The problem is the "least convenient world" seems to involve a premise that would, in and of itself, be unverifiable.

The best example is the pascals wager issue - Omega tells me with absolute certainty that It's either a specific version of God (Not, for instance Odin, but Catholicism), or no God.

But I'm not willing to believe in an omniscient deity called God, taking it back a step and saying "But we know it's either or, because the omniscient de . . . errr . . . Omega tells you so" is just redefining an omniscient deity.

Well, if I don't believe is assuming god exists without proof, I can happily not assume Omega exists without proof. Proof is verifiably impossible, because all I can prove is that Omega is smarter than me.

Since I won't assume anything based only on the fact that someone is smarter than me - which is all I know about Omega - then no, the fact that Omega says any of this stuff and states it by fiat isn't going to convince me.

If Omega is that damn smart, it can go to the effort of proving it's statements.

Jonnan

Post-script: Which suddenly explains to me why I would pick the million dollar box, and leave the $1000 dollars alone. Because that's win win - either I get the million or I prove Omega is in fact not omniscient. He might be smarter than me (almost certainly is - the memory on this bio-computer I'm running needs upgraded something fierce, and the underlying operating system was last patched 30,000 years ago or so), but I can't prove it, I can only debunk it, and the only way to do that is to take the million.

I am what I like to call a "Greedy Progressive", inasmuch as my liberal instincts are not based in the guilt theory that a lot of conservatives and some liberals associate with liberalism, but on an implicit assumption that others doing well helps my life get better - and after a certain point, indeed helping others helps my quality of life in more immediately helpful ways than even spending money on myself or my family, though exactly where this point is at is subject to argument.

However, fundamentally the point is that I am not a progressive because I'm a sweet guy, but because I get a return on the investment. This implies two obvious things

A) That as improving others life also improves mine, improving my life also improves the lives of others in society. I am no less worth of living in comfort than someone in Africa either.

B) That although it helps me to help someone in Africa, it may very well help me more to help someone here, who in turn helps someone else slightly further from my sphere of influence, et al. Since this is not about me being a sweet guy, the question of who I help depends on my (perception of) return on investment.

C) Once I get below a certain point, the highest return on investment for expenditure of X money for Y personal happiness, is me. And, since I am in fact as important as anyone else, I give myself explicit permission to do that. I quit giving to my local public radio and the ACLU when I get below that point - and start again when I get above. The same for every other charity in existence.

And that's where I dislike the article. It assumes my happiness is in fact less important than the happiness of those I could help. So in point of fact, no, there is a definite limit to what i will sacrifice for random strangers, just because my happiness is no less important.

"All you can do in science is discover something before anyone else discovers it"

Mulling this over - maybe I'm taking a false view, but although I never had a particular admiration for the 'race to the south pole' type of exploration, the more general 'Going where no one has gone before' I do admire.

Because the second one does indeed do something - it establishes a new baseline that the next generation can start from. And so with Science - Newton described the real world with a precision greater than anyone before him, but off to the side Riemann established a new mathematics, which obviously had nothing to do with the real world, except of course Einstein proved it actually described the real world even better than Newton. And then of course the Quantum Theorist's described a 'Real World' greater still.

I've no particular advocacy for 'celebrity' science that races to be the first to something we already know can be done, although assuredly the innovation fostered by friendly or unfriendly rivalry has it's place, but science that actually expands our boundaries and tells us of new and different possibilities?

If I had the good fortune to be remembered for nothing more than have expanded the realms of possibility by setting up a base camp in unexplored science territory so someone smarter than I can mark 'Here be Dragons' a bit further out on the map, I could live with that - <G>.

Jonnan

In the neither here nor there range, Much as I have fallen 'out of love' with Ender's game, in part having read some of Card's political rants, his definition of 'porn' as he applies it to Card's writing in that essay would qualify any work I can think of as 'porn', if the reviewer didn't like it. "I don't like the message" is sufficient, even "I think it's intellectually dishonest" and why - certainly I feel that way about every Ayn Rand novel I have subjected myself to. But his essay seems more about rationalization than rationality - <G>.

That said - for myself, probably the first thought of ethics as logic came from Asimov's "Three Laws", as a set of rules that allowed for logical consideration of when it was fair to help pr hinder yourself or others, although I was probably primed to look for a logical basis for ethics by Mr. Spock.

Jonnan

Begs the question - I would posit that the minimum assumption for any form of 'spirituality' is body/mind duality, and your proposed 'better' definition of insanity presupposes the result that there is no axiomatic, logical system that can result in body/mind duality being either true, or undecidable.

However, so long as it is even undecidable, then a person that uses it as an axiom for further thought is no more 'insane' than someone that explores the logical consequences of parallel lines crossing.

Now, Religion posits not only body-mind duality, but a number of other assumptions, and those other assumptions are generally quite amenable to debunking. But I suspect dualism itself qualifies as undecidable, which would place it outside the pale of propositions which one can both maintain a cohesive logical structure and explicitly deny.

There seems to be to assumptions that need to be correct for blind review to be detrimental: Both A) Older established scientists are more likely to be correct when they are positing an anti-establishment thinking explanantion than a younger, less established scientist, and B) those scientists are nonetheless no more capable of marshaling the required set of arguments to do so when faced with blind review than that younger scientist.

I have no issue with A), but B) seems to me to be supremely unlikely - the very factors of an established pattern of rigor that make it more likely that an older scientist may be a safer bet when he breaks from the establishment than I am, also would appear to make it more likely that he or she can establish the case without relying upon reputation.

I might be wrong, but I wouldn't have to fake surprise at learning I was.

I'm not sure how useful this is, and I feel odd posting it this way (Intuitive Rationality?), but there is a 'feel' to when there is a fallacy camouflaged in the discussion. If the reader could learn to pay attention to it and dig for it when they feel it, I would consider that a worthwhile book.

Just a personal problem that seems to me to be a precursor to the rationality question.

Various studies have shown that a persons 'memory' of events is very much influenced by later discussion of the event, when put into situations such as the 'Stanford Prison Experiment' or the 'Milgram Experiment' people will do unethical acts under pressure of authority and situation.

Yet people have a two-fold response to these experiments. A) They deny the experiments are accurate, either in whole, or in degree B) They deny that they fall into the realm of those that would be so affected.

With of course, the obvious caveat that some people actually are not so affected in those experiments (or do remember thing accurately), and will stand up for what they determine as ethical regardless.

The obvious fact seems to be that it is among those that honestly consider the possibility that their thoughts can be affected by these outside influences that the greatest chance of successfully maintaining one's own identity against them exists, but others than acknowledging this fact (Which can certainly be faked, even self-deceptively) what self-assessments allow one to develop this?

Once we have that, it seems to me that the question of maintaining rationality itself clarifies itself greatly.

Jonnan