Socialist Agencies Destroying America

[Cadsuane]

I agree with Max, even though he skirts religious fervor with his mathematico-deism. Any phenomena can be reduced logically and explained to some degree of accuracy by some theory, depending on how good the theory is, and usually articulated best with some kind of math. That's the aim of science at any rate.

I'm reminded of Isaac Azimov's Foundation Trilogy which started with a brilliant psychologist coming up with the discipline of psycho-history, which, after measuring the dizzying array of societal forces at work on civilization, allowed for probabilities of the actions of a sufficiently vast number of people to be predicted over the course of thousands of years. To some degree we already do this when psychology and economics try to be predictive sciences.

I disagree with Max though in the sense that hard hard naturalistic science is scarcely a practical place to start when trying to solve problems of politics etc, since too many questions remain unsolved, like how exactly computation can give rise to what we call intelligence and/or consciousness, for starters.
I end up finding it a bit pompous to pretend that a strong grasp of physics and math entitles one to a transcendental vantage with regards to mundane human problems. It's just not practical philosophy... yet.

[Kuya]

That reminds me, it has always bothered me that if one were to insist that a field such as psychology or sociology do as the classical conception of science demands, that is, decipher the laws that rule phenomena and therefore gain the ability to manipulate and predict phenomena, then we'd have a little problem.

If sociology is in charge of large groups of humans, and psychology is in charge of specific humans, then a truly "scientific" sociology and psychology should be able to manipulate and predict human thought and action. A suddenly we have an ethical dilema. Or at least i should think that people who don't like the idea of being manipulated should have a problem with that. Because if it were possible to do that, then whomever controls this psychology and sociology on stereoids, controls everyone.

[Cadsuane]

That reminds me, it has always bothered me that if one were to insist that a field such as psychology or sociology do as the classical conception of science demands, that is, decipher the laws that rule phenomena and therefore gain the ability to manipulate and predict phenomena, then we'd have a little problem.

If sociology is in charge of large groups of humans, and psychology is in charge of specific humans, then a truly "scientific" sociology and psychology should be able to manipulate and predict human thought and action. A suddenly we have an ethical dilema. Or at least i should think that people who don't like the idea of being manipulated should have a problem with that. Because if it were possible to do that, then whomever controls this psychology and sociology on stereoids, controls everyone.

I don't really think prediction equals manipulation anymore than I think the discipline of meteorology allows people to manipulate the weather, though, theoretically, you could I guess. It's more like how you could have a unified theory telling you useful things about tax policy or criminal law ie. some kind of provable hypothesis, as opposed to relying on the groupthink tribal intuition that man was born with.

[Max™]

That is what psychohistory literally did, Kuya, you should read the Foundation books.

lol


Logical thought tells me that people should not be required to be ruled, that government only seems a necessity when your population is uneducated and confined.

We are an ignorant childlike race, and we are trapped on a tiny little speck of rock and water.

Deny it, go ahead. Try to pretend we are not savage.


Do I seem like I am professing religious fervor? Maybe I do, but you know the difference between me "preaching" and an actual preacher?

I'm telling you that you should educate yourself, and doubt what I say.

If I seem to be preaching, it is just because of an ironic bend I have, and the observation that some of the zeal which makes religion such a virulent disease, could be used to fight it as well.

I am just an antibody.

[Kuya]

I don't really think prediction equals manipulation anymore than I think the discipline of meteorology allows people to manipulate the weather, though, theoretically, you could I guess. It's more like how you could have a unified theory telling you useful things about tax policy or criminal law ie. some kind of provable hypothesis, as opposed to relying on the groupthink tribal intuition that man was born with.

Isn't meteorology often made fun of for not being very exact at all? Theoretically, you could just perfectly predict weather without ever manipulating it, but i think the problem is more pressing if you could literally know what another person would do before they think about doing it. It reminds me of the truism of the scientist trying to apply perfect structures to human matters, while evoking the idea of a man with his head in the clouds because he cannot understand the vast complexity and non-rationality of human issues.

I believe that to me this comes down to two things: Either perfect laws predicting human thought and behaviour are impossible, or we should hope that they are.

[Max™]

Well naturally this would happen.

Scientists are educated, logical, and intelligent.

Thus scientists are men.

So we naturally don't understand the crazy complicated irrational side of our own species.

http://www.americanwomenarecrazy.com/cover.jpg

[Kuya]

Well naturally this would happen.

Scientists are educated, logical, and intelligent.

Thus scientists are men.

So we naturally don't understand the crazy complicated irrational side of our own species.

http://www.americanwomenarecrazy.com/cover.jpg

Au contraire, and like i said, nonrational, not irrational. Take for example, a man killing his lover in a fit of rage because she cheated on him. This is nonrational behaviour, rather than irrational. It is not irrational because it is not random, but it is not rational because it does not follow a set of principles. The behaviour has a reason, but it can not usually be deduced and can only really be understood by those who have experienced it or have a relationship to it. Most people can't say killing your loved one out of a fit of rage is rational, but they can understand it because they know what it means to love someone and at the same time hate that person, and they know that you can do brash things out of rage, which make sense at the time to the one doing it. It is something that can only usually be understood once it has happened rather than predicted, because it does not follow a solid set or rules, and it is unlikely to happen again for the same reasons and under the same conditions.

That is at least my understanding of what nonrationality is.

[Max™]

(I was mostly kidding, BITCHES IS KRAZY!)

[Cadsuane]

That is what psychohistory literally did, Kuya, you should read the Foundation books.

lol


Logical thought tells me that people should not be required to be ruled, that government only seems a necessity when your population is uneducated and confined.

We are an ignorant childlike race, and we are trapped on a tiny little speck of rock and water.

Deny it, go ahead. Try to pretend we are not savage.

I will, because it's a value judgment that comes more from your dissaffection with the species than any of its inherent qualities. Anybody significantly above the average of IQ and education is going to be a little disappointed with the intellectual faculties of the rest of the group whether the mean IQ is 100 or 250. It's all relative.

Do I seem like I am professing religious fervor? Maybe I do, but you know the difference between me "preaching" and an actual preacher?

I'm telling you that you should educate yourself, and doubt what I say.

If I seem to be preaching, it is just because of an ironic bend I have, and the observation that some of the zeal which makes religion such a virulent disease, could be used to fight it as well.

I am just an antibody.

Nah, you don't sound preachy, you just sound like a new age hippy tripping out on transcendental wisdom and acid flashbacks.

Have you ever read a guy called Gary Zukav who wrote an interpretation of modern physics called The Dancing Wu Li Masters? Basically talked about some heady quantum physics topics and did the obligatory flip the fuck out over the uncertainty principle (causality is a myth created by our weak fleshy minds!). Anyway, for the most part it wasn't a bad book per se and not egregiously inaccurate, but a bit overfull of this transcendentalist tone, especially when pointing out how modern science seems to confirm buddhism, the hip new refuge of the modern spiritualist.

Eventually I picked up another of his books called Seat of the Soul whose title lead me to believe I would be in for more of this new age sort of tripe and obviously it lived up to that expectation. I tossed it halfway through the first chapter, a bit depressed that even in science people can try too hard, if you know what I'm saying.

It's not as if you're quite that bad. After all, you haven't been on Oprah like Zukav has as far as I know, and you seem to be a better mathematician/physicist than I am. But you do sound like fucking Henry David Thoreau sometimes.

Isn't meteorology often made fun of for not being very exact at all? Theoretically, you could just perfectly predict weather without ever manipulating it, but i think the problem is more pressing if you could literally know what another person would do before they think about doing it. It reminds me of the truism of the scientist trying to apply perfect structures to human matters, while evoking the idea of a man with his head in the clouds because he cannot understand the vast complexity and non-rationality of human issues.

I believe that to me this comes down to two things: Either perfect laws predicting human thought and behaviour are impossible, or we should hope that they are.

It's still good science isn't it? Not even physics is exact anymore really. ":3

Well like I said, we can already figure out pretty well what people will buy, who they'll vote for, and even how groups will act, with some degree of accuracy.
A psychology student friend of mine (who I can't stop making fun of for studying psychology) showed me a book recently talking about the applications of chaos theory in group psychology which contained some pretty crazy math. Of course I wasn't exactly sure about how my friend was going to understand 3 words in this book and write a paper citing it when he stopped taking math in grade 10 but, I did gain a healthy new interest in psychology where before I'd mostly been pointing and laughing.

I can't seem to make myself scared about the concept, really. Seems to me that predicting the precise behaviour of an individual would be unfeasible outside a laboratory and predictions about groups have less sinistre implications.

[Max™]

I don't know what Thoreau sounds like, so is that good or bad?

All I can say is that I come to this honestly, of my own means, and my own conclusions.

Never heard of Zukav, I mostly read dry texts, or obscure sci-fi for fun. I'm remarkably ignorant when it comes to popular literature past and present. Though I have been looking to read some more Pahluniak since I finished Rant the other day. Great book btw.


I'm not saying we're uneducated per se, I'm saying we're savage and childlike.

We kill each other over imaginary friends.


To someone with no beliefs, this is the same as going to war over whether you think Santa or the Easter Bunny is right.


I don't think the uncertainty principle is what most people think it is btw, it is just a result of our limited view of time, and the fine scale structure of the Universe being, as I call it, coarse grained, and threaded.

[Cadsuane]

Well forget Zukav, you're not missing anything.

Shit, haven't read Thoreau, though? Honestly I'm a bit surprised since the more I think about it the more you resemble a modern version of him. For example:

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Thoreau did the luddite thing for awhile too when he went to live in that cabin with only basic amenities and wrote a book about it. I'd advise you to read Walden, but then again I think everyone should read Walden.

P.S. As I understand the uncertainty principle, it's an artifact of the fact that any measurement we do of anything involves shooting particles of a specific energy at something. Higher energy (higher frequency) detection gives us precise measure on position but not momentum, while lower energy detection does vice versa, and there's no way to know both precisely.

[Max™]

When we observe something in the present, we are unable to properly observe the changes we make to it's state in the past and the future.

An electron is spread further across time in it's interactions than we are, so what you do to it in a few seconds affects what you see now.


I've heard a bit about Thoreau going into the woods to live honestly or some such, I did it in a tent myself, and a car once, just never read him.

[Cadsuane]

Well, at any rate, the ploy of many a pretentious layman enlightened mystic sort (including Zukav) writing about physics is to talk about the uncertainty principle spelling out the end of natural science and objectivity, when the simple truth is no one would give a fuck about it if Heisenberg hadn't chosen such a provocative name for a physical theory.

[Max™]

Well, if he had simply called it the ΔxΔp limit then no one would jump on it as if it showed free will or the limits of science or some stupid shit.

[Cadsuane]

Just so.

[Kuya]

It's still good science isn't it? Not even physics is exact anymore really. ":3

Well like I said, we can already figure out pretty well what people will buy, who they'll vote for, and even how groups will act, with some degree of accuracy.
A psychology student friend of mine (who I can't stop making fun of for studying psychology) showed me a book recently talking about the applications of chaos theory in group psychology which contained some pretty crazy math. Of course I wasn't exactly sure about how my friend was going to understand 3 words in this book and write a paper citing it when he stopped taking math in grade 10 but, I did gain a healthy new interest in psychology where before I'd mostly been pointing and laughing.

I can't seem to make myself scared about the concept, really. Seems to me that predicting the precise behaviour of an individual would be unfeasible outside a laboratory and predictions about groups have less sinistre implications.

I wasn't saying that meteorology was not useful, just that it is often found at the end of jokes. The same would even apply to psychology, where it is the end of your jokes, but it has its uses (or at least i think so since it's one of the things i study).

Anyway, i'm not particularly worried about psychology providing the means to control us all by the will of some evil puppetmaster, seeing as how i subscribe to the group that thinks it's impossible. Although i am pointing out that if it were possible to treat psychology like chemistry or physics (kind of) then i suggest the results would not be ethical (for most of us at least).