Do clever people outsmart themselves?

[David Mo]

So then what you're saying is that you're just doing a red herring on your own sub-thread about getting some knowledge in other ways then the scientific method?



Cute. Retarded, but cute



1. You're still doing a by association fallacy. I mean, by that kind of logic, Newton spent a lot of time and effort on alchemy, therefore alchemy must be related to science

2. "Related to" is still irrelevant to the topic of getting knowledge by other means than science. I mean, astrology is technically related to astronomy, but that doesn't say much.

One of the clearest signs that the opponent maintains an irrational belief is that he begins to insult rather than argue. You go into that loop repeatedly. It's very significant.

In Newton's time alchemy pretended to be a science. Newton's philosophical deficiencies led him to believe such a thing. Especially the absurd idea that he didn't hypothesize. ("Hypotheses non fingo"). Fortunately alchemy was forbidden in England at that time and Newton was sensible enough to realize that his alchemical research led him nowhere. So he kept his research in a drawer and did not make a fool of himself.

Indeed, astrology is related to science. But not in the same way as philosophy. Astrology tries to predict facts based on data that contradict science. It can therefore be refuted with a little science, philosophy and common sense. The philosophy of science does not pretend to compete with science. Its relationship is of an analytical type. It assumes that science is a mode of knowledge and tries to investigate how it works. It does not pretend to talk about facts or predict anything. If science can refute philosophy it is not with facts, but by demonstrating that a philosopher has misinterpreted scientific theories.

 

[Chanakya]

Your problem is that you don't make any demarcation between science and non-science. If looking out the window and seeing it raining is as scientific as thinking the theory of relativity, our language becomes a puree. If they are two different things, where is the difference? I would say that in the use of a method: the hypothetical deductive (hypothetyco-deductive)

Of course I do. You can study the mechanics of the engine , learn some science and apply it. But that's not the case I was raising. I spoke of the daily activity of a person who refers to areas in which he is not an expert.

You appear not to have understood me. It could be a language thing, I don't know.

I was agreeing with you there, that a man thoughtlessly and as a matter of habit filling his gas, isn't "doing science", any more than Aztecs doing the human sacrifice thing to get the sun to rise again next day were, although both could be said, very roughly and broadly speaking, to be following the evidence. In this I agree with you and disagree with what I understood Hans to have said earlier.

But done rightly -- which probably no one ever does in practice -- absolutely, filling gasoline in your fuel tank can very well be science, no doubt of that. In this I disagree with what I understand you to have said, about this demarcation thing.

I would say that the advance of neuroscience indicates that there is a relationship of dependence between our mental activity and some activities of the brain. But that relationship is far from being detailed and understood for the most part. Establishing those details is more of a program than a certainty.

Sure, I did say "in theory". And sure, that this theory will translate into practice one day is by no means certain, obviously.

Unless you are of the opinion that even in theory such a thing isn't possible, then we are not in disagreement here. Again, probably a language thing: so perhaps you could confiorm this, or else correct my impression about your position on this.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

By the way, in passing, I also question whether it's true that haters must be unhappy. They are likely unhappy as long as those they hate continue to exist, but I'm not sure how unhappy they would be if they are successful.

It would be nice to believe that evil does not bring happiness, but I'm not convinced of that.

I'd disagree, certainly for many of them and say that the destruction of those they hate would probably rob them of happyness. I'm thinking of the communal hater rather than the isolated individual in their parent's basement, but I'd suggest that many people experience some of their happiest moments when part of a group explicitly ranged against something, whether their carrying placards and chanting "Dump Trump" or Tiki Torches and chanting "The Jews will not replace us" (NB. Just in case, I am not suggesting a moral equivalence between the two positions or the actions of the groups) hatred forms a strong bond and being part of a group makes us happy.

 

[Scorpion]

Horse swaggle.

You don't get to define the chemical makeup of another person's brain, which is all that love is. If her brain has the proper levels and ratios of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin she is in love. This is an objective fact.

Whether or not your brain has the chemical makeup to love her back is another thing, but it's an objective fact that is or isn't true.

I regard all you people talking about love as nothing but brain chemistry as proof of my opening post that clever people outsmart themselves.

There may be brain chemistry involved in feelings, but I do not believe love can be so easily dismissed.

For example, it was said by men who fought in the trenches of the first world war that they loved each other more than women. So their love was not biological, but born of comradeship..

People also love their pets, and I loved a bird. I cried when she died, and it takes a lot to drag a tear out of me.

 

[HansMustermann]

One of the clearest signs that the opponent maintains an irrational belief is that he begins to insult rather than argue. You go into that loop repeatedly. It's very significant.

Oh good, because you produced such gems as "If you don't know what you're talking about, why are you talking?" as early as page 3. So can we add hypocrisy to the list of your qualities?

In Newton's time alchemy pretended to be a science. Newton's philosophical deficiencies led him to believe such a thing. Especially the absurd idea that he didn't hypothesize. ("Hypotheses non fingo"). Fortunately alchemy was forbidden in England at that time and Newton was sensible enough to realize that his alchemical research led him nowhere. So he kept his research in a drawer and did not make a fool of himself.

Nevertheless, your claim was essentially that a short list of scientists have also done philosophy, therefore that means philosophy is important in some way. Then the EXACT same applies to alchemy, alcohol, drugs, or going to titty bars.

You haven't in any way shown that that interest in philosophy also helped in their scientific discoveries in any way. Once you do THAT, sure, THEN you can exclude alchemy for not qualifying in the same way. But until then all you demonstrate is that you make up BS double standards as you go, as usual.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I regard all you people talking about love as nothing but brain chemistry as proof of my opening post that clever people outsmart themselves.

Again someone who hasn't been wrong about literally everything they've said so far is gonna have to be the one to telling me I'm "outsmarting" myself whatever the bloody hell that means.

There may be brain chemistry involved in feelings, but I do not believe love can be so easily dismissed.

"Yes the Garden is beautiful, but there has to be fairies at the bottom of it" it is then.

For example, it was said by men who fought in the trenches of the first world war that they loved each other more than women. So their love was not biological, but born of comradeship..

People also love their pets, and I loved a bird. I cried when she died, and it takes a lot to drag a tear out of me.

That's just pure gibberish. When I get home I'll have my cat walk across the keyboard to give you a proper response.

 

[Scorpion]

When I get home I'll have my cat walk across the keyboard to give you a proper response.

Don't you love your cat? I know I loved my bird, and she knew it.

 

[Pixel42]

There may be brain chemistry involved in feelings, but I do not believe love can be so easily dismissed.

What you believe and what is actually the case are two different things.

For example, it was said by men who fought in the trenches of the first world war that they loved each other more than women. So their love was not biological, but born of comradeship.

Love between comrades is as biological, and as selected for by evolution, as sexual love.

People also love their pets, and I loved a bird. I cried when she died, and it takes a lot to drag a tear out of me.

I've loved all my cats, including the two I have now. Again, nothing but biology is required to explain that love.

 

[Chanakya]

I regard all you people talking about love as nothing but brain chemistry as proof of my opening post that clever people outsmart themselves.

There may be brain chemistry involved in feelings, but I do not believe love can be so easily dismissed.

Why "dismissed", Scorpion? To understand the mechanism behind something is not to devalue that something, surely? I don't see why realizing that chemicals trigger my love will make me value that love any less, why should it? Because those chemicals are triggered by other causes, which in the case of love would be the object of one's love.

On a separate and somewhat lighter note, I don't see that it takes any especial cleverness or smartness to understand this. To actually discover this, sure, but to understand this already discovered fact, probably not. No reason to think that those of us who recognize the chemical basis for emotions are any cleverer than those who don't, IMO.

 

[Scorpion]

Why "dismissed", Scorpion? To understand the mechanism behind something is not to devalue that something, surely? I don't see why realizing that chemicals trigger my love will make me value that love any less, why should it? Because those chemicals are triggered by other causes, which in the case of love would be the object of one's love.

On a separate and somewhat lighter note, I don't see that it takes any especial cleverness or smartness to understand this. To actually discover this, sure, but to understand this already discovered fact, probably not. No reason to think that those of us who recognize the chemical basis for emotions are any cleverer than those who don't, IMO.

Seems to me that simple people believe in God, and the power of love, because they can feel it in their hearts. And they do not consider their feelings of love are only due to chemical activity in the brain. They just love. Maybe clever people cut themselves off from those feelings, because they analyse them too much.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Maybe clever people cut themselves off from those feelings, because they analyse them too much.

Or feel them more profoundly and intensely, because they analyse them enough.

Dave

 

[Pixel42]

Seems to me that simple people believe in God, and the power of love, because they can feel it in their hearts. And they do not consider their feelings of love are only due to chemical activity in the brain. They just love. Maybe clever people cut themselves off from those feelings, because they analyse them too much.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/184384-i-have-a-friend-who-s-an-artist-and-has-sometimes

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Seems to me that simple people believe in God, and the power of love, because they can feel it in their hearts. And they do not consider their feelings of love are only due to chemical activity in the brain. They just love. Maybe clever people cut themselves off from those feelings, because they analyse them too much.

That's wrong. Again if you're going to convince us you have so new way of looking at the world, you have to stop being wrong.

Whether or not they "consider their feelings of love are only due to chemical activity in the brain" is meaningless nothing.

Reality gives not one toss what you "consider" it to be.

 

[acbytesla]

I regard all you people talking about love as nothing but brain chemistry as proof of my opening post that clever people outsmart themselves.

There may be brain chemistry involved in feelings, but I do not believe love can be so easily dismissed.

For example, it was said by men who fought in the trenches of the first world war that they loved each other more than women. So their love was not biological, but born of comradeship..

People also love their pets, and I loved a bird. I cried when she died, and it takes a lot to drag a tear out of me.

What makes you think anyone dismissing love? I haven't read that in this thread.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually, let's return to this, to illustrate the whole idiocy:

One of the clearest signs that the opponent maintains an irrational belief is that he begins to insult rather than argue. You go into that loop repeatedly. It's very significant.

The only "insult" in the message was in the following part:

I don't know how to tell you that I don't think philosophy is an alternative to science. Here I put it in Swahili just in case:

Falsafa sio mbadala wa sayansi.

Cute. Retarded, but cute

So, care to elaborate exactly which irrational belief would make me call the stunt of writing your backpedalling in Swahili and in big red letters "retarded"?

Oh wait, lemme guess, you were just hoping that if you quote it out of context, you can play some "I'm insulted, therefore I win" card instead of supporting your claims, right? Or in other words, more of your usual dishonest arguing, right?

 

[acbytesla]

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/184384-i-have-a-friend-who-s-an-artist-and-has-sometimes

Originally Posted by Richard Feynman
I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

Allow me to say this. AMEN

 

[Myriad]

Seems to me that simple people believe in God, and the power of love, because they can feel it in their hearts. And they do not consider their feelings of love are only due to chemical activity in the brain. They just love. Maybe clever people cut themselves off from those feelings, because they analyse them too much.

There's nothing wrong with appreciating and celebrating the genuine feelings, practical understandings, and good qualities of "simple people." It's been a popular topic for millennia. (Unless you start getting all patronizing about it. That, too, has been popular for millennia. But so far you've avoided that pitfall.)

Why, though, do you feel it necessary or appropriate to denigrate the understandings of "clever people" at the same time? What's the point or purpose of that kind of adversarial binary thinking? I don't recall Jesus saying "Blessed are the meek, because earnest aggressive people sure are a bunch of jerks."

Sixty years ago I came into this world in the company of my intellectually disabled twin brother. Over forty-five years ago, I came to terms with, not the obvious differences between him and me, but with our profound sameness, which is harder to perceive but which dwarfs those differences. That's led to a lifetime of additional experiences that have deepened my understanding. For instance, for some years (until his tragic early death typical for people with his condition) my best friend was a Down Syndrome man, from whom I learned greater confidence in stressful social situations.

Please, do go on with your interesting thoughts about clever versus simple people. But consider dropping some of your prejudices. They've got you on a very wrong path right now.

 

[Chanakya]

Why, though, do you feel it necessary or appropriate to denigrate the understandings of "clever people" at the same time?

This is something of a sidebar, but, to repeat what I just said to Scorpion, I don't see where the "cleverness" comes in.

Even actually discovering the chemical basis of emotions may not, in this age of institutional research, necessarily involve any especial cleverness, any more than a competent engineer, or stock analyst, or solicitor, or doctor, or whatever.

And even if we do accept that actually discovering the chemical (and neural) basis for emotions does require some above par intelligence, even then, surely simply digesting this already discovered fact does not represent any great intellectual feat.

I don't see why those arguing in favor of this chemical basis are being accused of being clever. It's kind of flattering to 'us', but I don't think it's true.

 

[Chanakya]

Seems to me that simple people believe in God, and the power of love, because they can feel it in their hearts. And they do not consider their feelings of love are only due to chemical activity in the brain. They just love. Maybe clever people cut themselves off from those feelings, because they analyse them too much.

You keep saying this is (or may be) so, and 'we' keep ganging up on you and telling you this (probably) isn't the case, but it occurs to me that both these are unsupported, ipse dixit claims.

I guess the thing to do would be to see if there's research showing correlation between intelligence and acceptance of scientific facts, and negative correlation between intelligence and happiness (or intensity of love).

I'm too lazy to look this up myself, but if by chance anyone's aware of something along these lines, or if some industrious soul would care to check this out, then the results might be interesting to see.

 

[IanS]

I regard all you people talking about love as nothing but brain chemistry as proof of my opening post that clever people outsmart themselves.

There may be brain chemistry involved in feelings, but I do not believe love can be so easily dismissed.

For example, it was said by men who fought in the trenches of the first world war that they loved each other more than women. So their love was not biological, but born of comradeship..
People also love their pets, and I loved a bird. I cried when she died, and it takes a lot to drag a tear out of me.

Well I can totally appreciate that (the highlighted), and I for one strongly applaud you having those strong sentiments towards any animals that become your friends. Personally I think there is something very wrong with the thinking of people who are not compassionate and caring towards all animals, and actual cruelty towards animals is the one thing in the world that I would get seriously angry about.

But just quite generally (and not now about Scorpion's bird, or my cat, anyone's dog, horse, wife, husband, parent, child etc.), just re the word “love” - I'm not sure that concept is either helpful or really accurate when we are talking about any of this. What I think we are actually talking about is just a great deal of physical and emotional attraction, and a great deal of caring and a wish always to stay together etc. But when we use the word “love”, it seems that people imply something far beyond that … so far beyond that it's implied to be almost incomprehensible and beyond reason, description, or understanding.

I don't see any reason or any evidence to think anything particularly incomprehensible, magical or mystical is going on. For example – when it was said earlier that we could use an MRI scanner to detect various chemical, electrical or other changes in a persons brain, I expect you could detect all the same changes if you just showed the person some sexy pictures. You could probably get all the same responses if you just showed a starving person or animal a plate of their favourite food!

OK, so science can probably detect all of those signs. But is there supposed to be something more to “love”? Something we cannot, or have not, detected? If so, then how did anyone ascertain that?