Doggone Right!

Title Irony

Look at the subheading of this book and tell me it doesn't chill you to the bone!  In the face of works like BNW, F451 and 1984, I still can't believe this sort of thing is standard procedure.

Blinders Unaware

"As defined by social psychology, a schema is the automatic mental template that each one of us uses to organize the world. Schemas are our organizational and active perceptual lenses that impact what we notice, what we think about, and what we remember. Though schemas can be quite useful due to their ability to make the "awareness endeavor" smoother and more efficient, they can also serve to prohibit new and important information from entering our paradigms. Schemas impact us in ways that may or may not be consciously known to us."   (My emphasis)

Not So Fast There, Atheist!

Secularists constantly bleat about God and the spiritual realm not being "observable or measurable" and faith being "illogical."  A comment at a forum does a good job of replying to this:

Let's talk about "observable, measurable."

 In Martin Rees' famous book he posits six numbers define the universe (the nuclear strong force, number of spatial dimensions, amount of material in the universe, etc.).   Stephen Hawking said the odds of these six numbers combining they way they have is about 1 in 10^300. That's a one with 300 zeroes after it.

Let's put that another way. Say you are facing a firing squad of sharpshooters. The odds of one missing is 1:1,000. So the odds of two missing would be 1/1000 x 1/1000 or one in a million. You face ten sharpshooters. The odds of them all missing would be one quadrillionth of a quadrillionth.
They aim, fire and all miss. They aim,  fire again and miss again. They miss a third time.  A fourth time.  In fact, they fire ten times each and miss each time.

At some point, the reasonable explanation is that this occurrence cannot be explained by stochastic probability; the game has to be rigged. Someone is slipping blanks in, or the sharpshooters are missing on purpose. But the outcome is so outlandish that the logical, reasonable explanation is that it is not left to random chance.

Now I ask you... based on that observable, measurable evidence, who is being logical and reasonable?

From a Former Jihadist

Jihad, or what we define as Terrorism, comes in three forms – Jihad by the pen, Jihad by the sword and Jihad by finance. When one is not in a position of military strength he uses the pen, or propaganda. If one has military strength, he uses violence, including acts of terror. Jihad by finance comes in the form of money to fund both the propaganda and the terror.  (Source)

Artificial "Intelligence" My Foot

I've written about Google's failings before, but it never ceases to amuse me anew when that search engine lets its imagination run wild.  So today, I was trying to find out where this image came from (it was "quoted" at a different site than where it originally appeared).  So what does Google come up with?  This.  ROTFL! 

I think maybe Google needs to just FACE its lack of smarts and CLOCK out.  (Edit many months later:  the original google link showed clock faces.  Now, it shows "images to color."  Not sure why it changed in the meantime.   But who can fathom the "mind" of A.I., eh? {snort})

Avoiding Solipsism

A recent email conversation about things spiritual prompted me to try to clarify some things for anybody who's interested.

Just because something makes no sense to me, doesn't mean it isn't valid.  It makes no sense to me that my rabbit eats his own excretions, yet the caecotropes---different than the normal downscaled-hay cannon balls rabbits produce---actually contain vital nutrients.  So, in my human world, where a whole different set of dietary and hygiene laws rule, caecotrope consumption is repulsive and noxious, but in the rabbit domain, it's perfectly normal and beneficial.

Or think about the paradox of water:  it can be ice, or snowflakes, or vapor, or liquid, yet it's always water, regardless.  Or how about light being a wave and a particle?  None of this makes "sense" to me on the surface, yet it IS a plain fact.  (As a footnote:  I have to trust scientists that light is in actuality a wave and a particle.  I have not myself ascertained this.  I have to assume they know what they're talking about when it comes to their domain.)

Or consider the first reactions, back in the days when someone first proposed the concept of microbes:  people thought the guys holding those ideas were off their rockers.  Yet, the microscope eventually proved them right. 

My favorite example, though, is bases in math:  in our everyday, Joe Blow world, 2 + 2 = 4.  But only because we work with base 10.  Had we for centuries worked with another base, then that simple equation would not "make sense" to us. 

Or while we're dealing with math, how about that stumper "E=mc²"?  To me, that makes zero sense (heh).  But that's because I (a) have zero ability in math (even algebra was torture), and because I thus have (b) never taken all the types of courses that would PREPARE me for understanding that equation.  I am basically an outsider, whereas Einstein and Co.---all the physics "initiated"---have a vast frame of reference within which that equation makes heaps of sense.

There's another way to approach this question:  take someone who's color blind.  If you rave about the beauty of a sunset to him, it won't make sense to him.  (Now, if he gets ANGRY at you for your rapture, you really have to ask yourself WHY he does that.  Is he jealous of your intact faculty and your concomitant broader base for joy and pleasure?) 

Ditto for someone who's tone deaf:  he will not be able to relate at all to my enjoyment of, say, this delicious piece.  The sounds will make no "sense" to him at all.  Which is perfectly understandable, given his truncated hearing.  If he is rational, he will simply humbly acknowledge that his shortcoming in this area in no way negates the objective beauty of the music, or the reasonableness of my reveling in it.  He will perhaps even wish for the day that science can rectify such tone deafness.

I think, too, of poetry:  up until I was about 16, abstract poems made no sense to me.  But after I read a certain one, which as it were served as the "key" to deciphering puzzling poems, I started understanding progressively more of the previously vexing texts.

So, whether or not something makes "sense" to me has a WHOLE lot to do with (1) how extensive my knowledge base is, (2) how intact my faculties are, and (3) my willingness (a) to have my brain cells exercised out of their usual paths, and (b) to believe those who are more qualified in a given field/topic than I am.