Monday, September 6, 2010

Factually Incorrect, But What Is the Intuition Getting At?

I have been irritated. Luckily, I have a blog.
""Deductively, we can assert that either Dr. Fukino is lying, or she is telling the truth"
Elizabeth Loftus disagrees. Yet again, philosophy fails to contribute."
No, this is a failure to understand philosophy. Predictably, from someone who thinks that philosophy fails to contribute. The belief obscures any evidence to the contrary, because philosophy is run on the wetware - you need to take philosophy seriously enough to install the programs before you can accurately evaluate its statements.

Either Fukino thinks she's seen a birth certificate, or not. Whether she has actually seen a legitimate document, or used her hypocrisy circuits to invent a memory of such, is quite irrelevant to whether she is lying or not.[1]

Would this small modification have helped?
"Therefore, B.H. Obama and [or] his associates [think they] are actively withholding this historical document (which should not be confused with a database printout on fancy paper) from the public in the face of substantial public interest. Remember, this is a best-case scenario."
I don't think so; I made this change automatically, as part of interpreting writings charitably, but perhaps this is a specialized skill which is more difficult than I realize.


I think there's something more to these anti-philosophy charades (I see them everywhere) that I don't fully understand. The issue of being factually incorrect is blinding me. I suspect that the situation is somewhat symmetrical - they don't understand philosophy, and I don't understand what they're finding objectionable in philosophy. Any ideas would be appreciated.


I should also mention that several commenters suggested that Obama is withholding on purpose. He's already president, so fait accompli, and a lot of his opponents are wasting time with this dead end. A sign of utter unscrupulousness, if so, but pure win for him, strategically.

[1] For the record I don't care either way. Citizenship is just a contrived legal hurdle, the real question is who should be president, for the good of the country, and the real answer is no one.

3 comments:

Adrian said...

You know, Alrenous, your blog is one of the best that I've seen, and I've seen hundreds (there have to be hundreds of millions though). There's no doubt that in our age philosophy has been mostly relegated to the trash bin in favor of "science" (scientism, really). It's ironic (or maybe only to the modern mind) that TRUE philosophers such as yourself are, in fact, the REAL scientists, because you engage in a scientific pursuit of knowledge, rather than all these science-worshipping denizens who are really just ascribing to a religion and don't even realize it.

I've seen several fools on YouTube claiming that we have no need for philosophy, that science has replaced it and it's the only thing it matters. I call them fools not because I disagree with them, but because they are actually so shallow they don't even realize how pathetic and predictable they are. It's good that you have a physics degree as well, the automatons can't say that you don't understand science. You should be getting hundreds of comments but everyone's busy with Lady Gaga and other mindless activities instead. Maybe you should write a book someday, and connect with more like-minded people. Keep up the excellent work nonetheless.

Alrenous said...

So apparently blogger ate some comments?

Can authors delete their comments without leaving a tombstone?

Regardless, the comment ended up at my email. So if you're reading this, thanks for the kind words.

Scientists by and large don't care either way for truth. They just want respect, generally, and to crush their enemies. Progress in science is often accidental with these people, which I see as a strength of the scientific method, because progress does occur, and not just when a scientist bucks the trend.

They could do a lot better if universities cared about truth more instead of simply perpetuating their own culture. But of course they have to care about perpetuation above all things, as otherwise they'll fail to perpetuate.

Alrenous said...

Ah, apparently I have a spam filter. For some reason, it didn't like Adrian.