diversity of attributes and behaviors that may lead to successful survival adaptations, largely to continue the 3.4 billion year chemical process known as "life on Earth" of which we, humans, are a recent result.
The way I'm "wired," the fact that we humans are not exceptional is a much more beautiful and noble idea than any of the alternatives.
YMMV, IMHO
can Largo prove that he is not so wired?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"one intriguing conclusion is that we might actually inherit ideas..." Edh
Compare...
One intriguing conclusion is that we might actually inherit our intuitions (moral intuitions, sexual intuitions, etc.).
This is a core interest of evolutionary psychology, of course.
YMMV...
Yes.
It's really too bad we don't occupy that very rare solar system in the MW where we could have the opportunity to emigrate to similar sibling goldi-lock planets and then have the opportunity somehow to speciate according to our wants - our evolutionary instincts and intuitions and our developed and developing interests.
Schucks.
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WBraun
climber
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"one intriguing conclusion is that we might actually inherit ideas..." Edh
Yes, the materially condition souls remain on that platform.
That is why one must transcend the limitations of that defective platform.
That then becomes true science .....
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