Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,901 
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Post by Dub on Aug 11, 2023 13:04:27 GMT -5
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Aug 11, 2023 13:23:13 GMT -5
Can’t read it without signing in. That’s not gonna happen.
Mike
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,901
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Post by Dub on Aug 11, 2023 13:39:37 GMT -5
I made a PDF and put in Adobe’s cloud. I’ll try to make it more available.
Because of an image, the PDF was too big to upload as an attachment.
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Post by david on Aug 11, 2023 13:54:48 GMT -5
Excellent article.
“Overconfidence,” the committee concluded, had “dulled faculties usually so alert.” Why does overconfidence wreak such havoc? Professor Don Moore, a leading expert on the subject, offers a convincing account. Overconfidence, he explains, is a “gateway bias” that “gives the other decision-making biases teeth.” Whereas a healthy sense of humility would check these biases, overconfidence unleashes them.
Thanks, Dub.
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Post by millring on Aug 11, 2023 15:06:10 GMT -5
Clever. You almost don't notice his confusion of categories or his omniscient, transcendent point of view.
The author is entitled to his own facts. He's not entitled to his own truth.
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Post by millring on Aug 11, 2023 15:22:35 GMT -5
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,901
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Post by Dub on Aug 11, 2023 18:55:51 GMT -5
Clever. You almost don't notice his confusion of categories or his omniscient, transcendent point of view. The author is entitled to his own facts. He's not entitled to his own truth. Don’t you have that 160° backwards? He is not entitled to his own facts but, like you and the rest of us, he is entitled to his own truth. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Aug 11, 2023 19:29:51 GMT -5
Terminological note/quibble: What exactly is one's own "truth"? Might not a more precise term be "belief"? (I might also suggest "faith," except for the emotional loading that word carries--and "faith" is seen as unassailable precisely because it is not necessarily coupled to evidence--to facts.)
"Facts" would be propositions that can be checked on and tested and agreed upon because they are supported by evidence, by observation, by measurement, by our senses and the instrumentation that extends them. Facts can be publicly shared. Conclusions derived from facts can vary--they are interpretations of facts and sets of facts.
Good epistemology depends on good semantics.
I'm not sure that Scalia's (predictable, Catholic) take on meat counts as overconfidence--my first impression is that he was arguing from authority ("You’re telling me the Pope has been wrong for centuries?"), and also making a categorical sidestep, specifically from a biological to a theological-doctrinal taxonomic system. (I also suspect that he knew exactly what he was doing--his education was at least as good as mine, and came from some of the same traditions.)
Though there is certainly a strain of absolute certainty in the kind of thinking I observe in the Catholic justices, particularly Scalia and Alito--their flavor of Catholicism is totalizing and thus absolutist, and it requires a degree of post-Enlightenment flexibility to treat secular matters in a secular manner.
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Post by millring on Aug 11, 2023 19:59:24 GMT -5
Clever. You almost don't notice his confusion of categories or his omniscient, transcendent point of view. The author is entitled to his own facts. He's not entitled to his own truth. Don’t you have that 160° backwards? He is not entitled to his own facts but, like you and the rest of us, he is entitled to his own truth. I don't question his factuality. I question the deceptive way he uses those facts and the conclusion he draws. |
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Post by Cornflake on Aug 11, 2023 20:14:24 GMT -5
"'Facts' would be propositions that can be checked on and tested and agreed upon because they are supported by evidence, by observation, by measurement, by our senses and the instrumentation that extends them. Facts can be publicly shared. Conclusions derived from facts can vary--they are interpretations of facts and sets of facts."
Suppose I were to go on a solo mission to Jupiter and return and tell you it's made of red chile. That assertion can't be tested. There was evidence for me. I was there. It's not faith or a belief, both of which are problematic words. But it's not evidence to you. Your explanation seems to rule out the possibility that people can have experiences that can't be duplicated by other people.
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Post by Cornflake on Aug 11, 2023 20:25:23 GMT -5
Never mind. We've had this discussion before. We just disagree, amicably I hope.
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Post by Russell Letson on Aug 11, 2023 21:37:21 GMT -5
"Telling" is testimony, and the first question I ask about the assertion that Jupiter is made of red chile is, "How did you come to that conclusion?" At which point, the assertion either gets supported by evidence (recordings of instrument readings, chemical-analysis results), or maybe just reports of first-hand experience ("I tasted it, and it was sure-enough chile"). The material evidence can be evaluated, but the unsupported report cannot. The reporter might be delusional or deceptive or deceived, but in the absence of evidence, I can't accept the red-chile assertion. (Or deny it, though there might be lots of evidence and inference to the contrary that make it quite doubtful.)
Individual experiences occur within individual nervous systems, and all we can do is report on them and see if anyone else has had similar experiences. But I really can't know what red looks like to you. I can, however, show a range of people a color sample that is objectively established as reflecting a given frequency of light and have them name it. And I can also test you for red-green color-blindness, just as I can test myself for hearing loss with a frequency sweep generator.
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Post by Marshall on Aug 11, 2023 22:25:16 GMT -5
Damn Papists
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Post by Cornflake on Aug 12, 2023 7:23:59 GMT -5
"Individual experiences occur within individual nervous systems, and all we can do is report on them and see if anyone else has had similar experiences." You could accurately say that all experience occurs within individual brains and all we can do is report them and check for similar experiences. I don't see how that gets you anywhere.
As I've mentioned, my religious views are anchored in a couple of experiences I had years ago. I didn't "report" them. I didn't mention them to anyone for many years because most people would have thought I had a screw loose or had been on acid. I did look to see if others had had similar experiences. There was a mass of evidence, quite reliable in my estimation, that many others had had similar experiences. William James collected and reported a lot of instances. Thomas Merton studied the subject near the end of his life and reached the same conclusion.
Some critters can perceive the ultraviolet spectrum or the near-infrared spectrum even though I can't. The fact that I can't duplicate what they experience doesn't make it any less of a fact. The fact that our gadgets can now measure and simulate what they perceive doesn't make it any more of a fact. My experience and the evidence convinces me that some people have perceived an all-pervasive order in this whole show that others can't perceive. Yeah, it's all in my brain, but every experience is.
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Post by John B on Aug 12, 2023 10:57:59 GMT -5
Some critters can perceive the ultraviolet spectrum or the near-infrared spectrum even though I can't. The fact that I can't duplicate what they experience doesn't make it any less of a fact. The fact that our gadgets can now measure and simulate what they perceive doesn't make it any more of a fact. If it can be replicated, perceived by others and/or by instruments, etc., I'm far more likely to call it a fact rather than a belief. |
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Post by millring on Aug 13, 2023 8:14:51 GMT -5
Some critters can perceive the ultraviolet spectrum or the near-infrared spectrum even though I can't. The fact that I can't duplicate what they experience doesn't make it any less of a fact. The fact that our gadgets can now measure and simulate what they perceive doesn't make it any more of a fact. If it can be replicated, perceived by others and/or by instruments, etc., I'm far more likely to call it a fact rather than a belief. At face value, I agree. But I'm pretty sure that most people's faith isn't in what they have duplicated or experienced. Instead, it is a mix of faith in their tribe's testimony of things they claim to have duplicated and experienced, coupled with institutional certainty. As I said last week, the religious among us are woefully ignorant of even the most basic theological and/or philosophical foundations of their beliefs ... but no more so than the modern man who thinks he believes in something he calls "science" but is nothing of the sort. That modern man couldn't math his way through the simplest equation, nor duplicate (or describe) the process by which what he claims to believe in was arrived at. We're all just faithful followers. |
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Post by jdd2 on Aug 13, 2023 8:28:25 GMT -5
Which is why trump resonates--it's all emotive, you don't have to think.
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