Jon and all,
Hi Jon, first off, could I ask you to set your line length to
something lower. It makes it rather hard to read your mail on my
system (and others I'm sure). I could turn word-wrap on but I like to
see how people have constructed their posts...
On Sun, 09 Jul 2000 16:43:13 -0400, you wrote:
>Jon and Ian,
>I don't have much to say in response to Ian's post but Ian did wonder what I meant by irrational, which is a good thing to wonder about.
>
>Irrationality is the tendency to draw a conclusion before thinking it over very critically and before confirming this conclusion against experience.
Which, in many cases in life, is an impossible task. Often time is
more important as an element in a situation that the actual value of a
response. Sometimes we must trust to blind luck and just do
<whatever>.
In debate, this would seem to be a crucible where we can bounce our
impressions off others. That is, it is often beneficial to bounce
something one has discarded off someone else to see what data they
bring to <the problem>.
It's the "looking at it with beginners eyes" syndrome. Our first
impressions may well be correct. It is all too easy to be dissuaded by
argument from an entirely correct impression.
>Such conclusions are usually wrong.
Would you care to substantiate that? I can accept the above with the
precursor "In my experience ..."
Take an historical belief that our world was infested by demons, imps,
sprites and all sorts of malevolent beings. Along comes Copernicus,
our modern scientific rational emerges (with it's obvious benefits)
and such beliefs are laughed at. To the point where Lister was
ridiculed for the idea of bacteria.
Now, perhaps I'm leaping to an irrational conclusion but, I do not see
that there is much difference in the conclusion. We label these things
bacteria and now keep our operating theaters clean but I do not really
see that the underlying reality has changed. Any "shamen" or herbalist
in the past whom used a compound "to ward off sprites" on an open
wound would achieve success if that compound were, what we now call,
antibacterial. The only difference is the label which we have attached
to these organisms.
The virus follows a similar path. It seems to me that often we can
observe the same phenomenon, with the same result. One is scientific,
the other is folklore.
>It's a common occurrence and nothing to be truly ashamed of, especially because getting something exactly right is incredibly difficult. The hallmarks of wrong or dubious conclusions are inconsistency (the conclusion contradicts the pertinent data) and incompleteness (not as bad as inconsistency but here not all the pertinent data is explained).
This differs from the scientific method in which way? To my knowledge
there have been no major leaps forward in a universal field theory
since Quantum Theory and Relativity were introduced. Which, as I'm
sure we all know, display this " inconsistency (the conclusion
contradicts the pertinent data) and incompleteness".
Yet we accept quite happily that we can use one in the macro-scale and
the other in the micro scale.
> Irrational arguments are based on false premises, bad logic,and misdirected logic (suddenly the problem changes in mid-argument). There might be more but that's all I can think of at the moment.
The key words are, I guess "pertinent" "false premises" and
"misdirected logic". These change over time I've found. Sadly a very
great number of people hold their opinion and their identity to be
near the same thing and "emotionality" causes the scientist the same
problems of refusing to let go it's progeny as the mother.
The case of "inspiration" is where ZAMM explores this. In the
multiplicity of possibility the scientist must choose what to look
for.
" An important scientific innovation
rarely makes its way by gradually
winning over and converting its
opponents: It rarely happens that Saul
becomes Paul. What does happen is that
its opponents gradually die out and
that the growing generation is
familiarized with the idea from the
beginning."
"Anybody who has been engaged in
scientific work of any kind realizes
that over the entrance to the gates of
the temple of science are written the
words: 'Ye must have faith.' It is a
quality which the scientist cannot
dispense with."
-Max Planck. Nobel Prize 1918 for
his theory of Quantum Mechanics.
>
>I like to differentiate irrational arguments from non-rational ones. Non-rational arguments involve broad leaps of logic (faith) and conclusions that are unverifiable. No one can say a non-rational argument is wrong but one might have a subjective feeling that it is improbable or farfetched.
regards,
Ian
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