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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 16, 2018 - 08:12pm PT
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NutAgain!: Science starts with an observation, . . . .
Not in my experience. Data and theory are so inter-woven that it’s difficult to say what starts what. You (and me) have been institutionalized by our professions and disciplines. We have degrees, work experience, and we are (were) deeply involved in communications with others in our fields. What data are hardly comes from a blank slate. As Werner would remind us, we project what we think and believe onto the world as it manifests itself to us. We pick and choose.
Get before interpretations, and I’d say that you are observing. But what is that? What is that which you cannot or do not label or categorize?
We see what we believe. There is much research to support the interpretation.
Happy hunting.
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WBraun
climber
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May 17, 2018 - 06:28pm PT
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with some opinions more grounded than others
None of your opinions were grounded at all.
You were all flying around off the ground.
Muwahahahaha ......
Only God knows everything and is the supreme expert.
The gross materialists only have opinions and no real knowledge .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 17, 2018 - 06:32pm PT
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Nice story, Dingus. A slice of life.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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May 17, 2018 - 07:16pm PT
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He must have a steel plate separating different brain functions.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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May 17, 2018 - 07:33pm PT
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I'm lucky to have both a physical sciences and life sciences background. Over the years I was startled many times to discover that an expert in one knew little to nothing in the other. As much as this disappointed it also motivated.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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May 18, 2018 - 05:34pm PT
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Over the years I was startled many times to discover that an expert in one knew little to nothing in the other.
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This is a common challenge for psychologists, especially with those clients who trudge into the office chocking on facts.
This syndrome is highly visible right now in baseball, of all places. The team that plays entirely beholden to analytics is often beat by a manager who knows how to coach. That much said, each team now has a whole staff dealing with stats. The trick is how to use the stats. That's where the coaching comes in.
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WBraun
climber
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May 18, 2018 - 06:58pm PT
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That's where the coaching comes in.
Yes, intelligence.
The stat guys think they are smart but have very little intelligence, broad vision.
Too many st00pid smart people and not enough intelligence in this day and age ......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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May 22, 2018 - 04:20pm PT
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Just uploaded this month. All under one playlist.
Moving Naturalism Forward
https://www.youtube.com/user/seancarroll/playlists?shelf_id=3&view=50&sort=dd&view_as=subscriber
Here's the original workshop itinerary...
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/naturalism2012/
it is important for those committed to naturalism to address the very difficult questions raised by replacing folk psychology and morality by a scientifically-grounded understanding of reality. We would like to understand how to construct meaningful human lives in a world governed by the laws of nature.
Tags: reality, emergence, reduction, consciousness, free will, morality, meaning, point and purpose, science and philosophy, Sean Carroll, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne, Steven Weinberg
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Worthy of downloading and a full listen: How humankind is on the verge of transforming itself: Yuval Harari. Great segment on agency and free will implications...
(1) The Modernity Deal: Humans give up meaning for power.
(2) Organisms are algorithms.
(3) Consumer's choice: Toyota Altruist or Toyota Egoist?
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-humankind-is-on-the-verge-of-transforming-itself-yuval-harari-1.3799865
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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May 23, 2018 - 04:17pm PT
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Steven Pinker tweets...
I admire much of Yuval Harari's writing (despite disagreements), but he mangles the meaning of "humanism," and philosopher Andrew Norman urges him to reconsider...
The Meaning and Legacy of Humanism: A Sharp Challenge from an Ally...
https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/9724
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Another excellent interview. Same site as the Yuval Harari interview.
Steven Pinker on a variety of topics re progress and enlightenment ideals. For example...
re: postmodernism, postmodernist influence
"The humanities have yet to recover from the disaster of postmodernism..." -Steven Pinker to Paul Kennedy, Ideas (38:20)
"... with its defiant obscurantism, self-refuting relativism, and suffocating political correctness. Many of its luminaries - Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Lacon, Derrida, the critical theorists - are morose cultural pessimists who declare that modernity is odious, all statements are paradoxical, works of art are tools of oppression, liberal democracy is the same as fascism, and western civilization is circling the drain." -Steven Pinker
Sound familiar? lol
"Disaster?" "Why?"
re: (1) science vis a vis the humanities (2) postmodern influence
Key: Sound familiar? (sf?)
"Well, if you look at the effects on university enrollment and funding it hasn't been good for the humanities. (sf?) Students are staying away in droves. Expansion in the universities has been focused largely on the sciences. The prestige of the academic humanities has gone down. And I think a large part of it has come from the obscurantism, the impenetrable prose, the jargon (sf?), the relativism - which as I noted is self-refuting - because if you think that all propositions are relative and there is no such thing as true or false, or warranted or unwarranted (sf?), then why should we believe those claims themselves? So I think the prestige of the humanities has sadly gone down and part of it is because of this particular clique, this particular faction, that has had an outsized influence in university humanities departments (sf?)." -Steven Pinker (39:00)
Sound familar?
Thank you, Steven Pinker!
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/enlightenment-now-why-steven-pinker-believes-in-progress-1.4668823
May, 2018
Any postmodernists here? lol
Be well.
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re intelligence, consciousness and free will ala Harari
https://youtu.be/8x3zaIYrHTs?t=1h3m36s
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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May 24, 2018 - 03:51pm PT
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As Werner would remind us, we project what we think and believe onto the world as it manifests itself to us. We pick and choose.
I would suspect this is more pervasive in bio-medical (ethical issues) and social sciences (interpretation issues).
Anyway, guy is a PhD...
I climbed with a sharp kid for a bit who was getting his doctorate in molecular biology, but it turns out he was raised in some fundamentalist sect and was getting the degree for the express purpose of joining the Intelligent Design crusade and disproving evolution. Sigh.
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WBraun
climber
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May 24, 2018 - 05:24pm PT
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Are the gross materialists st00pid designers?
So far they ARE as everything they touch turns to sh!t eventually ......
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 25, 2018 - 10:53am PT
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^^^ "The Big Bell Test provides an answer, albeit of a conditional variety. The answer is this: if humans have free will, then some physical events have no cause."
A very interesting article. Thanks.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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May 26, 2018 - 07:04am PT
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
Hadn’t been around here for a while and found this gem that HFCS posted a while back. It’s worth reposting and worth your time.
“That light that shines not on us, but within us.”
~ Dewitt Jones
Yeah!! That’s the juice!!!!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 29, 2018 - 03:13pm PT
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David Brooks has an interesting editorial about the educated elite in the NYTs today. In it he says that the new elite (intellectuals) has engendered a number of unintended consequences in policies from their ideological points of view.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/opinion/failure-educated-elite.html?
In the article Brooks makes the following claims:
1. There has been an exaggerated faith in intelligence.
2. There is a misplaced faith in autonomy.
3. There is a misplaced notion of the importance of the self.
4. There is a misplaced idolization of diversity.
According to Brooks, altogether, these misplaced notions provide the basis in the abiding belief this country has in meritocracy.
I would say (at least as a ex-professor) that Brooks has some points to make. Some folks here might argue with his ideas.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 30, 2018 - 10:04pm PT
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Ha-ha.
Hell, maybe he does!
EDIT: Come on, people. This is like shooting fish in a barrel. THINK.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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May 31, 2018 - 10:10pm PT
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Come on, postmodernists. THINK.
Now wait a minute scientists where the heck does the idea that slavery and discrimination are wrong come from? What is the source? Come on scientists THINK.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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HFCS: Come on, postmodernists. THINK.
I suspect you’re talking to me. Yeah, let's do some thinking.
It’s the European Enlightenment, not Eastern Enlightenment (viz, liberation) under discussion, right?
Mr. Pinker has, IMO, over-characterized postmodern writers. There is a very broad spectrum of post-modern concerns, values, objectives, complaints, notions.
Let’s review the European Enlightenment’s core ideas. There are arguably 3 that the French and English Enlightenment were based upon: Reason, Nature, and Progress. (Seems favorable, right?)
Reason is supposed to lead us to the truth, and away from views limited by wider cultural environments, the Church, the State, social and economic classes, superstition, ignorance, prejudice, poverty, vice etc. Reason is supposed to be related to philosophy as grace is to Christians. The mind, ala reason, would comprise the core capability upon which experience writes content onto mind. Manipulating experiences in various ways could control the formation of mind. Changing environments changes human beings. Education has a big part to play in all of this.
Nature is closely allied with Reason. Reason could probe beneath and identify all corruptions from misleading presentations (i.e., Church, State, . . .). The study of Nature could generate facts, upon which Reason would work its magic to lead to truth and better ways of living (see progress below).
In addition, Nature was also seen as undeniably good. On the other hand, what was unnatural would inevitably foster evil. In time these two assessments became confused or ambiguous. Would the man or woman who parceled land (Nature) for public use be natural or unnatural? Do environmental interventions lead to what is natural or unnatural? This led some groups to say that only primitive living / cultures would be natural.
Last is progress. It is a belief that no matter what really happens, in the end, what finally emerges must be progressive, evolved. “The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns” was a set of beliefs by some out of medieval times that the best had already come and gone (Greek & Roman writing). Moderns of the Enlightenment thought that all movement must be forward movement. (Progress, however, could be at odds with Nature.)
Three core ideas are hardly unassailably true and good. Postmodernists have criticized each one of them, for (again) good reasons.
Pinker’s assessments seems historically and academically ungrounded. I suspect he’s not read postmodern writing very closely, and his thinking seems to be rather narrow, maybe even prejudiced. I’m unaware that anyone from the postmodern camp has said that moral values are “nothing but cultural customs.” Postmodernists that I’ve read tend to have a very sensitive regard for history, context, and difference, whereas Pinker seems to be far more reductionist in his broad generalizations. No one is saying that morals don’t matter, which is what “myth” tends to communicate around here.
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