He was the opposite of a liberal progressive, or socialist
I know they used the word Socialist in their Title, but it was German, it can be interpreted as Nationalism and a Fascist State
The Skeptics are all about proving what's true, and what's fiction
and the Werner speculations are pure fiction
The Skeptics can assure you that the Sun will rise tomorrow
and the truth is well accounted for on our side,
as opposed to the side of fantasy and ancient books of myths posing as gospel
The story is one of human drama. I delivered a paper that followed this one, at an international meeting at Luminy, outside Marseille, in the fall of 1989. Then, Lisa Lorentzen, a colleague from the University of Trondheim, delivered a paper that considerably generalized mine, to my astonishment. All this happened during a single session.
What a mixture of feelings this provoked! A little like making a FA of a boulder problem, only to see someone walk up to it and say, "I did that without using your crucial hold." ;>)
If only I didn't like soloing so much - in math as well as climbing. Had I communicated with her, we would have had a joint theorem. Nevertheless, sometimes it is called by both our names - a kindness I appreciate.
Alas, in all of this, the math stayed pristine and pure, uncontaminated by our efforts, and supported by analytical inspection that made nary a symbol waver.
Infinite Compositions of Moebius Transformations was my thesis, appearing in the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society back in the 1970s.
I am looking for some explanation of how those biases alter the observation of how bodies of differing mass accelerate in a gravitational field [regarding observation of a ball rolling down a ramp].
MH2:
You seem to think that observation cannot avoid seeing what is real. I'm saying that observations can be distorted because they depend upon many things that are not unequivocal or unambiguous. What is acceleration, what is a body, what is gravitation, what is an experiment, why do people do experiments, what is an observer, and how do all those objects relate to one another?
At the base of your argument, aren't you saying that there are real, concrete, independently existent things in the universe, that you know what they are incontrovertibly through repeated observations, and that you know or can surely know how they relate to one another?
I have doubts about the veracity of observations because I think the crucial link in research is a deeply flawed instrument that cannot be depended upon to be objective--human beings.
Don't take this as a slam, you seem to be a believer in simple realism: there are things out in the world, words make reference to the things in the world unequivocally, and concepts adequately describe all the important parts. I don't. I think that there are no objects in the world that are concretely and independently existent, I question whether there are separate multiple objects at all, I don't think that words refer to things in the world on a 1:1 basis (it's all semantics), and I see concepts as socially constructed.
You then say, "how can bias affect an observation" (especially an external, physical one)?
I don't think you can imagine it--much less see any of it in life.
Ed:
I don't think I've ever said your vision is limited.
If you can read math as a narrative, great. Most people who have talked about narratives, stories, and dramas traditionally, don't. I know that these days narratives can also mean a message, but I'd have problems with that notion literarily.
If you have an argument with different forms of knowledge structures, it's just a theory.
I don't mean to be profound. I don't even believe in profundity.
(I'd say that Jogill's paper does not present a story, but that he told a story about it.)
I don't think that words refer to things in the world on a 1:1 basis
One word per thing? I don't think that's the case, either. But how about using combinations of words to refer to things?
At the base of your argument, aren't you saying that there are real, concrete, independently existent things in the universe, that you know what they are incontrovertibly through repeated observations, and that you know or can surely know how they relate to one another?
What I would say is that the world behaves as if there are real things in the universe and that we can learn about how they relate to one another. I don't require that knowledge be incontrovertible. It is good to question the materialist view but I don't see what your basis is for opposing it. If you cannot explain and/or I cannot understand what you mean, where can we go from there? I acknowledge that 'reality' could be quite different from what we think it is, but whatever mysterious reality there may be, it has so far failed to show in the interwoven tapestry of empirical knowledge. If you want to make a case about how the world works you need evidence.
If you have an argument with different forms of knowledge structures, it's just a theory.
Just a theory? are not those terms mutually exclusive? Sorry for the drift but there's nothing more agravating than the term "just a theory"...... well maybe a two by four to the head, but you know what I mean. Lets leave "just a theory" for people like Michelle Bachman ot Herman Cain.
I'd say that Jogill's paper does not present a story, but that he told a story about it
jogill can answer why he choose to tell the story he did...
I suppose I could have spun a tale out of mathematical symbols, carefully describing the adventure of discovery, but even that isn't what MikeL means. His journey into the substratum of thought is pleasantly nihilistic, though unproductive and . . .
"You wanted to run away, did you? But my war club overtook you. And after you were cooked, you made food for my mouth. And where is your father? He is cooked. And where is your brother? He is eaten. And where is your wife? There she sits, a wife for me. And where are your children? There they are, with loads on their backs, carrying food, as my slaves."
a Maori warrior taunting the preserved head of an enemy chief
Source: eyewitness account by a missionary of the Maori, referenced in The Angles of Our Better Nature, Steven Pinker, 2011
Civilization's come a long way. We hope we can figure out life strategies now and in the future to continued better living - so we never return to such lives nasty, brutish and short.
What I know about stories (prose) I got from my undergraduate major and further readings for articles I was trying to write as new professor. Stories express our deepest thoughts, feelings, and experiences about humanity and life--according to a given author. Whether stories are comedies, romances, tragedies, or ironies, there is almost always a protagonist who experiences an "inciting event." That inciting event destabilizes the protagonist's world, and he or she or they attempt to regain the old equilibrium. To do so, he, she, or they need will. Without will they are powerless, and there is no story. With will, they reach out to reacquire the equilibrium state, but antagonists push back and thwart the protagonist. That leads to an ever-increasing escalation. During the escalation, readers learn who the characters are, what they want, and why they want what they want. The most important characters show development in story--that is, up until the protagonist gets fed up or pushed to the limit. Then the protagonist makes a life-changing decision ("a crisis"). From that point there forward, nothing will ever quite be the same. What plays out then in the action is called "the climax," and there is often a denouement where we learn how everything realized a new (or the old) equilibrium after the fact.
An author must work out plots, premises, believable protagonists and antagonists, and a host of supportive characters (with less depth) that intertwine into an overarching story. Major or minor protagonists and antagonists can be personal, societal, psychic, physical, or emotional. How a plot is structured (positive to/from negative?) and a protagonist's capabilities (super, great, common, or pitiful?) help to place a story within broad genres (comedy, romance, irony, tragedy).
The greatest stories seem to be stories about heroes. Invariably the heroes greatest challenge is himself or herself. Through an internal psychic struggle, a protagonist transforms into another being. The focus is personal, life-altering, change. All stories present struggle and change. If not, there is nothing to keep readers interested or give audiences the kind of satisfaction they expect and need.
Stories that stay in equilibrium and never get out it are boring. Stories that show change in character but with no appropriate struggle against an equal antagonist leave readers unconvinced. Stories that exhibit struggle but no change in the protagonist don't say much to us either, as they provide no satisfying catharsis.
Readers do not need to be surprised by endings; often stories give readers more than enough cues sub-textually that readers know exactly how stories are going to end.
Satisfying stories simultaneously give readers emotional experiences with an equally powerful insights. Irrespective of whether the story presents an ending that is good or bad or ironic, readers think, "Yup, life is pretty much like that" (In real life, insight usually come long long after emotional climaxes.) Stories don't say what life is; they say what life is like.
Literature has changed much over the past 50-60 years. Some stories present plotless description upon description, hypnotically lulling readers into a dream-like states. Other stories jump back and forth from fantasy to realism seamlessly, presenting an alternative reality not of this universe. Recently, contemporary literary critics tend to focus on pure structural analysis of how an author narrates a story; "narratology" is especially critical of how authors lead us. That postmodern concern has been applied to work in the sciences, which is partially where I come from. As Foucault said: "Texts refer only to themselves," not to reality.
What's great about good stories is that they place readers intimately into imaginatively different worlds. They demand readers suspend their most basic judgments and give up notions of "how things are" so they can see things outside their comfort zones in "as if" worlds. Literature tries to show us that life and "how things are" could be radically different than what people believe. As Fernando Solanas entreated, in his book "Toward a Third Cinema":
The existence of revolutionary cinema is inconceivable with the constant and methodical exercise of practice, search, and experimentation. It even means committing the new filmmaker to take chances on the unknown, to leap into space at times, exposing himself to failure as does the guerrilla who travels along paths he himself opens up with machete blows. The possibility of discovering and inventing film forums and structures that serve a more profound vision of our reality resides in our ability to place oneself on the outside limits of the familiar, to make one’s way amid constant dangers.
"Inconceivable?" "Without methodical practice, search, and experimentation"?? How could that possibly show anyone anything?
**Solanas is an Argentine filmmaker, most famous for La Hora de los Hornos, an epic revolutionary documentary set in the midst of political turmoil in Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s.
I don't know why it dawned on me before (I'm so stupid), but here I am occasionally claiming that the emperor may not be wearing any clothes to people who have commitments and investments in the things that I show doubt about. The power and pervasiveness to which responses come at me sometimes indicate there is more than ideas under consideration.
I'd like to shift the conversation, to use the posts on this thread as observations. What is it about ideologies, worldviews, concepts, theories, frameworks, etc. that make them so emotionally charged that conversations about them give rise to ridicule, ad hominems, back-handed retorts, and exaggerated declarations of what a person "was REALLY saying?"
Without justifying or admonishing a particular position or person, why do you think people take such things so seriously and personal? Is it the nature of internet (blind) interactions, is it the people who show up on these threads, is it the things discussed (ideologies, etc.), or what?
(I guess I'm more interested in this topic than I am about philosophy of science.)
here I am occasionally claiming that the emperor may not be wearing any clothes to people who have commitments and investments in the things that I show doubt about.
As really we're just motes of dust in the background of your brilliance, I'm surprised you're willing to post here at all.
.....
I'd like to shift the conversation, to use the posts on this thread as observations. What is it about ideologies, worldviews, concepts, theories, frameworks, etc. that make them so emotionally charged
why do you think people take such things so seriously and personal?
In a nutshell that perhaps only we motes can understand: (1) Beliefs matter. (2) Egos are required to push those beliefs that lead to change, making a difference; without them we're screwed. (3) We all have to get on with living in precarious if not dangerous times even as others fiddle.
Thank good ness for the internet and these forums, I say. Better to hash out - or hack out - these ideomachies or culture wars on the internet than on the more traditional battlefields of bricks and sticks (e.g., Dunkirk, etc.) where actual blood can be spilt, skulls crushed, and limbs hacked off.
.....
Here's a final thought to this post: Why do some people go too far? Why do some people over-philosophize subjects that don't need it esp if their aim or objective is some actual, practical problem solving? Perhaps it's habit? Or perhaps they don't see a clearer or more direct approach to what they seek?
"History is littered with doomsdays that have come and gone. The end of civilisation seems to hold a morbid fascination for people, through a combination of grim excitement over how the end might come, and more individual thoughts of our own extinction.
"The Mayans did not predict anything bad for today. Their calendar has simply run out. Nothing more, nothing less. But that has not stopped people preparing – inasmuch as it is possible to prepare for the apocalypse. For all the nonsense, there have been implications for the real world.
In parts of Russia, people have stockpiled candles, salt, matches and torches. In France, police are keeping an eye on Bugarach, one of two villages said to be safe havens. In the other, Şirince in Turkey, the locals are making a mint out of the influx of tourists. From Italy comes a report of a lawyer who had a bunker built beneath his villa, all in time for today.
The world will not end today, but the doomsday myth will surely weave itself into the day's events. Join us as we report all things apocalyptic around the globe."
"For the business minded, every crisis is an opportunity. And so it is proving to be for the Mayan nations of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras which are aiming to cash in on the end of world hype.
Between them, these four countries expect almost a million extra visitors this week thanks to a series of special programmes to mark the end of a 5,125-year cycle of the Mayan calendar on Friday.
The events - including rituals, concerts, conferences and fireworks - will take place at 39 ancient sites, including the pyramids of Chichen Itza in Mexico , Copan in Honduras, Tikal in Guatemala and La Joya de Ceren in El Salvador. State presidents will attend some of these festivities. At others, the start of the 13th baktun - or new era - will be marked by night surfing competitions and pyramid building.
Archaeologists and indigenous groups have complained that this momentous moment is being misinterpreted, trivilialised and commercialised.
“Baktun’s not the end of the world, but a cycle,” Carlos Barrios, a Guatemalan Mayan priest, told the El Tiempo newspaper. “It is an energy shift. We’ll get into a new consciousness that is in closer harmony with Mother Earth. “
“We resent those who say it’s the end of the world, because no Mayan ever said so. Others have mixed the sacred Mayan calendar with the Chinese calendar,” said Barrios, who lamented the rise of an end-of-the-world industry, selling everything from tin cans and water purifiers to bunkers and mountaintop properties.
The director of the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism, Pedro Duches, predicts that between 150,000 and 200,000 tourists will visit his country - one of the centres of Mayan culture - to mark the start of the new era. The visitors may find themselves hoping to be abducted by aliens because Duches also acknowledged that it has been difficult to find hotel beds at the sites of the main festivities."
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