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[Vector]

Series of four books.  I read them in fourth grade or so, obsessively, and still have copies of all of them on my shelf because they're high up there on my list of Favorites Of All Time.  I lurve them.  They are seriously up there with The Little Prince and Notre-Dame de Paris for me, and the former is a holy book for my family.

They are great.

[Solifuge]

It's hard to say, but that book may have been the thing that stoked the fire of inquisitiveness in me, and kick-started my meandering life's quest for knowledge/wisdom.

[Pnx]

Reading the wikipedia description for "A Wrinkle in Time", and "A wind in the Door" makes it sound like a batshit insane scifi novel.
I suppose I should shut up and add it to my reading list already.

Personally the only religion I've ever proscribed to is Terry Pratchett.
He has something like 20 novels and I've read and loved every one of them. He manages to pull off something unique every time.
It's probably growing up with them that does it, I must have a Terry Pratchett quotes memorised by now.

Anyway, since we're on the subject, "Small Gods" is... religion themed, and makes for a good introduction into the Discworld books.

He did also do some scifi books, but I've always felt they're a little "meh".
The "Truckers", "Diggers", and "Wings", series is, I think, when he's at his worst. Although that's probably because they're really childrens books, I found the fact that he talks down to you to be kind of annoying.
"Carpet People" is interesting though. It's a fun little world, although the scale of it always struck me as being a little off...

Anyway, I should stop myself before this turns into an essay on why I like Terry Pratchett.

[Rose]

Personally the only religion I've ever proscribed to is Terry Pratchett.
He has something like 40 novels

Fixed that for you.

[Leafsnail]

We're stuck with deciding what's a priori no matter what.  You can't sweep it under the rug by saying "experimental data."  Say you're schizophrenic... then what?

If I am somehow schizophrenic in an extremely specific and consistent way then I will roll with examining the consistent schizophrenic world in which I reside.  You appear to be dismissing the idea of testable predictions (which you can perform with the senses, since they generally give consistent information about the world) being proved right time and time again for no reason.

I can see there is a slight chance that I am delusional in this way, but a) there's no reason at all to think that over the alternative and b) it's not relevant to me whether or not it's true since I think you're proposing me being delusional in such a way I'd never be able to tell I was.

You choose to believe in your senses.  You choose to believe in a lot of things.  And to demean those choices, as though they were nothing, just because you think the evidence is very strong... now, that's foolish.

If you're gonna be insulting at least be it directly to me rather than to the world in general.

[Africa]

I read those "A Wrinkle in Time" books in third grade or so and loved them, but they're one of those ones that you really have to read in third grade. I reread the first one as an adult and it was pretty grueling. It's a kids' book and nothing is wrong with that, but it's not a kids' book that also makes good adult reading, like Harry Potter or His Dark Materials.

[Il Palazzo]

Today I learned that Buddha had a mild stroke in his left hemisphere and spent the rest of his life trying to teach people how to get one for themselves.

[Vester]

I read those "A Wrinkle in Time" books in third grade or so and loved them, but they're one of those ones that you really have to read in third grade. I reread the first one as an adult and it was pretty grueling. It's a kids' book and nothing is wrong with that, but it's not a kids' book that also makes good adult reading, like Harry Potter or His Dark Materials.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet is still good, but A Wrinkle in Time itself really does read as though it's meant for a young audience.

[Tack]

Yeah, I like the Pratchett idea that gods gain power from the amount of belief that they have. And then I realized that the gods I made up in high school and then ceased believing in then would have died. Unfortunately, that makes me a god-murderer, which I don't want to have on my conscience, although I would totally put it on my resume.

But yeah, when you brought up the concept of defining a chair, all I could think of was Piaget and his theory regarding the concrete operations stage of development, in which children will over-define or under-define an object - for instance, they'll see a chair, and say 'chair', and then see a table, which is also made of wood, and say 'chair' - or the opposite, where they won't accept that another chair is a 'chair', because the object they know as 'chair' is the one with the knot-work in the backboard - etc.
Just makes you think that we spend our childhood learning not to do that, and then we get to adulthood and begin having reasonable discussions about why we should revert back to it.
But then again, I'm so sleep-deprived right now that my theory-linking is a little odd.

[Vector]

If you're gonna be insulting at least be it directly to me rather than to the world in general.

I didn't realize that the idea of questioning everything was so insulting, or that if one has a general complaint with the conduct of the human race, one should hold one's tongue until one manages to assemble a majority.

I'll just say now that I've been bit in the ass by rationality, science, careful planning, and all those good things more times than I can count.  Scientifically that leads me to the conclusion that I need to consider other things for the situations in which science no longer functions well.  It doesn't work.  My observations of the world lead me to the secondary conclusion that what we're doing doesn't work for most of us.

I'm not saying "blah blah blah religion! <3," I'm saying "Clinging to the scientific method like this isn't even good science.  It doesn't make philosophical sense, it doesn't make scientific sense, it doesn't make an ethical world.  This goes double for anything and everything attached to game theory."

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm saying "Clinging to the scientific method like this isn't even good science.  It doesn't make philosophical sense, it doesn't make scientific sense, it doesn't make an ethical world."

What. The scientific method is the very essence of science itself. And science has nothing to do with ethics! It can help to inform ethical choices, but science has always been about what is true, not what is right.

I'll just say now that I've been bit in the ass by rationality, science, careful planning, and all those good things more times than I can count.Scientifically that leads me to the conclusion that I need to consider other things for the situations in which science no longer functions well.  It doesn't work.  My observations of the world lead me to the secondary conclusion that what we're doing doesn't work for most of us.

Then name a situation in which this has happened, and your proposed alternative.

The scientific method isn't perfect, but it is close, and furthermore it is the best and only methodology available to us for the monumental task of defining our reality.

[Vector]

But what about the truth of what is right?

And why is the best world thought to be the most efficient and least flexible?  This notion is fundamentally destructive.  When speaking to things, yes, it is good.  But what we end up doing is treating human beings like a chorus of exchangeable parts on the factory line, often in the name of "fairness."  Equivalence is, as I have said, not equality.  But this idea is the root of so much pain in the world, so many "isms," that we all end up running our self-optimization projects rather than paying attention to who we really are.

You don't get double-blind objective scientific laboratory trials when it comes to knowing yourself.  You get one chance, and every moment--every subjective moment--you live is another moment in which you can grow to see yourself better.  Who you are, what you need, what you should become.

Or, rather: why should the collective statistical information of a bunch of people who have never known you tell you what your telos is?


The experience of sitting in a chair isn't scientific.  Sure, you can write down all the force diagrams, and draw pictures of your spine doing x or y, or get a bunch of volunteers to write out what it's like, rate the experience from 1 to 10, etc.  And you can make a big fancy report of all this, and issue it to people right before they're going to sit in a chair for the very first time.  You can write down all sorts of things in this report--where the materials come from, who made that particular chair, diagrams of the factory, history of the chair in human society, every single piece of scientific information we could possibly manage.

But would you know the chair better from all that objective information, or from how it feels to sit for the first time?

[Leafsnail]

I didn't realize that the idea of questioning everything was so insulting, or that if one has a general complaint with the conduct of the human race, one should hold one's tongue until one manages to assemble a majority.

It was quite obviously the "foolish" part.  If you think I'm foolish, I'd rather you say that to me rather than make a general statement to that effect (which is clearly intended to implicitly insult me).

I'll just say now that I've been bit in the ass by rationality, science, careful planning, and all those good things more times than I can count.  Scientifically that leads me to the conclusion that I need to consider other things for the situations in which science no longer functions well.  It doesn't work.  My observations of the world lead me to the secondary conclusion that what we're doing doesn't work for most of us.

This is fair - I suppose if you thought I was saying that you have to be scientific about everything that would be a pretty bad viewpoint.  I think I should stress at this point that I'm not, though.  It's not that you have to be rational all the time, or scientific all the time, it's more that I have trouble understanding how/ why faith (rather than the other possibilities) is supposed to work as an alternative.

And why is the best world thought to be the most efficient and least flexible?

It's a good question, but it's surely not intrisically necessary to the scientific process.  Indeed, you are making an argument based on the scientific process why it shouldn't be.

[Vector]

No, it wasn't meant to implicitly insult you, Leafsnail.  I think that the world as it is is doing a lot of foolish things.  There's the fools who rely overmuch on science, nearly deifying it, and there's the fools who rely overmuch on faith and do evil by it.  And as for you and me, I thought we were both in the first category, though I may have been wrong on your count, and I hope to be wrong about myself in time.


As for faith, maybe there's some confusion as to what I meant by that word.  I meant "the existence of questions that are not satisfiably answered via scientific proof/evidence/theory."  So, in this instance, I'm not talking about religion so much as experiences outside of scientific inquiry and proof, which are still held as/known as true... and furthermore, not as an alternative so much as a supplement.

I'm not at all saying "Throw out science!"  I'm saying "Add to science!  It has seriously damaging limitations!"

It's a good question, but it's surely not intrisically necessary to the scientific process.  Indeed, you are making an argument based on the scientific process why it shouldn't be.

... True, it's more of an offshoot of game theory and our usual optimization schematics than science proper.  Still, there should be no trouble with discovering the limitations of science with meta-science.  If it worked with mathematics, then...

[Il Palazzo]

Vector, as far as I can understand the exchange, you're not arguing for religion but for sensuality. You're basically saying that we shouldn't overanalyse things.