Critical Thinking, reductionism, epistemology RI megathread

[Harvey]

: )

[Canadian_watcher]

This has an overlong intro - just let it buffer and watch from the 3 minute mark.



I'm sure the whole documentary is worth watching & I'm going to do that tomorrow.

[barracuda]

As a counterpoint to Expelled, a reminder that within the living memory of many on this board was a time in which the teaching of basic science rather than the words of the Bible was still punishable under the law in the United States.

[Canadian_watcher]

As a counterpoint to Expelled, a reminder that within the living memory of many on this board was a time in which the teaching of basic science rather than the words of the Bible was still punishable under the law in the United States.

[youtube]S_DQUAuNUvw

and luckily that time has passed. This new era calls for similar outrage.

[Harvey]

and luckily that time has passed. This new era calls for similar outrage.

What, cynical mass murder in the name of other even more cynical mass murders? Profit is god, and god is, well, Passé. And if God isn't what you like, you can always have Murdoch piss his vile spew in your face and consider yourself showered in gold. Outrage?

Way past outrage.

[barracuda]

[and luckily that time has passed.

Not in Kansas it hasn't. But really, are we at the point now where "intelligent design" is being promoted and supported on Rigorous Intuition?

[norton ash]

Blake's universe. Being two places at once.

Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence 1789)

Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green,
Grey headed beadles walk’d before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames’ waters flow.

Oh what a multitude they seem’d, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience 1794)

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak and bare,
And their ways are filled with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.

For where'er the sun does shine,
And where'er the rain does fall,
Babes should never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

[Wombaticus Rex]

My favorite riffs on this theme:

http://singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf

and

http://www.yorku.ca/aviseu/pdf%20files/ ... zation.pdf

[vanlose kid]

thread locking in 5... 4... 3... 2...

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32461&start=570

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[vanlose kid]

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[Canadian_watcher]

But really, are we at the point now where "intelligent design" is being promoted and supported on Rigorous Intuition?

Well, it's a theory, right? I'm not sure anyone is supporting or promoting the theory itself, just the ability to look in to it.

What do you think about the way academics are being treated when they mention, make reference to, or otherwise dip their toes in any way into intelligent design?

[Searcher08]

[and luckily that time has passed.

Not in Kansas it hasn't. But really, are we at the point now where "intelligent design" is being promoted and supported on Rigorous Intuition?

I have no horse in that race (although I find Creationist accounts hilarious on a personal level). My horse is in the meta-race, that questions why it would be an issue to discuss things like that, here of all places?

I have friends sending me calls to sign a Facebook petition that says

"Lets reach 1 million signitures that believe in evolution".

I had always intuitively felt that Darwin just had part of the picture; when as a teenager, I heard of Lamarck being described as a 'heretic', experienced a bit of an inner "Whoa! people are very... INVESTED in this on both sides".

I remember seeing the brilliant one man show that Leslie Nielsen did on the life of Clarence Darrow, which went into the evoution trials in detail.

Many years later, I read about Richard Sternberg's expereinces, and have become as wary of OrPs (Orthodoxy Promoters) as Creationists or Evolutionists.

http://www.richardsternberg.org/smithsonian.php

[Stephen Morgan]

But really, are we at the point now where "intelligent design" is being promoted and supported on Rigorous Intuition?

Well, it's a theory, right? I'm not sure anyone is supporting or promoting the theory itself, just the ability to look in to it.

What do you think about the way academics are being treated when they mention, make reference to, or otherwise dip their toes in any way into intelligent design?

We ought to take a Fortean approach, to be as sceptical of the offlicial position as the others. So we should equally take seriously the Vedic hypothesis your Cremo lad puts forward, and Darwinism, and Lamarckism, and Creationism, and adaptive evolution and guided evolution and so on.

In mere impressionism we take our stand. We have no positive tests nor standards. Realism in art: realism in science -- they pass away. In 1859, the thing to do was to accept Darwinism; now many biologists are revolting and trying to conceive of something else. The thing to do was to accept it in its day, but Darwinism of course was never proved:

The fittest survive.

What is meant by the fittest?

Not the strongest; not the cleverest --

Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.

There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.

"Fitness," then, is only another name for "survival." [26/27]

Darwinism:

That survivors survive.

Although Darwinism, then, seems positively baseless, or absolutely irrational, its massing of supposed data, and its attempted coherence approximate more highly to Organization and Consistency than did the inchoate speculations that preceded it.

[wintler2]

[and luckily that time has passed.

Not in Kansas it hasn't. But really, are we at the point now where "intelligent design" is being promoted and supported on Rigorous Intuition?

You didn't notice? We passed that point some time ago.

That ID advocacy will be defended as 'open enquiry', but will consist of a daily torrent of rightwing gobbledegook that noone will be allowed to criticise, unless they can weather a barrage of abusive offtopic posts. Remember how much climate change denial stuff there used to be? There is a pattern here folks..

I'm not in any way trying to stop discussion of ID, i say bring it on, and we'll see how it goes. But i will say 'i told you so' if/when the now familiar pattern recurs.

[Canadian_watcher]

[and luckily that time has passed.

Not in Kansas it hasn't. But really, are we at the point now where "intelligent design" is being promoted and supported on Rigorous Intuition?

You didn't notice? We passed that point some time ago.

That ID advocacy will be defended as 'open enquiry', but will consist of a daily torrent of rightwing gobbledegook that noone will be allowed to criticise, unless they can weather a barrage of abusive offtopic posts. Remember how much climate change denial stuff there used to be? There is a pattern here folks..

I'm not in any way trying to stop discussion of ID, i say bring it on, and we'll see how it goes. But i will say 'i told you so' if/when the now familiar pattern recurs.

ID does not equal creationism, for starters. It's very different.
Scientists and scholars are being fired and blacklisted for even MENTIONING it.. in America and in so-called free and civilized countries.
Evolution is still just a theory, too. Sure, changes happen over time and as far as I know ID researchers take no issue with that. But who/what put the first little zot of life into anything? Don't you want to find out?