Thanatos_Savehn

Experience alone leads me to pick Theory #2. In what I do I'm constantly battling academic experts peddling Theory #1. Typically they have looked at say 10 epidemiological studies and concluded that the theory "A causes B" is consistent with the data and thus true. A thousand lawsuits against the maker of "A" are then launched on behalf of those who suffer from "B".

Eventually, and almost invariably with admittedly a few notable exceptions, the molecular people then come along and more convincingly theorize that "C causes... (read more)

I was trying to understand hindsight bias when a friend first directed me to overcomingbias.com. I still have the link he sent in my favorites and it informs my view of the original post above and many of those that follow. Here it is for those interested in such things:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/hindsight-bias.html

What I've never understood is why it's so much worse to be vaporized/die of radiation burns than it is to be incinerated/die of fire burns. Or why it's "wrong" to nuke people cheering on soldiers who used pregnant women as bayonet targets but "just an unfortunate part of war" to blast the same people into little bits. I'm being coy, of course. There is no difference. The fact is that the "sin" of dropping one bomb versus another was concocted, and has since been propagated, by the anti-American Left and Right.

Isn't this George Berkeley's issue? Isn't math just the structural part of another sort of language? Isn't 2 + 3 = 5 the same as red and blue make purple in the sense that each observer has a sense of red, blue, purple, 2, 3 and 5 all his/her/its own?

If space aliens find Voyager and read 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 *, etc do they see those *s in any context other than the three tentacles on their second heads?

How then is "2" in any sense different than "red"? How then is "2" any more independently real than "red"?

I sell "truth" for a living. Or, perhaps better said, I discover and then sell the "truths" people are eager to buy.

I conjecture that having access to, or good insights about, the truth is and has always been a survival trait of great value - especially among social animals. People have thus indeed a reverence for truth borne of practicality.

The problem is that most people, including most skeptics, are afraid to dip their "truths" in the acid bath of falsification. Far better (for the ego at least) to build elaborate structure... (read more)

Your problem, I think, has not to do with nihilism, but rather with narcissism. (If none of it's about anything, then certainly none of it's about you.)

Regarding the quest for mind-altering experiences I lay that at the feet of the same drive that causes us to want to control our environment, including that of our mind. Some folks just don't know when to quit. Depression is simply self-flattery. Get over it. If you're able.

And then back to the point: one trap laid before us by our narcissism is that we think we "know" as much as those who came be... (read more)

Let's not and say we did.

Recall I'm a lawyer fighting a fairly lonely battle for sound science in the courtroom. So let me tell you; abandoning Popper and falsification (i.e. rejecting Daubert v. Merrell Dow) and going to a subjective "more likely than not belief" standard is nothing but a recipe for handing billions more over to the already super rich trial lawyers (several of whom are starting to report to prison, along with their experts, for the perjury, bribing of judges, etc that went on back in the bad old days).

Alas. The claim that "... (read more)

It's good to know that somewhere I won the World Series of Poker last year; and the idiot that went all in over my 3x raise with 7-2 off suit and sucked out to beat my AA with is poor and broke somewhere today and that's good to know too. Not that I'm bitter or anything, of course. Not in those other worlds anyway.

I've never thought much about this subject nor did I spend much time pondering the thoughts that follow before typing them up so I apologize in advance if they are inane or offensive to anyone or any zombie out there.

It would seem to me that self-awareness is the sine qua non of consciousness. Now, if self-awareness is somehow extra-physical wouldn't it to remain so throughout its range. Yet awareness throughout a rather easily observable portion of its range is obviously grounded firmly in the physics of this world. How so? Pardon the anecdote but once up... (read more)