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To: Be Careful

He makes a claim that people irrationally come to a conclusion then “cherry pick” data to bolster it.

Having thrown away the basis to believe in anything, he rushes right on as though he hadn’t done it.

That’s known as having your philosophical cake and throwing it in the garbage too, or something like that.


11 posted on 09/23/2016 8:34:55 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

People ARE irrational.

We conservatives cherry-pick data to support our worldview. So do liberals.

Bias is a part of human nature and every one sees the world differently. No two people agree on everything.

That’s true even if you’re married - you won’t always agree with your partner.

What to make of the election? Scott Adams says feelings and your personal hunches matter more than the facts.

People decide first and look at the data later.


47 posted on 09/23/2016 9:17:46 AM PDT by goldstategop ((In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever))
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To: HiTech RedNeck; Hugh the Scot
To support his contention that we see is not reality but only what evolution has designed us to see Scott Adams links us to an article where cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman (I'm using the term scientist loosely here) says:

"Given an arbitrary world and arbitrary fitness functions, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but that is just tuned to fitness."

the article then states:

To test this idea, Hoffman and collaborators have run evolutionary simulations with different kinds of fitness functions — some of those tuned to reality and some having nothing to do with reality. The non-reality functions almost always win.

All they have done here is created computer models to "show" that their non-reality based "fitness functions" are as good as or better than reality based functions. But this is not the case. Hoffman starts by saying "Given an arbitrary world and arbitrary fitness functions" and then he goes on to create SPECIFIC functions that he can use in his computer models to "prove" his hypothesis - that reality based perception is not the best way to reproduce your genes. There is no way that ARBITRARY functions would as Hoffman states, "almost always win" over reality based fitness functions but I'm sure you could CHERRY PICK some functions that would out perform the reality based function in the computer model the YOU DESIGNED to prove your hypothesis. Science? Not so much.

Just like the global warming models - design the model that will show your desired outcome using your cherry picked data.

I think Hugh the Scot has it exactly right:
Reality: That which continues to grind your face into the concrete, even after you stop believing in it.

61 posted on 09/23/2016 11:32:32 AM PDT by Garth Tater (What's mine is mine.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

The point of the author is that senses are designed & optimized so that their owners can have babies.


63 posted on 09/23/2016 12:33:21 PM PDT by ckilmer (q e)
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