in another life I would have been a scientist... sigh....

Check out human migration...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

response to Bellum omnium contra omnes comment...

On my political and rhetorical approach...

Stating people possess the scenario between conservative or liberal cognition seems like an "either-or" fallacy. I will need to read the study further to be certain. I too believe in checks and balances in the form of policy. There is no evidence one form of political rhetoric is more harmful to our republic than another, at the least there is no harm when there is balance between the ideologies. The combination of conservative and liberal values (independence versus social welfare) can work together in the government system. Evidence for my claim can be found here.

"The combination of conservative and liberal values (independence versus social welfare) can work together in the government system."

To protect and empower... you can't do any of that with conservative policy goals... so I would disagree. Every man for themselves pull yourself up by your boot-straps... individualist ethics is destructive economically and socially. See Adam Smith... Stiglitz... modern economics as a whole on the importance of infrastructure investment which the private sector never does...

So i'd totally disagree on that one. Oh and I'd love to see the impacts on people from the welfare reform now that the growth of the Clinton era are now gone.

Science can't create either/or fallacies. The world is either flat or its not...

if the empirical data doesn't hold then that would be the legitimate challenge. Not likely though... we're getting better and better at cognitive science and neuroscience... and free will as we conceive of it... and all of that nonsense entailed in it will soon fade (okay not likely... but a boy can dream.)

the age of reason is quite dead...

Thats the biggest problems with philosophy in general... it sticks to theory and all these "ideas" that are reasoned out...

My philosophy professor at UC Davis... a guy name Cummins had a great cartoon it had an armchair with a red cross over it... like no smoking. It was "no arm-chair philosophy".

To see logical knock-out blows to metaphysics as an accurate description of the world and all that is there-entailed see Logic, Truth, and language by A.J. Ayer.

Metaphysics is useful for subjective truth and the way individual brains understanding the paradoxes and complexities of the world, as well as human interaction. But science is the method for accurate descriptions of the world that can be verifiable and therefore the only rational public discourse that one can use in areas such as politics.

Its fine for interpersonal relations and religion and such... but those are subjective at their core... (think of the bond between two friends... or the subjectivity of what one person means by god... as compared to another... see the quote by Dennett at the top of the page)

Bellum omnium contra omnes... kudos to you for using a blog the way its supposed to be used... to debate and create a dialogue... I'm learning a lot from you and improving my ability to explain and understand my own positions. Thanks!

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

"People without math training naturally think in terms of ratios"

A Natural Log: Our Innate Sense of Numbers is Logarithmic, Not Linear


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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Why oh why am I the way I am...

At GA State waiting for student id office to open up. Its about 8:15am. Someone walks up and says to me... "is this where I am supposed to be to get my ID card." I respond, "well technically no. But if you wait about 15 minutes it will be."

As Douglas Adams once wrote: "We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."

Blog post on Habermas...

The Future of Human Nature

I’ve just finished reading “The Future of Human Nature” by Jurgen Habermas, the world renown German philosopher and one of the last true believers in the ideals of the Western Enlightenment. He has a really interesting argument against stem cell research and genetic engineering that is based on a completely rational-secular point of view.

motley collection of half-truths

"As vast experimental literature shows, our intuitive theories are often a motley collection of half-truths that get us through the average day rather than true redescriptions of the world." --Gary Marcus

Something nobody has been able to answer for me...

There are a lot of very smart people who spend a lot of time creating very clever narratives about why Religion--more specifically Christianity--is a form of Revelation that is rock solid. The most truthful of true.

These are very smart people who are far smarter and better educated than I am; so maybe there is just something I don't quite understand.

I mean; I accept the a priori existence of God through the rules of our language, the likely a priori of its biological existence in our brains, the usefulness in the early development of our economy--its organizational and sociological capabilities.

But why do intellectuals adhere to it?

Some argue its a political alliance--a decision to pick one cultural faction over another, some say its needed to create and sustain community through the harsh truth of living, some argue that it is a useful means of explaining in narrative form important views to allow less educated people to flourish--which to me seems condescending of people and inaccurate aside from abnormal developments of some humans.

It just doesn't seem to add up. Doesn't inaccurate information harm our productive possibilities and humanistic capabilities? I don't know the answer to that one... any one care to give it a go?

A.I in NYT's

Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence

I have a question...

For those of you who don't know me: I don't have a PhD in climate sciences, in geography, in oceanography, biology; basically any area that may have some important information on global warming.

Now I have noticed a lot of people who have a passionate belief that global warming is a hoax. And they get really really deep in technical details about things that I have no fucking clue about and like to challenge me on it. None of these people have phd's. They don't actually have very in-depth intellectual competency in...well anything really. (whats the connection between believing in supply-side economics and not believing in global warming?--there is one, if you haven't noticed)

But my question is... why do all the PhD's not seemed to be bothered by all this gobbly-goop? I don't know nothing bout nothing when it comes to science. I put more trust in a phd than a guy who believes in the Fair Tax; thats just me.

Why would I trust a talk-show host over a guy who has spent years studying science? I mean seriously... I'm just askin'...

these things are mysteries to me.

Dennett: Can we know our own minds?

Quote

"For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria."

--Richard Dawkins

"Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not." --Isaiah Berlin

go learn something random...

here more can be found here

Probably the best quote all election year...

From Clintonite Paul Begala on CNN SUperTuesday

Nobody is more conservative than Huckabee. He don't believe in evolution or gravity or photosynthesis or anything.

Conservatives want to win...

Its distrubing to read something like this from Jim Wooten in todays AJC

We are a nation of rationalizers, skeptics and negotiators best defined by Rodney King: “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”

The opinion piece was about John McCain and being the right guy to fight terrorism. Why bring up a black man who was filmed being beaten by cops, and the cops acquittal stirred up the largest mass scale riots this country had seen in many years?

Why do conservatives continue to play on race? It had nothing to do with what he was talking about; aside from the fact that his arguments about the war on terrorism lack a lot of coherency to many foreign policy experts. If the experts don't buy conservatives foreign policy views on fighting terrorism the average man on the street might not either. Unless you play on race... since more and more studies by neuroscience are showing that racism blocks many peoples higher brain processes--might that have to do with reason and logic as well??

Which might explain why latent racism tinges the edges of conservative politics? I don't know... but it was disturbing to read this shoddy writing on my Sunday. And it makes a guy like me who is interested in the whys of social science to ask one question. why?

Why does Wooten feel the need to bring Rodney King into an opinion piece about Foreign Policy and John McCain?

Blog post on Dainel Dennets Mitochondrial Eve

I happened upon this blog post....

I too have always found the idea fascinating... and the author does a real good job of giving an overview if you've never read Darwins Dangerous Idea.

Is the world flat?

watch this from the view... to get a feel for the many conversations we have to have in our communities. And I don't post this as a call for more oppositional thinking and us vs. them rhetoric. But just an awareness and sensitivity for what is the outcome of philosophical postions I disagree with.

Thinking takes time... and other examples.

People ask me what I mean when I say I want to be a philosopher, they ask me what I really want to be doing. I tell I think. And then I think about thinking. And then I think some more. Everyone does it, people plan, analyze, compare others thoughts. Philosophers just do it paying very close attention to what they are thinking and how they are thinking it and then take the next step and try to write some of it down. It takes time and patience. You'll spend days trying to understand an idea or come up with a solution to something. But then something happens, out of the blue, in the middle of a rain storm while you are waiting in traffic, talking on the phone, and eating a sandwich the answer or solution you've been looking for will pop out of nowhere. Basically you set the stage with proper maintenance and then you wait...

Well the same thing works with science. You need certain tools, you learn certain strategies that help improve your chances of success. But many times success is found in the random downtime as you can see here....