Bill and Ted's second adventure

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Julian

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Starting a "fresh" thread since the other one got canned before I could reply. (Whoa, déjà vu...)
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But it wasn't his fault -- the real blame lies with the questionable handling qualities of the cars of the day. Had he been driving a new G8, any BMW, or, say a Prius (I just had to add that), he'd have have negotiated the turn with no trouble -- and he'd likely have ended up as the President in 72 or maybe 76. Just another example of the far-reaching consequences of nefarious car makers!

Disclaimer: this is NOT intended as any form of a political comment!
I generally meet up with what I consider to be the Feyerabend (or Feyerabend–Lakatos rather) crowd on this topic, if that wasn't clear enough already. My end-user proposition for your type (by which I mean law folks of course) is that causality is defined by what the majority (?) perceives as such (which itself relies on structures of the same nature to define). Causality is basically an aesthetic distinction like salty and sweet (or tall, human, and loud for that matter) in my opinion.
 
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My end-user proposition for your type (by which I mean law folks of course) is that causality is defined by what the majority (?) perceives as such (which itself relies on structures of the same nature to define). Causality is basically an aesthetic distinction like salty and sweet (or tall, human, and loud for that matter) in my opinion.


Can that be simplified to "conventions"?
 
Julian:

Ummm, try this:

1) Place your left thumb on an anvil.

2) With your right hand, swing a large hammer, so as to strike the top of your left thumb (the one that's now bleeding on the anvil).

3) Ponder carefully the sensations emanating from your left thumb.

4) Ask yourself whether there's any lack of clarity about the cause of why your thumb is hurting.

Now, seriously, such matters can get complex when you analyze events that are actually the result of a large number of multiple factors. Certainly, one's perspective on life in general, and the event being analyzed, will to some extent shade one's perceptions and beliefs concerning which are the dominant causal factors.
 
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Ummm, try this:

1) Place your left thumb on an anvil.

2) With your right hand, swing a large hammer, so as to strike the top of your left thumb (the one that's now bleeding on the anvil).

3) Ponder carefully the sensations emanating from your left thumb.

4) Ask yourself whether there's any lack of clarity about the cause of why your thumb is hurting.


What we're often faced with are "remedies". If, for example, you find that a significant number of people are splaying open thumbs with hammers on anvils ..at an incredible (perceived or otherwise) cost to the society, then the remedy may be to regulate the distribution of hammers and anvils. It may be the only practical way to address it. One might prefer breeding smarter herd members or allowing the natural culling process to do it by default. The statement, "those who play with fire tend to get burned" is too one-dimensional if it's also in an environment where people routinely spread gasoline around and hand out matches.

Complex indeed.
 
"If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.

If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death. "
 
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Don't mind me. I'm just waiting for Julian to show up with our feature length post of the day.

Carry on.
 
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
Steady everyone...


..are we on "shaky ground"?

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I think it's wise to stick to stupid stuff that people say if you perceive them as crusty old geezers as opposed to "elder men of wisdom" (being a near crusty old geezer, myself)

"If man were meant to fly, he'd have wings"
"People who play with fire tend to get burned"
"They oughta throw the book at him"(when the week before, he was a "good neighbor").

Stuff like that.
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Ha! You guys are a hoot. Maybe you're over thinking this.
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Ummm, (don't) try this (at home):

1) Place your left thumb on an anvil.

2) With your right hand, swing a large hammer, so as to strike the top of your left thumb (the one that's now bleeding on the anvil).

3) Ponder carefully the sensations emanating from your left thumb.

4) Ask yourself whether there's any lack of clarity about the cause of why your thumb is hurting.
There you go making my points again, Mr. left-right-left.
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I'm sure I could be quite aware of many sensations (or lack thereof) after my thumb was smashed, but I don't need to know a hammer smashed it in order to know my thumb is hurting, and I don't need to know the name for my thumb in five different languages either. I think maybe everyone here has seen "The Matrix" one too many times. You can't experience something that's "not real"; that doesn't make any sense. Aside from that sort of thing, I don't see any conflict there at all with what I'm trying to explain. That's probably very similar to how most people (including myself) would think about the situation in whole or in part, and that's also probably a very functional perspective for them most of the time I should think. You can call that realization whatever you want. You did cheat a little bit trying to present a "closed" system though, which was really not the focus here I thought. Suppose the hammer fell off a ledge ("O my master, hast thou not a knife... err, hammer?") or it was Julian in the kitchen with the hammer? I'm not holding onto some sort of space cadet view of cause and effect here (I've explained myself with this before anyway); the world is as it is one way or the other. I'm just trying to point out the nature of the perspectives with which we can experience it. Maybe you need to look at your same scenario from different states (asleep, awake, under anesthesia, distracted, as a plant, as a rock, from first, second, third person, etc.) and then ask yourself how you would gain some kind of omniscient knowledge of cause and effect (or consumption and production, or however you want to see it) relationships between what you perceive as discrete entities to follow the reasoning with this mentality (not saying you would even want to, I just happen to think it is very interesting myself). You and Win apparently both had this down earlier with your explanation of convictions in our legal system anyway, which makes me very suspicious of your intent.
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This is yanked off his wiki page, and pretty much explains what I'm trying to say:

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The Australian philosopher David Stove claimed that Feyerabend was responsible for the "sabotaging of logical expressions" (Popper and After, 1982). This was the practise of robbing logical statements of their logical force by placing them in epistemic contexts; for example, instead of saying "P is a proof for Q" one would say "It is generally believed by scientists that P is a proof for Q". This produces what Stove calls a "ghost logical statement": it gives the impression that serious statements of logic are being made when they are not - all that is really being made are sociological or historical claims which are immune to criticism on logical grounds.

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Now, seriously, such matters can get complex when you analyze events that are actually the result of a large number of multiple factors.
Yeah, they can get pretty "complex" I think. They have a large supercomputer by where I live used to calculate things like that. Even then all it can do is manipulate the data available to it. You might try reading "The Evitable Conflict" if you happen to get bored being omniscient one of these days.
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Originally Posted By: Julian
Ha! You guys are a hoot. Maybe you're over thinking this.
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Quote:
Ummm, (don't) try this (at home):

1) Place your left thumb on an anvil.

2) With your right hand, swing a large hammer, so as to strike the top of your left thumb (the one that's now bleeding on the anvil).

3) Ponder carefully the sensations emanating from your left thumb.

4) Ask yourself whether there's any lack of clarity about the cause of why your thumb is hurting.
There you go making my points again, Mr. left-right-left.
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I'm sure I could be quite aware of many sensations (or lack thereof) after my thumb was smashed, but I don't need to know a hammer smashed it in order to know my thumb is hurting, and I don't need to know the name for my thumb in five different languages either. I think maybe everyone here has seen "The Matrix" one too many times. You can't experience something that's "not real"; that doesn't make any sense. Aside from that sort of thing, I don't see any conflict there at all with what I'm trying to explain. That's probably very similar to how most people (including myself) would think about the situation in whole or in part, and that's also probably a very functional perspective for them most of the time I should think. You can call that realization whatever you want. You did cheat a little bit trying to present a "closed" system though, which was really not the focus here I thought. Suppose the hammer fell off a ledge ("O my master, hast thou not a knife... err, hammer?") or it was Julian in the kitchen with the hammer? I'm not holding onto some sort of space cadet view of cause and effect here (I've explained myself with this before anyway); the world is as it is one way or the other. I'm just trying to point out the nature of the perspectives with which we can experience it. Maybe you need to look at your same scenario from different states (asleep, awake, under anesthesia, distracted, as a plant, as a rock, from first, second, third person, etc.) and then ask yourself how you would gain some kind of omniscient knowledge of cause and effect (or consumption and production, or however you want to see it) relationships between what you perceive as discrete entities to follow the reasoning with this mentality (not saying you would even want to, I just happen to think it is very interesting myself). You and Win apparently both had this down earlier with your explanation of convictions in our legal system anyway, which makes me very suspicious of your intent.
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This is yanked off his wiki page, and pretty much explains what I'm trying to say:

Quote:
The Australian philosopher David Stove claimed that Feyerabend was responsible for the "sabotaging of logical expressions" (Popper and After, 1982). This was the practise of robbing logical statements of their logical force by placing them in epistemic contexts; for example, instead of saying "P is a proof for Q" one would say "It is generally believed by scientists that P is a proof for Q". This produces what Stove calls a "ghost logical statement": it gives the impression that serious statements of logic are being made when they are not - all that is really being made are sociological or historical claims which are immune to criticism on logical grounds.

Quote:
Now, seriously, such matters can get complex when you analyze events that are actually the result of a large number of multiple factors.
Yeah, they can get pretty "complex" I think. They have a large supercomputer by where I live used to calculate things like that. Even then all it can do is manipulate the data available to it. You might try reading "The Evitable Conflict" if you happen to get bored being omniscient one of these days.
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Really?
 
(said in a manner not unlike "Why, Spock, that's amazing!")

Why, Julian ...how thoughtful (w/animated hand/arm gestures)
 
*sweaty, out of breath, tearing up* I just want to give all the credit to my Lord and Savior Charles Manson; without him none of this would have been possible...
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