Re: Pascal's Wager

From: Dana Hedberg (dah@signalinteractive.com)
Date: Tue Dec 08 1998 - 15:36:37 MST

 

Zenarchy wrote:

 
"ignorant intolerance" can call itself whatever it likes. Sometimes it calls
itself judeo christian, sometimes buddhist, sometimes communist, sometimes
libertarian, sometimes national socialist, sometimes taoist, feminist,
humanist, socialist, hinduist, or any ist you want to list.

I don't think we (tolerant, sensible, mature, rational, compassionate, sexy,
intelligent, well-intended, honest, responsible, good-humored people) have
much to fear from *ignorant* intolerance. OTOH, the *knowledgeable*
intolerance of political lunatics and religious fanatics can present a
difficult situation, as it regularly opposes reasonable science. I regret
that science offends some people. But I don't think that scientists owe an
apology to anyone.

Ideologues, theologues, and demagogues oppose reason and fear science
because if reasonable scientists ruled, we could forget all about ideology,
theology, and demagogy.

-zen


Well put. Although, one could argue that science itself contains ideology, theology, and demagogy. We would like it otherwise, and in the main I think that science is free from these things, but you see it (collective) raise its ugly heads on occasion.

 

PS: I consider myself a student/scientist specializing in "psychonomy" -- a
word I made up to signify the study of cognition beyond the myth of the
mind. Psychonomy relates to psychology as astronomy does to astrology.
Extropy plays an extremely vital part in this new field of science (or
pseudo-science, if you feel intolerant), because extropy operates beyond the
mind myth, and therefore merits careful and thorough study by extropic
psychonomers.

Ah...this caught my attention: "Psychonomy relates to psychology as astronomy does to astrology."  Wow.  That's a really strong statement to make. Perhaps you could elaborate?

Psychology as a field of science seems to contain specific sub-fields that definately try to get at explaining cognition, general level consciousness, self-awareness, etc. beyond the level of the "mind myth". That is, real world physics are used in the sub-fields to explain what is going on in the brain, rather than global level, "black box" oriented models.  Perhaps I am misunderstanding your term "mind myth" and you could elaborate on this as well.

Thanks,
Dana

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