Posted on 01/01/2012 5:02:18 PM PST by grey_whiskers
One of the things that is fun about forums such as Free Republic is the sheer volume and scale of topics discussed. Everything from discussions of GOP primary races (come BACK, Sarah!) to speculations on the Middle East, from Kim Jong-un to fitness resolutions for the New Year, from Naughty Teacher threads to black helicopter speculations. If the Internet is a microcosm of the real world, then Free Republic is a microcosm of the internet. And all helpfully sorted by keyword, date, and author in order to make drinking from the fire hose easier.
But of course, not is all fun and games. Free Republic bills itself as “the world’s premier conservative internet forum.” And as such, it is a welcome place to hang out and talk with like-minded people, away from the “rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, sh*t-kickers and Methodists”
found on the rest of the internet. Unfortunately, that means that all kinds of people, from Paultards to Mitt-bots, from DU infiltrators to atheist crusaders (a little ironic, that), *all* consider it their dishonor-bound duty to try to worm into FR unnoticed or at least post here, to “set the record straight”. Free Republic has developed its own defense against such, the famed Viking Kitties and their famous ZOT!
And why is there the necessity for the ZOT? Are we not broad-minded enough, intelligent enough, magnanimous enough, tolerant enough to allow the existence of contrary or dissenting viewpoints? Sure. But that’s what the rest of the Internet is for. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, the purpose of an open mind, like that of an open mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. Or, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, “I am balance.” Conservatives need a place to go to recharge without constantly being ridiculed, calumnied, mocked, and shouted down by main force.
So what happens? The voices of “tolerance” are so offended by the existence of an oasis for conservatives (and, what’s worse, most of them are Christianists as well -- of all the nerve!) that they seek to plant a flag for reason (as they proclaim it) right here on FR. Which leads to noteworthy fireworks when they try to do so, as many of the ideas which they hold to be axiomatic, are marked as heresies here on this site. As Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) wrote, “everybody is someone else’s weirdo.”
But how is that that people identify someone else as a weirdo? After all, with so many different subjects around, and different opinions available on each subject, conservatism is not nearly as monolithic as liberals and atheists assume (indeed, there are some conservative atheist, some of them even have remained unzotted on FR for years). May I suggest, for the purposes of insight, that we borrow a page from statistics, and in particular, from analytical chemistry? This is not meant to be a rigorous discussion, only a semi-humorous one to get the creative juices flowing. Say hello to my little friend, Student’s t-test.
Despite the name, and its use in classes, “Student’s T-test” was originally developed by W.S. Gosset, who went by the fictitious name “Student” and worked for the Guinness brewery. Come to think of it, maybe that had something to do with the name he chose :-) Student’s t-test is used when comparing two small sets of data, to decide whether differences in the data sets are due to chance, or are “significant” (that is, whether or not, the data sets “really are” different -- meaning, that is, 95% of the time, or 99% of the time, or whatever -- the differences in the data sets cannot have come about due to random differences). The idea is conceptually simple. Everyone has heard of a “bell curve” to describe data. The t-test is used to compare, not theoretical bell curves, but sets of experimental data, which have ranges of values instead of infinitely long tails. By looking at the mean of each data set, as well as the range of values of each data set, one can determine whether the two data sets are ‘most likely’ measurements of the same thing or not.
That’s fine, you ask, and how exactly does this relate to websites or social interactions therein? Consider someone’s political views as a set of data points, with the extent of “liberalness” or “conservativeness” for each topic being spread along the X-axis, and the *count* of topics of which a person is liberal or conservative to that extent as the height above the axis. If you plot out a person’s political views in this fashion, you will trace out a curve. It might be a symmetric bell curve, it might be somewhat asymmetric, it might even exhibit kurtosis. But in general, you will be able to get a feel for how a person “stacks up,” left or right, by talking to them.
And so it is on discussion groups, or in forums such as FR. Typically most of the posters in a self-identified, semi-autonomous site such as FR would, if their “political bell curves” were plotted, would be somewhat similar: a significant difference between two people could come about if either the overall shape of their bell curve were different, or if they had a particular outlier on a important topic, on which they differed *greatly* from someone otherwise similar. In either case, other people talking to the person would begin to feel that “something is amiss here”: something which bears an analogy to statistical sampling and comparison. And if the difference is significant enough, the person is outed as a TROLL.
“Everybody is someone else’s weirdo.”
Cheers!
The key to what I said is "associations." New "associations" of old ideas. To simplify, if there are two established ideas and a new relationship between them is determined, then the new association gives us a new idea resulting from the other two. So now we have three ideas. Someone else may make a completely different association of the original two and then we have four. As you see, ideas and knowledge become exponential.
How many uses through the years have we found for fire? How about the wheel? The gears in a watch resulted from the wheel but how long was it from the first wheel to the first watch. Did the inventor of the wheel have a watch in mind? Look how many new associations there had to be between the two. James Burke's Connections shows many examples of one thing leading to another and, surprisingly, rarely are they linear progressions. One of his examples was the invention of irrigation leading to increased agriculture which led to mathematics which led to bookkeeping which lead to co-ops, which led to increased transportation which led to ...... All were new associations of existing ideas leading to something previously non-existent.
How does a baby learn? Doesn't human mental growth illustrate my point?
Without the "reality test" — comparing our subjective thoughts to objective reality — the world "outside" of us — we're just spinning our wheels. Or worse, we'd be psychotic in some degree....
We "know", or think we do, that in the subatomic range we have mostly space which consist of the distance between protons and neutrons. Projecting from there we can say that everything we know is mostly space. However, in keeping with your statement, the junk yards, hospitals and cemeteries bear ample evidence what is true on one plane is not on another. Our subatomic world crashes into the reality of worldly existence. Does that mean our subatomic theories are false?
I believe there is direct correspondence between mind and world. .... The correspondence "works" because the "objective" (relative to us) Logos is in both.
Of course, but I must not be very skilled in saying it because on other occasions I have been corrected when I said that. I think these discussions sometimes become a semantic confusion rather than real disagreements.
Bottom line, we do not live in a world of abstractions. If we did, we'd be abstractions, too — not real flesh-and-blood human beings.
So? To me, you are an abstraction. I have never seen you or heard you. To me, you are just words on a computer screen, or pixel patterns. However, using my imagination and knowledge previously gained through new associations of old ideas (grin), I think I "know" you. I also have faith that if we met you would be a real flesh and blood person rather than an abstraction but right now you're just a tiny piece of the Logos.
I'm NOT criticizing your analysis as "false" by any means.
Yes you are, so stop it! :-)
Just suggesting that it might be "incomplete."
And it always will be. Regardless, it will always come back to this:
I believe there is direct correspondence between mind and world. .... The correspondence "works" because the "objective" (relative to us) Logos is in both.
The key there being Objective Logos rather than subjective Logos.
You don’t have to have a degree in science or faith in much of anything to see that looking for answers in the physical world is a better idea than looking for answers in the ancient accounts of the delusional ramblings of power-hungry men.
“You don’t have to have a degree in science or faith in much of anything to see that looking for answers in the physical world is a better idea than looking for answers in the ancient accounts of the delusional ramblings of power-hungry men.” ~ A_perfect_lady
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2829877/posts?page=55#55
Now it's time to shift gears and find out what the world is.
Naturally, we tend to conflate the world with our characteristic way of knowing it, but it is always "more" than this or that point of view, something the materialist seems constitutionally incapable of appreciating.
I mean, who can disagree that the world is composed of matter? But only matter? C'mon. Who says so, a tenured rock? And if that is the case, why are there university departments other than geology?
All historical periods have their share of stupidities, man being what he is. The danger in ours -- because it is spiritually fatal -- is to regard the world as nothing more than a reflection of our lowest way of knowing it.
Just because the world may be known scientifically, it hardly means that it is nothing more than the material object disclosed by science. If this were the case, the world would be too simple to account for the existence of even the most simpleminded materialist.
Think about it for a moment: we all know that it is wrong to treat a human being as a material object. This is an example of our intrinsic morality, something we cannot not know unless we have attended graduate school. The rest of us know that a person is infinitely more than a sackful of meat, blood, and bones. ...."
Atheists love to mention self-organizing complexity, cellular automata and chaos theory - but they all also have guides to the system.
There is random, and then there is random.
When the range of random choices is limited to a certain range, then the outcome is biased in a certain direction. Or if there is a way of filtering out wrong answers, again, the outcome is biased in a certain direction. And so the outcome progresses, "randomly", naturally, spontaneously.
The plan doesn't dictate the particulars, just the principles. That is what is so cool about the way God creates. He gives you a box of tools, and a few decades of freedom, and whatever you come up with, he can work with it and make something from it. His way of creating is inseparable from the principle of redemption. He can turn a debris-field into a garden. He does it all the time.
Yes, that's a great idea. Of course. You go ahead and do that.
I think it's time to crown you with the title, "Fallacy Queen". :) False Dilemma (Either-Or Fallacy, Black and White Fallacy).
To reiterate:
"Naturally, we tend to conflate the world with our characteristic way of knowing it, but it is always "more" than this or that point of view, something the materialist seems constitutionally incapable of appreciating
The rest of us know that a person is infinitely more than a sackful of meat, blood, and bones. ...."
What, indeed, do we mean by ‘random’?
I don’t know.
Does random mean, “designed to be unpredictable”?
Whereas “chaos” means not only unpredictable, but undesigned, and beyond control?
Anyone?
One cannot say something is random in the system if he does not know what the system "is." The full number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable. Likewise a particle or field which has no direct or indirect measurable effect cannot be said not to exist.
As used in science, the word "random" actually means "unpredictable."
As an example, if he did not know the origin of the string, a person looking at a series of numbers from the extension of Pi might conclude the numbers are random when they are in fact highly determined by calculating the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
Science has also misappropriated the word "information" which in mathematics (Shannon) means "the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver as it moves from a before state to an after state." As science has now misappropriated the term it basically means determinism.
Misappropriations such as these put the burden on the consumer to discover the actual meaning - but how few are willing to do the math!?
The language of mathematics is truly universal (Tegmark, Level IV etc.) and quite specific - it should not be misappropriated for reductionist investigations. e.g. by methodological naturalism.
The discipline of mathematics is rigorous. The most certain things we can declare about our observations are mathematical.
And the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences (Wigner) is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos.
BTW, If you want to talk about CHAOS, YHAOS, then you may want to revisit your keyboard when you next enter your screen name.
:-)
Cheers!
What a wonderfully informative essay/post, dearest sister in Christ! Thank you oh so much for your penetrating insights!
I just loved this:
...if he did not know the origin of the string, a person looking at a series of numbers from the extension of Pi might conclude the numbers are random when they are in fact highly determined by calculating the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.I confess I am truly fascinated by this mathematical crittur Pi, an irrational, transcendental number. It is strictly "determined" (by calculating the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter). Yet at the same time, we never can see the "end of the string" of the digits in its extension, because that extension is thought to be infinite.
Neither do we ever see the end of the string of digits in the extension of a rational number. But — since rational numbers are characterized as such on the basis of repeating behavior of some same sequence of digits, we feel we know what we need to know about rational numbers, their infinite extension regardless: They "resolve" for us within 4D spacetime reality.
But not so with Pi. Pi is an irrational number, exhibiting zero "patterning behavior" in its extension. Last time I checked, mathematicians had calculated Pi out to some 10 million digits of the extension and discovered no evidence of pattern, of repeating behavior. Pi is regarded as a transcendental number — because its extension runs out of our 4D spacetime reality altogether. I.e., it does not "resolve" within 4D spacetime.
Which insight leads me to believe that our ordinary 4D spacetime world exists as something embedded in a higher-dimensional reality. And as you truly say, "The full number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable."
Also truly you say that "the discipline of mathematics is rigorous. The most certain things we can declare about our observations are mathematical."
And so I note with some bemusement that orthodox evolutionary biology has so far eschewed all representations of its theory and findings in precise mathematical terms. That should tell us something. Especially when the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr seemed so pained by this discrepancy from standard scientific practice that he actually proposed that Biology ought to be regarded as an independent sovereign science on a par with physics, but not bound by the mathematical conventions of physics.
Jeepers, what the scientistic, materialist types have done to Shannon is a total disgrace. How his information theory can in any way be regarded as evidence of determination in Nature is beyond me.
Eugene Wigner's remark speaks truly to me: "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos."
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your superb essay/post!
How about a pseudo-science like psychology or global warming?
(If you can't quantify it, it shouldn't truly be called "science" -- much of medical practice is not strictly speaking "science" either, so this is not to be taken as an excuse to introduce a perjorative)
As far as pi?
My favorite number is π*i because it's not only irrational, it's imaginary: as some wag has said, that means it's completely deranged...
Cheers!
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, dear brother in Christ!
Yet not just that God "still" has hold of "the other end of the string of variables so delicately balanced...." Rather He always has hold of it, from First to Last, Alpha–Omega, ever entailing and renewing the Implicit Cause in-between, in this process....
Thank you so very much, dear brother in Christ, for your beautiful observation!
LOLOL!!! I just love it!!!!
"Some wag" has a spectacular sense of humor; and it's definitely "contagious." :^)
Imaginary numbers are definitely "cool." They are the reason for the Y-axis (the vertical extension) on the Cartesian plane. Otherwise, we'd be "stuck" only with the X-axis (the horizontal extension)....
Stephen Hawking has had a field day with imaginary numbers, using them to justify his concept of imaginary time. Which concept he evidently needs to obviate any idea of a beginning of time.
Which is so strange to me; for Hawking and Roger Penrose were the very men who confirmed, to a very high degree of mathematical certainty, that the Universe did, indeed, have a beginning in time.
Go figure!
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear grey_whiskers!
Exactly, dear brother in Christ. The Logos does not fully determine. But it has known its End from the Beginning. As a "guide" to our system, it will never be defeated.
I very much agree with your idea of divine creation, post-First-Creation, as a constantly renewed act of "redemption" of that which is....
Thank you so much for your beautiful essay/post, dear brother in Christ!
I was fairly certain I would trip your mathematic switch, AG.
So what’s the word/description Science is looking for when it says “random”? “Unpredictable”? Is there a better (more exact) description? And . . . to be “random,” must something first be designed to be random?
I get it when you explain that numbers that are an extension of Pi, taken out of context (the system), might be mistaken as “random.”
It strikes me that Science is sometimes even more confused than I.
“BTW, If you want to talk about CHAOS, YHAOS, then you may want to revisit your keyboard when you next enter your screen name.
If that’s a crack about my typing abilities, then I get it. If it’s something else, you are going to have to elaborate (should you be so moved by the Spirit).
(^ 8}
Your reply: So? To me, you are an abstraction. I have never seen you or heard you.
Indeed. Perfectly reasonable. But on the other hand, the fact that I am an "abstraction" to you doesn't make me any less real as a flesh-and-blood human being in myself.
Dear MNR, you wrote:
I think these discussions sometimes become a semantic confusion rather than real disagreements.Well jeepers, you are probably right about that!
Thank you for your outstanding essay/post!
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