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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 26, 2015 - 05:04pm PT
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The goal is truth, truth of experience and reality just gets in the way.
And underneath that, your nervous system is a good emphasizer and extrapolator. It takes edges and sharpens them by taking the derivative. Your nervous system tries to look into what is going to be reality in the near future. It takes input from the present reality and what it can remember of past reality, but it doesn't stop there. It looks ahead.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 26, 2015 - 06:01pm PT
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The goal is truth, truth of experience and reality just gets in the way.
but then how do we know what is true?
Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!
is one interpretation of "an experience" that is based on "experience" but is not true... of course, the USA went to war with Spain over it...
The explanation that the Spanish were responsible was a good story, and the belief in the truth had some rather somber consequences.
I'm sure that Hearst and Pulitzer may have thought that "reality" just gets in the way...
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
attributed to Karl Rove in a Ron Suskind NYTimes article...
A good story, and certainly Rove thought this was "the truth"
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 26, 2015 - 08:51pm PT
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but then how do we know what is true?
When one has reached "Touchstone" ....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Oct 26, 2015 - 11:16pm PT
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Largo, in this essay, is careful to "set the record straight" on the actual experience, which I find very interesting. While Largo insists on the importance of the "objective" and the utilitarian application of it, here he is pushing on the "subjective."
I think the point here is the search for balance. Especially for folks in the liberal arts, the issue is to see many points of view. Anytime dogmatism arises, we are supposed to shoot it down. We started out arguing that the scientists were downright dogmatic in their refutation of the dogmatic nature of religion and now we've progressed to the nature of mind and what is objective and subjective and whether "truth" can be measured.
If the majority on this thread were New Age believers, a lot of the myth makers and mystics here would probably be arguing for science. Since the majority are scientists, some of us try to argue that there's more than just being objective. In reality, most of us on this thread are both objective and subjective and not so one sided in the way we live our lives. That's why we can still talk to each other.
Try reading a thread like "Climber shot in Ten Sleep" if you want to appreciate how rational and balanced everyone on this thread is in comparison.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Oct 27, 2015 - 02:39am PT
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Oct 27, 2015 - 05:58am PT
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Good one Bushy, I've not been sleeping well and trying to follow along.
Seems that an only I
And I alone can Understand what is mind.
Now do you all know?
the answer is. ,. . .
BLUE
A silver hue'd BLUE!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 27, 2015 - 08:15am PT
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but then how do we know what is true?
Discerning the truth is never simply easy. But there is much truth in fiction and story telling and exaggeration. There are great truths in literature from Job to Virginia Wolfe... little of which is real and much of which is exaggerated. Ironic, don't you think?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 27, 2015 - 09:11am PT
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There are great truths in literature from Job to Virginia Wolfe... little of which is real and much of which is exaggerated. Ironic, don't you think?
not so much, the irony is in what we term "truth"
Paul may identify with Wolfe, her social class and the privilege she derived from it, and not so much with the other people in England at the time, most of who certainly did not have the time to pen great literature. That is the nobility of Wolfe... the true nobility.
What is the "great truth" and how do you learn about it? What is preserved and what is not? and just how much of the total amount of literature has been read by anyone, and the "great truths" extracted from that literature?
Along with "great truths" there are many "great lies" and telling the difference may not only be difficult, but might change with the times.
The Bible is a set of edited books, and there are books not included by the "editors." What constituted "great truth"? who and how were the decisions made to include what was included? And what of the discarded material?
No doubt this was done with the utmost taste, as dictated by the prevailing notions of what is "true" by a set of people (most likely men) convinced of their own rectitude.
There's the irony... what we take to be "truth" may not be, and it is a greater irony when we talk about "great truth."
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2015 - 09:30am PT
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Absolute "Truth" is never extracted it is always revealed.
The gross materialists always try to extract the truth independently.
It's impossible to do that way as the living entity is eternally dependent.
The gross materialist always say "There is no need for God" and simultaneously imitating God all while being completely dependent on God eternally.
Thus the gross materialists are ultimately "stupid".
The gross materialists creating the Cern instrument for trying to extract is the classic foolish mistake of their work.
No material instrument can reveal the "Truth".
The living entity is not material but encased within a subtle and gross material body according to the consciousness it has developed in both it's previous life and present ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 27, 2015 - 09:36am PT
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I think I agree with you about "Truth"
that is not the aim of science...
and I also agree that "Truth" is totally subjective... and therein the great irony.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 27, 2015 - 09:47am PT
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"...about "Truth"... that is not the aim of science... and I also agree that "Truth" is totally subjective..." EdH
Aughghhhh!!!! :( :(
With all due respect, that (your latest post) is just plain awful.
(1) You bring confusion to a subject (which is already confusing enough ) by not explaining either yourself or the context in which you say so (eg, that "truth is not the aim of science").
(2) You just reinforced the bronze age nonsense and superstition (eg ghost in the machine superstition), the blind baseless claims, and the will and determination of this thread's vulgar, foul-mouthed, childish, science-disrespecting, insolent bully.
And we wonder why science brings with it, and has, such difficulty.
:(
No wonder we can never get it together.
Yet you can quibble over the linearity or nonlinearity of Ohm's law. AMAZING!
More irony for us, I guess.
:(
.....
Anyone who's graduated with a science degree (if not a high school student who's about to get A's in physics and chemistry and biology) in ten minutes could list a dozen truths (no I won't put the word in quotes) about how the world works that's been REVEALED BY SCIENCE in the last few hundred years.
ALL OF WHICH IN EACH CASE WAS THE AIM OF THE SCIENCE AT HAND AS WELL.
No I don't value obfuscation when it comes to nature investigation via science.
.....
What I can gather from my internet readings over the last several years is that (a) by and large liberal arts graduates are a breed apart; (2) many a "higher" math and "higher" physics science type are a breed apart.
So the lessons I guess... (1) This explains a lot. (2) Be wary. Be wary! (e.g if aim or goal is consensus).
.....
Thank atheist god - yes thank you!! - for the likes of Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins and Neil dG Tyson... and yes Peter Atkins and Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking too... WHO HELP KEEP US STRAIGHT.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:04am PT
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Paul may identify with Wolfe, her social class and the privilege she derived from it, and not so much with the other people in England at the time, most of who certainly did not have the time to pen great literature. That is the nobility of Wolfe... the true nobility.
This is pure sophistry. The idea that class and privilege are the markers of authorship in literature is plainly false. The list of struggling, poor authors with great truths to tell is endless. They include the greatest of all from Wordsworth to James Joyce and a host of others. The bible may be the most published book in history and has been read by millions. The notion that literature, fiction and its appreciation is a function of class is just ridiculous.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:15am PT
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maybe it takes a certain science type - or even a certain character personality - and clearly you are not it.
No? Yes.
Yes, it DOES explain a lot.
Yes, ED H and I do not have consensus (either regarding Ohm's Law, it use, eg; or even "truth" sadly).
Yes, Paul and I do not have consensus (based on our different schools of thinking, eg how one should think about/define "truth" or "religion" or...).
Case closed.
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jstan
climber
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:22am PT
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"...about "Truth"... that is not the aim of science... and I also agree that "Truth" is totally subjective..." EdH
I would try to make more nuanced the argument developing on this.
If you read posts on ST you discern right away that everyone ( absent trolling) speaks what they take to be "The Truth". In that context "The Truth" is all over the place. Factually it is known the truth of the bible was the opinion, at the time it was published, of some subset of the individuals alive at the time.
So if we extend this factual record we have to talk in terms of "personal truths" and "socially important truths".
In this context all of the arguments on ST are attempts to arbitrate into which groups the various expressions fall. Humans love to deal in absolutes.
There aren't any. Sooner or later we find hair on everything.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:27am PT
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I would try to make more nuanced the argument developing on this.
Exactly.
You just don't make a statement, a provocative, super easily misconstrued statement like that - without clarification and context and every step. Or it leads to confusion, obfuscation, misunderstanding, needless argument, anti-science sentiments and throwbacks.
Hydrogen and oxygen compose water. That is a truth. That is a scientific truth. That is a truth about how matter is structured in our world, a truth that was revealed by science. Truth. Truth. Truth.
That hydrogen and bromine compose water is a falsehood. That H and Br compose water is NOT A TRUTH.
When people mean to communicate about different "models of truth" or different "versions of truth" or about personal, social or cultural "perceived truths" or "provisional truths" or "truth-claims" ("claims to truth") then they should say so.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:33am PT
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Factually it is known the truth of the bible was the opinion, at the time it was published, of some subset of the individuals alive at the time.
The truths found in the bible are not necessarily in the "facts" it purports to declare. Any scientist/fact finder/ truth seeker/ atheist can read Job and see within that text great, yes great, wisdom and a sublime truth: the universe is overwhelming in comparison to our being and our minds and we are humbled by it.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:33am PT
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The bible may be the most published book in history and has been read by millions.
And Danielle Steel has sold 800 million copies - neither is exactly a font of the 'truth'.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:36am PT
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And Danielle Steel has sold 800 million copies - neither is exactly a font of the 'truth'.
As someone extolling the virtues of logic and rational thought do you realize the absurdity and irrelevance of that statement?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:40am PT
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do you realize the absurdity and irrelevance of that statement? -Paul
You are a breed apart, Paul. In large part due to your definitions, the language of your "school," no doubt.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Oct 27, 2015 - 10:43am PT
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Facts are different than truths.
And as jstan says, personal truths are different than social truths.
Certain societies work better than others. That is a fact.
In a highly individualistic society such as ours, personal truths often get confused for social truths.
It is up to the social scientist to try to figure out what facts of well functioning societies might be universal truths that others could incorporate to their advantage. If an individual's truths refuse to accept the facts, then not much can be done.
One of the greatest hindrances to the collection of facts let alone any discernment of truths is the person who is a true believer in something whatever the cause. Believing in science as a cure all for human and social ails is just another religion.
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