Uplifting and Helpful Quotes

I try to be a little less wrong each day.
Three very tightly packed concept that I think relate to the Stamp Collector story.
Kant's "Kingdom of Ends." "We should always treat people as ends in themselves and never as merely a means to an end."
John Searle's His Pains, tickles, and itches, "have a subjective mode of existence, in the sense that they exist only as experienced by a conscious subject. "
His "Chinese Room" Thought Experiment has stood the test of time and is a polar opposite to the Turing test.

 

Crab boat in town has "the only easy day was yesterday" on both sides of the house. Back in the day it said that on port and "don't let the mother f$$$$s get you down starboard" but it didn't last the retrofit or the public parking space.

Not as profound.... but the owners a multi-millionaire now so....

 

The usual phrase is Illegitimi non carborundum : Mock Latin for don't let the ******** grind you down.

It has an interesting history, but gained traction with Barry Goldwater's campaign in '64.

Both sayings are associated with the US 1st Special Forces Group.

 

“The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

This sort of fits my own philosophy that just because you know how the miracle was done doesn't make it any less a miracle, because as Einstein said "God doesn't play dice".

 

Some links for those curious about
Einstein's quote that "God doesn't play dice".

What Einstein meant by ‘God does not play dice’

Does God Play Dice, by Stephen Hawking

 

We have or don't have free will.
God does or does not play with dice.

"Of course we have free will, we have no choice,” He might as well have said, “We must believe in quantum mechanics, we have no choice,”
(Isaac Singer’s) from the magazine "Promised City"

I don't think these are factual statements just some free floating rationale between our imagination and understand. Instead of having a conclusion they pump our intuition and get you to say. Aha!
(Daniel Dennett's) "Free Floating Rationale" and "Intuition Pump"

I stoled all of these quotes and broke them.

 

That's like when a scientist I was having a conversation with, about the existence of God, told me, when I mentioned the impossibility of the Universe ever even starting, "We know exactly how the universe started."

I said, "Yes, of course, that's why we call it a 'Singularity', because we know exactly what happened and how."

I absolutely agree, and yet, every known cause has in underlying unknown cause or state somewhere behind it.

In a sense, to say we know what caused a "miracle" is to say we know what caused all miracles out of which it came. Only one group of people have a satisfying answer to that, yet even they still leave questions about the fundamental nature and origins of that answer too.

-Will

 

I personally don't support any "belief" over any other, and that includes those that "believe" in "non-belief". As a student of mathematics though, Pascal's Wager and Occam's Razor form a compelling position.

 

Over the years many noteworthy philosophers have taken exception to Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's wager - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
(see CRITICISM section)

Pascal’s Wager about God | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/pasc-wag/

Pascal’s Wager (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/#ObjePascWage

 

To take Pascal's Wager out even further, it would be most advantageous and safest, to act as though there was a God who wanted us to continue exploring and understanding our world as though he/she/it wasn't the final, fundamental source.

Science and logic are not 'ends', but simply tools to aid us in understanding. Why would one throw away a fine set of hand tools because they had access to a bandsaw? Some jobs are best accomplished by traditional and tried means. Use everything at your disposal. The trick is knowing how and when to use the most effective tools for every job.

-Will

 

Pascal's Wager Aha!
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”
(Charles Darwin)
I am inherently flawed living proof. Therein lies the problem with "Free Floating Rationale" and "Intuition Pump" they are almost Darwinian in nature. Evolution is slow and can lead to a dead end more often than not.

Less Wrong Solution
"Every boat is copied from another boat... Let’s reason as follows in the manner of Darwin. It is clear that a very badly made boat will end up at the bottom after one or two voyages, and thus never be copied... One could then say, with complete rigor, that it is the sea herself who fashions the boats, choosing those which function and destroying the others."
"We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove."
Alain Emile Chartier

"The less wrong solution is meant to be a joke about Darwinism as a design theory.
We don't design boats from a bottom up like a Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. It's a trickle down and bubble up methodology. Even the big bang theory or the standard model in of particle physics is only considered to be the less wrong chose. "
Danial Dennett

 

Denial of God, in the face of His Creation, dishonors science and God.

 

"A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box."
Frederick Douglas

 

"Might makes right."

-T H White