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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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All questions are created or contrived. One will not find any questions or problems or solutions empirically.
Care to elaborate on this one MikeL? Doesn't sound like a statement that would hold up to any kind of scrutiny, particularly the second sentence. I mean, nature, of course, empirically arrives at solutions all of the time. That is what every evolutionary adaptation is, an empirically-derived solution to a "problem". Accelerated climate change is a good example of a problem
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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I thought about that statement, also. But I think MikeL is referring to exercises and projects in a formal educational environment. God knows how many math "problems" I had to solve in my course work, all of which had been solved many times by others. I found that frustrating and really sparked alive when I got to original research.
I didn't want to say anything because MikeL might call me a stalker!
;>(
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Fair enough jgill, I do have a tendency to read a post on its own rather than in its relation with preceding posts when I'm work-stressed. No need to answer, Mike.>>
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WBraun
climber
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One will not find any questions or problems or solutions empirically.
Making this kind of poor statement comes from being too far grounded in mayavadi impersonalism and is definitely not true at all .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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re: truth, varieties of truth
Paul, what do you say?
"Porcupines throw their quills."
Imagine in a certain case (eg, a tribe, 20k years ago) this instruction from parents and teachers saved a dozen children over a few centuries. (By effectively warning them to keep a very respectful distance from any porcupine whose quills can in fact kill.)
With that as a given, is it acceptable then to consider this instruction a "mythical truth" or a "metaphorical truth" or an "allegorical truth", in your opinion?
Curious, your take. Are there "truths" besides factual truths?
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Hey Werner, even if it's nothing personal it's all still nothing but Vishnu!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Me: All questions are created or contrived. One will not find any questions or problems empirically.
Sorry I’ve not been attentive to this thread.
It’s my view that things (whatever “things” really are) just are, without any need for positive or negative evaluation. There’s a tree. There’s a rapist. There’s an atom or two. My refrigerator is stainless steel. Gasoline is $2.15 a gallon. It is what it is.
To say that any thing is good or bad requires an evaluative interpretation . . . an explanation within a cultural context. To look at anything *as it is,* without any elaboration, is lucid clarity. One can look at one thing and see it one way, yet another person can look at the same thing (theoretically) and see it another way. No thing is good or bad, right or wrong, a problem or a non-problem intrinsically, in and of itself, by itself. What could be unequivocally undeniably good or bad in all instances, at all times, in any context?
Empiricism’s vision is a reality that only the senses establish and verify. No problem, no solution, no question comes through the senses. They are all the results of thinking, conceptualization, interpretation, evaluation, or assessment. Empiricism is simply sight, hearing, tactile sensation, taste, etc. No person sees, tastes, touches, etc. a problem or a solution. Questions, problems, and solutions are made-up by human actors based upon one’s or one’s community attractions and aversions.
“But hey, I just got a feeling when I put my hand over the flame!!” Right. You experienced pain, and you don’t like or want pain. If it’s a problem, it’s because you’ve decided it is a problem. (So now, you're suffering.) Evolutionary biologists and psychologists would say that pain a very positive conditioning that helps the body (and hence the species) to learn and endure.
Pain: problem or solution?
Professionally, when I first started my career as a teacher and academic, all that I was oriented to was solutions (fix, fix, fix). After a few years of that, I began to recognize patterns and categorized them as types of problems, so my attention shifted to the structures of those “problems.” While my students wanted to rush to fixing things, I advised them to slow down and be sure they were attacking “the right problem.” That became an orientation to discovering the right question to ask.
Ever heard of a Type I or Type II errors in statistics? In statistical hypothesis testing, a type I error is the incorrect rejection of a true null hypothesis (a "false positive"), while a type II error is incorrectly retaining a false null hypothesis (a "false negative"). There is also a type III error: that’s solving the wrong f*cking problem. (Consultants are known for this.)
After a number of years focusing on asking the “right questions” (from which answers would tumble out almost naturally), I began to realize that there was really no question about anything. Everything was the way it was because of causes and conditions. From my point of view, everything was perfect just as it was in that it was what it could not help but be. Given histories, people, resources, time frames, experiences, etc., all things were exactly what they could not help but be.
Although things might be difficult, challenging, painful, etc., those were simply my interpretations.
“Yeah, but what about a Hitler, a Trump, a hurricane, a drought, a raging wildfire, cancer, the genocide in Darfur!!?? Are those things perfect??” They are what they are. They are the results of causes and conditions, which are themselves the results of causes and conditions . . . and so forth.
If you’re like my wife, you’ll immediately ask if you should just commit suicide or sit around and vegetate . . . you know, do nothing, especially since everything is perfect. My response to that is to be who or what you cannot help but be. It’s a grand divine drama. Everyone has a role to play. Everyone’s an actor, so act.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Guess I was being a little too charitable in my analysis. MikeL is what MikeL is.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Sep 12, 2017 - 01:53pm PT
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HFCS, nice post.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 13, 2017 - 10:23pm PT
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Accelerated climate change is a good example of a problem.
Yea, if all your wealth was invested in Key West real estate, that definitely looks like a problem!
But if you're dirt poor, and had borrowed tooth and nail to short sell that real estate, it probably looks more like a solution.
But it's hard to figure out which it is without a perspective. For the climate change resistant organisms on earth, or their descendants, it's maybe not such a bad deal.
As much as we humans like to admire ourselves for being the pinnacle of evolution's solution, we may start looking more like a problem before too long.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 17, 2017 - 02:13pm PT
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re: The story behind Quillette
Taking Risks to Move the Culture Forward
An interview with Claire Lehmann, founder of an online magazine for free thought...
I think that we are simply offering up an alternative to the blank slate view of human nature that appears to be dominant within the media ecosystem.
"The blank slate view, which is the idea that who we are is entirely or predominantly the product of culture and socialization, is very common in left-leaning media."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/more-mortal/201709/taking-risks-move-the-culture-forward
"It’s kind of ironic, because the convergent evidence coming out of evolutionary psychology, biology, behavioural genetics and neuroscience that falsifies this blank slate view is simply incontrovertible at this point, but most of the media, and even the popular science media keep clinging to it. At times it’s just embarrassing."
...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1MZ8U8C9c8
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 18, 2017 - 09:21pm PT
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Neil deGrasse Tyson “Save the Humans”
How is he gonna do that?
He can't even save himself nor does he know how.
So he's all bullsh!t until he can save himself first .......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 19, 2017 - 08:49pm PT
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Sir Edmund perhaps. At least I hope so.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 20, 2017 - 07:34am PT
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Jgill,
One points a person to a phenomenon, and then one becomes mystified that other person sees something very differently.
It’s a wonder, isn’t it?
Not even science corrects this so-called problem.
Isn’t this why we’re always arguing with each other?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 21, 2017 - 04:51pm PT
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With Tenzing below it HFCS was joking.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Sep 21, 2017 - 05:33pm PT
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Some nice links, HFCS!
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