there are so many beautiful things about this post. i have only a smallish idea what you are talking about a good deal of the time, but i can easily understand this: "To form accurate beliefs about something, you really do have to observe it."

your posts here have helped solidify this for me. this is true, i feel strongly, for all great art, for reliable science, and for joy in living. observation is everything.

this sentence: "One of the chief morals of the mathematical analogy between thermodynamics and cognition is that the constraints of probability are inescapable; probability may be a "subjective state of belief", but the laws of probability are harder than steel."

man. this is one of those sentences i'll be meditating on for a while. god that's a good one. just simply as a piece of writing, that is nice work. i'm going to put it on a t-shirt or something. maybe a bumper sticker, see how many accidents i can cause on the way home...