So I was doing some research on Presidential candidates last night, and what I found just blew my mind. John McCain has completely embarrassed the Republican Party, completely compromised his principles and has thrown common sense out the window. I'm so ashamed to be a member of the Republican Party. Sarah Palin is the political equivalent of a dumb blonde... there are only about three short videos you need to watch to understand how ridiculous this whole campaign is:
John Stewart catching Fox News with their pants down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQK1al91drs
(this ones just funny, but not as relavent. It has both Stewart and Colbert, and a little of Family Guy :) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGCRncVOkS0 )
Here's a clip of Katie Couric ripping Sarah Palin's foreign policy experience. It also shows just how dumb Palin is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vh6WDmb-Rc
God, that was painful to watch.
Lastly, I found this article very touching and bringing up a very relevant point. Something all conservatives should consider when casting their vote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathlyn-and-gay-hendricks/the-obama-relationship-a_b_128896.html
In closing, I want to say I've been reading Obama's book, and the guy is not as liberal as people make him out to be. He's very well educated, was raised on the streets of Indonesia, and quite balanced in his views of the world. He supports the idea of improving small business and strengtheing family values. I think he knows what he's doing, and he's not a push over when it comes to defending America. He also understands that America has to be involved in world affairs, and at times even police the world... something most liberals just can't comprehend. He's not one of those "we can't impose democracy on other people" idiots, because he realizes that given a choice, ALL people want to be invovled in the decision making process. All people want the freedom to be themselves and express themselves. It's human nature. So yeah, I was on the fence before, just because I felt he was a little too liberal for my liking, but McCain has proven himself to be a power hungry bastard. Thank you for your service, but you compromised too many of your principles... and Palin was obviously a purely political choice that was not well thought out.
Sorry, I'm too annoyed and embarassed to say anything else.
Sincerely,
Youngil Ely Loew
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Occam's Razor
Well, I'm going to try my hand again in the blogging world.
Reason (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Reason, #7)
“the faculty or power of acquiring intellectual knowledge, either by direct understanding of first principles or by argument”
“the power of intelligent and dispassionate thought, or of conduct influenced by such thought”
Occam's razor- Unreasonable Reason
While engaging in intense arguments with different people about the existence of God, the purpose of religion, and the existence of a spirit world, I’ve often been hit with this ‘law of logic’, which is known as Occam’s Razor (the following excerpt is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_Razor ).
“"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities”
When talking with a friend recently about spiritual phenomena, I pointed out that it bothered me that many atheists, scientists, psychologists, and philosophers (among others) try to explain and invent causes to experiences that they themselves never had. I pointed out that I knew people personally who have had spiritual experiences, and their personal testimonies of what they experience are nearly impossible to discount. They are obviously not crazy, and they obviously are not lying. I find it very unscientific to discount these testimonies off-hand, because much of scientific inquiring is based on personal study and experience. If someone goes into the Amazon jungle, and comes out and explains about the life forms they saw and studied there, people believe them. If they bring back a rare species, maybe a total of 200 scientists actually get the chance to see the new species with their own eyes. The rest believe the personal accounts of those two hundred and the books that they write concerning it. I think spiritual phenomena should be looked at the same way. It is possible to study it in a scientific way, thru personal experience and then the accounts of these experiences.
Anyway, after I expressed my frustration at this arrogant and biased attitude of the sciences towards spiritual phenomena, my friend responded with an Occam’s Razor argument:
“What makes a naturalistic explanation of a phenomenon more rational than a supernatural explanation is the fact that it makes fewer assumptions about the world (and is therefore less likely to be false). A good theory posits as few substances/entities as possible. Practically speaking this makes it easier to test the theory and isolate confounding variables”
Every time I get this response, I kind of stop and ask myself... “What the hell does that mean??”After thinking about it for awhile, I’ve finally decided that I can simplify it into layman’s terms for everyone: “When there are two theories and you don’t know which one is best, pick the one you like the most.” Yes, Occam’s Razor is basically an open license for people of reason to be completely arbitrary in their decision making, a very unreasonable thing to do...
How does one determine how many assumptions a theory has? It’s like that old tootsie roll pop commercial. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop? The boy asks the wise old owl this question, and the owl takes a huge bite out of the tootsie roll pop, gives it back, and says “One”. In the same way, how many assumptions does the theory of evolution have compared to the creationist theory? Depends on who’s counting and how they’re counting. Not that I think the world was created in six days, which is a stretch in logic for even the most liberal thinkers, but still, if I believed that the world was created in six days, I could argue that there is only one assumption in that theory: That God exists and He can do whatever the hell he wants. My theory is the simplest, and therefore is the most likely to be true…
Example: a close friend of me and my wife is very spiritually open. She’s proved this to my wife a couple times, but most clearly when she could guess 5 or 6 numbers in a row that my wife was thinking of between one and 100. One time my wife was even unsure of her number, and this friend was saying “87, no wait, 88, 87, make up your mind!” (actual numbers were different). So, I have to ask, does this friend has some weird chemical reactions in her brain that makes her delusional (and capable of reading minds sometimes), but in all other ways fully functional in society, or she actually can see and talk with spiritual beings? Which has more or less assumptions? You decide.
Another example: A close friend was lying in her bed, studying late at night by lamp light, when a dissembled hand floats in saying ‘go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep’ and then shuts off the light. A delusion induced by tiredness (vision and sound come to different parts of the brain, so isn’t it weird that both would be affected at the same time)? Or a spiritual vision? Again, you decide.
The fact is, there are countless stories like this, all told by perfectly sane and normal people. Some are more clear and straight forward, like actual conversations and being told information that a person could not know otherwise, and others are vague and could easily be discounted. The point is, rather than studying these phenomena and coming up with a scientifically based conclusion, most people just discount these testimonies using very arbitrary theories and logic because the existence of a spirit world is something that they don’t believe in. It’s a very biased and unscientific approach, which is actually understandable, considering the history of religion and science.
It used to shock me that people who claim to hold reason as the highest virtue could be so unreasonable, but now I think I understand. I think the pursuit of pure reason is one of the most unreasonable things a person can attempt. Why? Because they’re people. Because a part of their existence is emotional. They can’t understand their own existence without including all of the evidence, and some of that evidence is emotional. Therefore in order to come to a truly reasonable understanding of the world, they need to have emotional experiences and include emotion into their calculations. In the end, I think people who are pursuing pure reason are actually doing something else: avoiding the pain of emotions. That seems reasonable to me.
What do you think?
-Youngil Ely Loew
Reason (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Reason, #7)
“the faculty or power of acquiring intellectual knowledge, either by direct understanding of first principles or by argument”
“the power of intelligent and dispassionate thought, or of conduct influenced by such thought”
Occam's razor- Unreasonable Reason
While engaging in intense arguments with different people about the existence of God, the purpose of religion, and the existence of a spirit world, I’ve often been hit with this ‘law of logic’, which is known as Occam’s Razor (the following excerpt is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_Razor ).
“"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities”
When talking with a friend recently about spiritual phenomena, I pointed out that it bothered me that many atheists, scientists, psychologists, and philosophers (among others) try to explain and invent causes to experiences that they themselves never had. I pointed out that I knew people personally who have had spiritual experiences, and their personal testimonies of what they experience are nearly impossible to discount. They are obviously not crazy, and they obviously are not lying. I find it very unscientific to discount these testimonies off-hand, because much of scientific inquiring is based on personal study and experience. If someone goes into the Amazon jungle, and comes out and explains about the life forms they saw and studied there, people believe them. If they bring back a rare species, maybe a total of 200 scientists actually get the chance to see the new species with their own eyes. The rest believe the personal accounts of those two hundred and the books that they write concerning it. I think spiritual phenomena should be looked at the same way. It is possible to study it in a scientific way, thru personal experience and then the accounts of these experiences.
Anyway, after I expressed my frustration at this arrogant and biased attitude of the sciences towards spiritual phenomena, my friend responded with an Occam’s Razor argument:
“What makes a naturalistic explanation of a phenomenon more rational than a supernatural explanation is the fact that it makes fewer assumptions about the world (and is therefore less likely to be false). A good theory posits as few substances/entities as possible. Practically speaking this makes it easier to test the theory and isolate confounding variables”
Every time I get this response, I kind of stop and ask myself... “What the hell does that mean??”After thinking about it for awhile, I’ve finally decided that I can simplify it into layman’s terms for everyone: “When there are two theories and you don’t know which one is best, pick the one you like the most.” Yes, Occam’s Razor is basically an open license for people of reason to be completely arbitrary in their decision making, a very unreasonable thing to do...
How does one determine how many assumptions a theory has? It’s like that old tootsie roll pop commercial. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop? The boy asks the wise old owl this question, and the owl takes a huge bite out of the tootsie roll pop, gives it back, and says “One”. In the same way, how many assumptions does the theory of evolution have compared to the creationist theory? Depends on who’s counting and how they’re counting. Not that I think the world was created in six days, which is a stretch in logic for even the most liberal thinkers, but still, if I believed that the world was created in six days, I could argue that there is only one assumption in that theory: That God exists and He can do whatever the hell he wants. My theory is the simplest, and therefore is the most likely to be true…
Example: a close friend of me and my wife is very spiritually open. She’s proved this to my wife a couple times, but most clearly when she could guess 5 or 6 numbers in a row that my wife was thinking of between one and 100. One time my wife was even unsure of her number, and this friend was saying “87, no wait, 88, 87, make up your mind!” (actual numbers were different). So, I have to ask, does this friend has some weird chemical reactions in her brain that makes her delusional (and capable of reading minds sometimes), but in all other ways fully functional in society, or she actually can see and talk with spiritual beings? Which has more or less assumptions? You decide.
Another example: A close friend was lying in her bed, studying late at night by lamp light, when a dissembled hand floats in saying ‘go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep’ and then shuts off the light. A delusion induced by tiredness (vision and sound come to different parts of the brain, so isn’t it weird that both would be affected at the same time)? Or a spiritual vision? Again, you decide.
The fact is, there are countless stories like this, all told by perfectly sane and normal people. Some are more clear and straight forward, like actual conversations and being told information that a person could not know otherwise, and others are vague and could easily be discounted. The point is, rather than studying these phenomena and coming up with a scientifically based conclusion, most people just discount these testimonies using very arbitrary theories and logic because the existence of a spirit world is something that they don’t believe in. It’s a very biased and unscientific approach, which is actually understandable, considering the history of religion and science.
It used to shock me that people who claim to hold reason as the highest virtue could be so unreasonable, but now I think I understand. I think the pursuit of pure reason is one of the most unreasonable things a person can attempt. Why? Because they’re people. Because a part of their existence is emotional. They can’t understand their own existence without including all of the evidence, and some of that evidence is emotional. Therefore in order to come to a truly reasonable understanding of the world, they need to have emotional experiences and include emotion into their calculations. In the end, I think people who are pursuing pure reason are actually doing something else: avoiding the pain of emotions. That seems reasonable to me.
What do you think?
-Youngil Ely Loew
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