
Did anything ever happen in the sky
That is not happening now?
And is what we see now
All there ever was?
Did anything ever happen in the sky
That is not happening now?
And is what we see now
All there ever was?
Funny how we can learn so very much
About the nature of things
While ignoring so very much
About the nature of us!
The statistician will collect and publish statistics about how people are, and the rest of the world tends to take those stats as rules. And in doing so, they often draw some bad conclusions. For instance, when some certain ailments show up a lot in the elderly, it’s easy to assume that the ailment happens because they are elderly, rather than because they’ve been doing some certain bad habit long enough for it to start showing up in disease. We see alarming rates of disease, so we jump to conclusions about the causes, without ever stopping to give due consideration to the question, “Why aren’t all the elderly suffering from this disease?”
Continue reading Statistics Aren’t the Same as RulesIt is easier to assume—
When one finds it beneficial—
That what we see now is all there ever was.
And thus, by that simple trick in the mind,
Are destroyed in one’s imagination
The possibility of any of a number of
Things previously reported—
To wit, God and Jesus and the angels,
(Holy and otherwise)
And heaven and the underworld
And the giants and the spirits
And the flood and the other miracles.
In my frequent discussions about truth/reality, I’m often asked a question of this general sort:
“But which reality? The one about how things actually are, or the one that people perceive or believe?”
It’s a very common point of confusion in our society, yet to me, the difference between the two is like night and day. The definition of reality that I use goes something like this:
Continue reading But WHICH Reality?In the entire history of the Planet Earth, not once has any person done an impossible thing.
The truth of that statement should be self evident. The real trick is in figuring out what it should mean for us. For one thing, it tends to rob of us our common excuses, for other people sometimes do things that we have told ourselves are impossible to do. Continue reading Impossibility
These are my notes for:
What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought
by Keith E. Stanovich
This book is profoundly important as it highlights a crucial deficit in the American awareness of its own cognitive health. I found this book in a deliberate search for answers to the question of why so many people are irrational in their beliefs and behaviors. To my own surprise and delight, the book challenged my own irrationality, exposing it on a number of test problems that I answered incorrectly.
As you read the notes below, it is important to understand that the author defines rational thinking as thinking that jibes with reality. For example, 2+2=5 is an irrational expression because it does not jibe with reality. (2+2 actually equals 4.) Similarly, if Jack took a notion to become a child actress, this would be an irrational notion since Jack can neither become a child nor a female in reality.
A recurring theme throughout the book is that of the “cognitive miser”, the person who refuses to “spend” any more cognitive energy than he is forced to expend. Stanovich argues that we all tend to be cognitive misers. I would have argued with him on this point before reading the book, because I can directly observe that I spend a great deal more time thinking about things than do most. But even so, his test questions proved that I also tend to jump off the cognitive train too early at times, taking an easier answer when a harder answer was necessary to match with reality. So even though I came to this book in search of information, I was taken to school by the book—and that’s very exciting to me.
Interesting Quotations
The Christian thinks his philosophy is better than that of the Atheist, for he detects in the Atheist some illogical argumentation here and there. And he sees the dogmatic spirit in the Atheist and declares “Atheism is a religion, too!”
Meanwhile, the Atheist sees widespread hypocrisy in Christianity and declares that it is but a myth that some god empowers and guides the Christians. He sees their dogmatism and their frequent irrationality and declares that religion is but an “opiate” for the masses. Continue reading The Mutual Repulsion Society
Every once in a while, someone inquires about my “world view”. Here it is: