Christine the Lioness (3122)
Christopher the Pyro (1986)
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Keith the Director (573)
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eric the Lil' Devil (351)
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Haas the Addict (187)
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routerguy the Groupie quibbed this
This ties into the “reasonable doubt” so prominent yet misunderstood, in our legal system. The keyword here is reasonable. Discrimination (not racial, but critical) is lacking, and seemingly diminishing all the time.
Nice Post!
Christine the Lioness up'n wrote this
If you’re suggesting that nothing can exist that doesn’t consistently pass tests to see if it exists, then you’re suggesting that we, as humans, in 2007, have the ability to know enough about things we don’t understand, that we are able to come up with perfect tests to test them. You are not considering that perhaps the amount of knowledge we have at this time is miniscule and maybe we haven’t come up with a perfect test yet. Upon doing so, we might get consistent results. I mean honestly… we can’t even predict the weather. So because we haven’t found a way to test the weather in a way to accurately predict it, we say its unpredictable. Since everything in nature follows cycles, it makes more sense that weather in not anomalous, it is just a more sophisticated system than we as humans here and now can figure out how to test accurately.
Christopher the Pyro uttered
If we can’t prove it or test it then it really isn’t relevant for our decision making process. If you want to base your decisions on all unknowns ( faith healing as opposed to medicine for example ), that is clearly your choice, however illogical and foolish it might be.
You are attempting to muddy the picture and the point, we can experience weather, if 10 of us are standing in the rain we all know we are getting wet so it is happening, the fact that we realize we are not advanced enough to model prediction models something is completely different from arguing whether it exists all together. There is truths, weather happens we experience it.
If you tell me you saw a ghost but can’t show me that ghost and I can’t see it, then it basically for all intentional purposes doesn’t exist in the realm of reality. We aren’t even to the point of trying to figure it out because it never gets past the point of plausibility.
Sid the Virgin scribbled
Totally agree. I’m curious whether you would apply the same line of reasoning to religious beliefs.
Christopher the Pyro chimed in with
I would, however I believe religion can and does fall into a slightly different category because religion in itself basically say’s you will never have proof and you are required to have faith. It is likely we will never be able to prove or disprove the existence of God.
eric the Lil' Devil chimed in with
i actually saw a program on cnbc that a few scientists have proven that there is a global cooling starting back 15000 years ago i’m not entirely sure about all the details but these scientists have proven the fact and that it is continuing now, so after this show and all of the jargon used i was convinced
Christopher the Pyro thought this
So your now convinced that Global Warming isn’t real or is real… or that we are entering “the big freeze”
Joe the Groupie spake, and sayeth
As far as knowledge goes, there is what we know, there is what we know we don’t know (like I know I don’t know how to speak Japanese), and there is always going to be what we don’t know that we don’t know. How does this fall into your line of thinking? Good post, gets people thinking.
Christopher the Pyro stated
Our individual knowledge is slightly different then knowledge as a whole. You could certainly “learn” Japanese because you know it exists, if we know it exists yet don’t understand it is completely different then believing in something that we don’t even know exists. With certain subjects for example, religions, creating a new one doesn’t prove there is a new God. If I create a new language and tell everybody that it is a 5000 year old language, and there is no evidence of this being true, believing it would be a bad idea. To summarize, we as a society know certain things exist, yet may not understand everything. We do not know if other things exist yet we believe in them anyway, in fact many times we believe in things that we can prove are false. ( Winning streaks in gambling, hot shooting streaks in basketball, esp, ect ). Christine likes to point out to me that maybe we havn’t developed a test for everything that we don’t understand so therefor we can’t prove or disprove it exists, this is very very true, however it we can’t prove it exists then we should probably not base our life around it. ( astrology )
Christine the Lioness added
Sometimes we collectively believe we know something based on evidence, but the evidence actually suggests something else. For example, the classic study done in the 70s or 80s about the divorce rate being higher for couples who cohabitate before they are married. The evidence showed that there was a connection between premarital cohabitation and divorces, so everyone starting spouting off about how cohabitation can ruin a marriage. Later, someone proved that the real reason for the divorce rate being so high was unstable finances, meaning people were getting divorced because of financial pressures. The same couples (or at least most of them) were deciding to cohabitate because they thought it would save money. The financial pressures were what was causing the cohabitation and down the line, the divorces too. Anyway… my point is… we would have gone on believing that if no one had ever decided to question it and prove that study– and therefore the evidence– was flawed.
Christopher the Pyro asserted
Again, your dealing with a subject that is testable, reading data the wrong way or having incomplete data is different then having no supporting data. For example astrology in double blind tests in a controlled environment have never proven accurate yet people still choose to believe. Why? Not everybody understand they are believing in complete baloney for kicks and giggles some people take it very seriously. So the point of the discussion wasn’t really to debate if we read data wrong it is can we believe in things without any data at all?
routerguy the Groupie stated
I’m highly skeptical of anything that purports to “prove” motivation, not to mention the difficulty of proving causal relationships between extremely complex events. This is the problem with weather forecasting, as well as why a marriage would fail. If the study said that statistically, economicly unstable couples get divorced more often than stable one, that’s one thing, but to say that the economic unstability caused the breakup is completely different. Perhaps there was an underlying reason for the economic unstability and it was just a symptom. Perhaps economically unstable people have some other characteristic that causes their economic unstability. Too many variables to pinpoint the cause. Data is data, and as long as it’s collected properly, and consistently recreateable, can be trusted. Drawing conclusions from that data is lot more tricky. If it rains every time my knee hurts, does that mean my knee hurting caused the rain?
Mara the Peacemaker penned this
“…can we believe in things without any data at all?”
Well, is that your question or is it really “can truth ever be determined through belief in something without any data at all?” I only say this because to answer your question as written, of course you can. As you pointed out in your example of a fortune teller, people CHOOSE to believe things all of the time without any data whatsoever. Maybe we regard that person’s belief with more skepticism than a belief that is formed upon data (of some sort whether biased, unbiased, etc.), but that certainly doesn’t change whether that individual believes.
Hmm. Perhaps I don’t understand your question…
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