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Regarding 2: >> Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men ... It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my under

Regarding 2: >> Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men ... It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. This is beautiful in its simplicity and still has a piece of truth. But a more elaborate modern take would be probably that we also have finite resources. I do believe for instance that the earth surface is spherical, although I cann't immediately come up with an argument to prove this. I have not personally traveled around the world in a boat or launched satellites. It seems that there is fundamentally no choice but to trust some people or traditions of thought on some things and then somehow to decide when to start doubting. Which is why fake news is a problem, for instance.

laretluval 8y ago
"We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up." Hayek
dnomad 8y ago
The entire frame is bogus. Starting with Socrates, westerners like Kant believe that cognition (computation) is a solitary endeavor. Thus humans are "vulnerable" to group-think and it's up to the philosopher to "break free" from the illusions of common society. But this is of course the "very persistent illusion." The reality is humans are group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition (language, consciousness -- which is always of others). Kant is fundamentally wrong when he suggests that a single person is unenlightened if he only accepts such truths from others because any rational and sane person in any significant group (>150 people) must accept the vast majority of their knowledge from second hand and third hand sources -- or go live alone in the forest. His command -- “Have courage to use your own understanding!” -- must be directed to the society as a whole. An enlightened society would be precisely that which had freely investigated and shared all of its knowledge as widely as possible.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >But this is of course the "very persistent illusion." The reality is humans are group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition (language, consciousness -- which is always of others). First, this presupposes ("of course") what it should prove. Second, even if humans are indeed "group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition" that doesn't mean they arrive at a more accurate description of reality via that method -- just that this way of "group thinking" is evolutionary more advantageous. A view that is accurate and one that has evolutionary fitness are not necessarily the same thing. In fact, they can be the very opposite. E.g. an animal that inaccurately considers all instances of another group as one and the same based on limited prior experience (e.g. as enemies) will be more likely to survive that one that tries to accurately gauge what the intentions of each new member of the other group it meets actually are. To quote Nietchze: "Where has logic originated in men’s heads? Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally have been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished; albeit that they may have come nearer to truth than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern the "like" often enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all similar cases immediately divined the equality. The dominant tendency however, to treat as equal that which is merely similar - an illogical tendency for there is nothing equal - is what first created the whole basis for logic. It was just so (in order that the conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to be overlooked, and remain unperceived; the beings not seeing correctly had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux" In itself every high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every sceptical inclination, is a great danger to life. No living being might have been preserved unless the contrary inclination to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than be in the right had been cultivated with extra ordinary assiduity. The course of logical thought and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical and un just; we experience usually only the result of the struggle, so rapidly and secretly does this primitive mechanism now operate in us."
latexr 8y ago
> I do believe for instance that the earth surface is spherical (…) I have not personally traveled around the world in a boat or launched satellites. Eratosthenes needed neither[1]. With a pair of sticks and friend far away, you can replicate the experiment and conclude for yourself. [1]: https://youtu.be/0JHEqBLG650 https://youtu.be/0JHEqBLG650
- LambdaComplex 8y ago
  "This video contains content from eOne UGC, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."
  - latexr 8y ago
    It’s a clip from Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”[1]. Searching for “Eratosthenes” returns tons of other videos that explain the experiment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage
- cosmic_ape 8y ago
  That's useful, thanks. But to be a bit pedantic, this can only show that at a particular place where the measurement is taken, the earth has some curvature, that its a bit like a hill there. This does not show that the earth is globally a sphere, which would mean for example that if you go in the same "direction" long enough, you arrive at the same point.
  - abecedarius 8y ago
    Sure. But the game is to think of experiences that are more or less likely depending on which guess is true. Any ‘crucial’ experiment is only so given some background. It might be fun/useful to spend five minutes writing down all the experiences like that that you can think of. (E.g. I’m writing this from a town on the edge often Rocky Mountains facing a plain. If I climb up, how would how far I can see vary with the height?)
kross 8y ago
> This is beautiful in its simplicity and still has a piece of truth. It will likely always be true. It is human nature.
tw1010 8y ago
You'd be surprised how much resources you have available if you spend zero time in front of the TV or surfing the web, and spend all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper studying.
- watwut 8y ago
  I attempted that three times. It lead to low per hour performance, frustration from slow progress and to depression twice. Turns out, I need to spend some time relaxing.
- cosmic_ape 8y ago
  I agree with what you mean. But do you read all the medical literature before going to a doctor when something just feels weird? Or, somewhat differently, do you read the source code of all packages on your computer to ensure there is no malware? I'm a universalist as much as I can, but there's a reason specialization, division of labor, results in productivity increase. Somewhat funny that Kant himself also argued for division of labour, just a year after publishing the Enlightenment article, [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour#Immanuel_Kant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour#Immanuel_Ka...
- badpun 8y ago
  Have you done this?
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  That can be just as exhausting as watching TV or surfing the web. All time and life experience need not be optimized, mechanical, and efficient - just because some aspects of it 'must' be.
- felipemnoa 8y ago
  >>You'd be surprised how much resources you have available if you spend zero time in front of the TV or surfing the web Not really. Your available time, even if not wasted is still tiny. Seriously, just think about it, after college maybe you have some 40 years of peak productivity, if not less (and I suspect it is a lot less for most people). That doesn't really sound like a lot to me. Especially if you want to spend it doing things that are none trivial. >>and spend all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper studying You cannot do this. You need to unwind. You need to enjoy culture, watch some TV, have relationships. Otherwise you will likely just burn out early. Plus, inspiration many times comes when you are just relaxing doing something completely unrelated to what you are pursuing.
agumonkey 8y ago
It's probably deeply rooted in our social organ. So often people will choose to delegate (knowledge, action) instead of doing it themselves. It's even got a bad name in programming: NIH. I also think it's why people like money so much. It's the infinite delegation medium. I lived the opposite of that, I needed (as a lack of trust or other emotional factors) to understand it all. Probably why I liked Lisp so much too, you integrate less, you use lisp to melt lisp into the desired shape. But enough Lisp for now. I wonder if society would be better with more people avoid (or reduce to the bare minimum) reliance on others for understanding. Could be, or not.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  > I wonder if society would be better with more people avoid (or reduce to the bare minimum) reliance on others for understanding. Could be, or not. Absolute independence leads to a breakdown in communication, understanding, and empathy. We all need to rely on one another at some point or another because these are things that keep us connected, even during the times we choose to be disconnected.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    I do think so but I'm not sure how much.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
      Personal preference, maybe? I know sometimes it can feel like a choice you don't have, but it can often feel like everyone you try to connect with seems to think you do. Money, to someone who orders, organizes, and directs individuals, represents efficacy and skill already established and therefore, rewarded. So when money directs in bodies of organizations, it is done so with intent. Intelligence is always the same thing, the symbols change, sometimes you get it wrong, sometimes right, sometimes can't predict the outcome because one individual self is in a tenuous balance of connection-disconnection that.. seems to oscillate in cycles around a self that doesn't truly exist.
s-shellfish 8y ago
> It seems that there is fundamentally no choice but to trust some people or traditions of thought on some things and then somehow to decide when to start doubting. It's either you choose to trust and open yourself up to making the error while trusting, or you choose to not trust and either learn you took the longer route to discover the same truth, or you discover a different truth and wonder if there is more to it than that.
mettamage 8y ago
If anything, this particular paragraph has motivated me to become understand how to be as self sustainable as possible.

laretluval 8y ago

"We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up." Hayek

dnomad 8y ago

The entire frame is bogus. Starting with Socrates, westerners like Kant believe that cognition (computation) is a solitary endeavor. Thus humans are "vulnerable" to group-think and it's up to the philosopher to "break free" from the illusions of common society. But this is of course the "very persistent illusion." The reality is humans are group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition (language, consciousness -- which is always of others). Kant is fundamentally wrong when he suggests that a single person is unenlightened if he only accepts such truths from others because any rational and sane person in any significant group (>150 people) must accept the vast majority of their knowledge from second hand and third hand sources -- or go live alone in the forest. His command -- “Have courage to use your own understanding!” -- must be directed to the society as a whole. An enlightened society would be precisely that which had freely investigated and shared all of its knowledge as widely as possible.

coldtea 8y ago
>But this is of course the "very persistent illusion." The reality is humans are group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition (language, consciousness -- which is always of others). First, this presupposes ("of course") what it should prove. Second, even if humans are indeed "group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition" that doesn't mean they arrive at a more accurate description of reality via that method -- just that this way of "group thinking" is evolutionary more advantageous. A view that is accurate and one that has evolutionary fitness are not necessarily the same thing. In fact, they can be the very opposite. E.g. an animal that inaccurately considers all instances of another group as one and the same based on limited prior experience (e.g. as enemies) will be more likely to survive that one that tries to accurately gauge what the intentions of each new member of the other group it meets actually are. To quote Nietchze: "Where has logic originated in men’s heads? Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally have been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished; albeit that they may have come nearer to truth than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern the "like" often enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all similar cases immediately divined the equality. The dominant tendency however, to treat as equal that which is merely similar - an illogical tendency for there is nothing equal - is what first created the whole basis for logic. It was just so (in order that the conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to be overlooked, and remain unperceived; the beings not seeing correctly had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux" In itself every high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every sceptical inclination, is a great danger to life. No living being might have been preserved unless the contrary inclination to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than be in the right had been cultivated with extra ordinary assiduity. The course of logical thought and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical and un just; we experience usually only the result of the struggle, so rapidly and secretly does this primitive mechanism now operate in us."

latexr 8y ago

> I do believe for instance that the earth surface is spherical (…) I have not personally traveled around the world in a boat or launched satellites. Eratosthenes needed neither[1]. With a pair of sticks and friend far away, you can replicate the experiment and conclude for yourself. [1]: https://youtu.be/0JHEqBLG650 https://youtu.be/0JHEqBLG650

LambdaComplex 8y ago
"This video contains content from eOne UGC, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."
- latexr 8y ago
  It’s a clip from Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”[1]. Searching for “Eratosthenes” returns tons of other videos that explain the experiment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage
cosmic_ape 8y ago
That's useful, thanks. But to be a bit pedantic, this can only show that at a particular place where the measurement is taken, the earth has some curvature, that its a bit like a hill there. This does not show that the earth is globally a sphere, which would mean for example that if you go in the same "direction" long enough, you arrive at the same point.
- abecedarius 8y ago
  Sure. But the game is to think of experiences that are more or less likely depending on which guess is true. Any ‘crucial’ experiment is only so given some background. It might be fun/useful to spend five minutes writing down all the experiences like that that you can think of. (E.g. I’m writing this from a town on the edge often Rocky Mountains facing a plain. If I climb up, how would how far I can see vary with the height?)

kross 8y ago

> This is beautiful in its simplicity and still has a piece of truth. It will likely always be true. It is human nature.

tw1010 8y ago

You'd be surprised how much resources you have available if you spend zero time in front of the TV or surfing the web, and spend all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper studying.

watwut 8y ago
I attempted that three times. It lead to low per hour performance, frustration from slow progress and to depression twice. Turns out, I need to spend some time relaxing.
cosmic_ape 8y ago
I agree with what you mean. But do you read all the medical literature before going to a doctor when something just feels weird? Or, somewhat differently, do you read the source code of all packages on your computer to ensure there is no malware? I'm a universalist as much as I can, but there's a reason specialization, division of labor, results in productivity increase. Somewhat funny that Kant himself also argued for division of labour, just a year after publishing the Enlightenment article, [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour#Immanuel_Kant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour#Immanuel_Ka...
badpun 8y ago
Have you done this?
s-shellfish 8y ago
That can be just as exhausting as watching TV or surfing the web. All time and life experience need not be optimized, mechanical, and efficient - just because some aspects of it 'must' be.
felipemnoa 8y ago
>>You'd be surprised how much resources you have available if you spend zero time in front of the TV or surfing the web Not really. Your available time, even if not wasted is still tiny. Seriously, just think about it, after college maybe you have some 40 years of peak productivity, if not less (and I suspect it is a lot less for most people). That doesn't really sound like a lot to me. Especially if you want to spend it doing things that are none trivial. >>and spend all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper studying You cannot do this. You need to unwind. You need to enjoy culture, watch some TV, have relationships. Otherwise you will likely just burn out early. Plus, inspiration many times comes when you are just relaxing doing something completely unrelated to what you are pursuing.

agumonkey 8y ago

It's probably deeply rooted in our social organ. So often people will choose to delegate (knowledge, action) instead of doing it themselves. It's even got a bad name in programming: NIH. I also think it's why people like money so much. It's the infinite delegation medium. I lived the opposite of that, I needed (as a lack of trust or other emotional factors) to understand it all. Probably why I liked Lisp so much too, you integrate less, you use lisp to melt lisp into the desired shape. But enough Lisp for now. I wonder if society would be better with more people avoid (or reduce to the bare minimum) reliance on others for understanding. Could be, or not.

s-shellfish 8y ago
> I wonder if society would be better with more people avoid (or reduce to the bare minimum) reliance on others for understanding. Could be, or not. Absolute independence leads to a breakdown in communication, understanding, and empathy. We all need to rely on one another at some point or another because these are things that keep us connected, even during the times we choose to be disconnected.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I do think so but I'm not sure how much.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    Personal preference, maybe? I know sometimes it can feel like a choice you don't have, but it can often feel like everyone you try to connect with seems to think you do. Money, to someone who orders, organizes, and directs individuals, represents efficacy and skill already established and therefore, rewarded. So when money directs in bodies of organizations, it is done so with intent. Intelligence is always the same thing, the symbols change, sometimes you get it wrong, sometimes right, sometimes can't predict the outcome because one individual self is in a tenuous balance of connection-disconnection that.. seems to oscillate in cycles around a self that doesn't truly exist.

s-shellfish 8y ago

> It seems that there is fundamentally no choice but to trust some people or traditions of thought on some things and then somehow to decide when to start doubting. It's either you choose to trust and open yourself up to making the error while trusting, or you choose to not trust and either learn you took the longer route to discover the same truth, or you discover a different truth and wonder if there is more to it than that.

mettamage 8y ago

If anything, this particular paragraph has motivated me to become understand how to be as self sustainable as possible.