Apophenia

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
— Bertrand Russell

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
— Francis Bacon

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
— Homer

As he left, he realized that he was wiser than this man because even though neither of them had any knowledge to boast of, the man thinks that he does, whereas Socrates is aware that he doesn't.

Are there any news / opinion magazines that have a wide range of strong and pursuasive political views, and debate between contributors?

I don't think I ever see honest debate, where the people involved honestly believe what they're saying but are honestly open to being shown to be wrong. It's all meta-debate, where the goal is to win, between people who think the other is wrong and an idiot and just needs to be got through to.

I'm convinced that 99% or more of people have political opinions that are based on intuition and vague unexamined facts, vague values guiding them toward positions that allegedly reflect those values but often oppose them. Once a trend is established, it gets reinforced by selective media input that reinforces the trend, with all data and opinion that disagrees getting bypassed, or if it gets through it gets shrugged or laughed or shouted off. Polarities appear, clear stands being more confortable (and often more useful) than gray confusing reality. Every once in a while, enough contrary info gets through that a person suddenly can't ignore it any longer, and converts to a different polar view, defending it passionately because a subset of it that they focus on is now clear to them as being more true than their old beliefs.

People think of science as hard, but in a sense it is simple, because it has the perfect reality check in plain measurable reality. You can cut off mice tails all you like, but baby mice will still be born with tails, and your theory will die.

I'd like to see some political science that had actual science in it. The more important and personal questions get, the less rational people become.

mumble etc

It just hit me. George Bush is a suicide bomber. A certain personality selected by others and launched on a political mission of theirs, believing in his heart that what he's doing is good no matter how many innocent people are murdered.

*agh! sunlight outside! must find computer game!*

Bigots and other limited thinkers live in a smaller universe.

I did a search on "J. Random", since I for some reason sometimes refer to myself as J. Random __________, and found this: A Portrait of J. Random Hacker. Describes me pretty well, tho I never refer to myself as a hacker.

"Their code will be beautiful, even if their desks are buried in 3 feet of crap." hee

"Almost all hackers have terribly bad handwriting, and often fall into the habit of block-printing everything like junior draftsmen." la

stuck for the last 8 hours wondering which sort of beautiful to make a piece of code; thank you, j random depressobottery, for removing my decision-making ability.

I sometimes wish I had more glial cells.

ADD - source of civilization — via cyotha

THE ADD INTERVIEWS

http://www.livejournal.com/users/cyotha/11943.html

My computer tells me that today is my 7th anniversary with my employer: 7 years after 7/7/97.

The 4th was approximately the 5th anniversary of mittel and I. Approximately because we have several, and it's easiest for me to remember the 4th of July, even tho it should probably be the 3rd. Everyone else gets married and gets shiny toasters.

I just had one of the most profound dreams i've ever had - it's now slipping away like all such epiphanies, but was basically the answer to "why does [bad thing x] keep happening?", where x is things like a particular bad dream, seeing something bad about a city or nationality of people, or the city erupting volcanically around me and lots of people i care about getting swallowed, etc. gets farther from truth the more i try to put words to it.

wandered the streets of europe suddenly understanding all sorts of art that before just seemed meaningless to me.

fear left me at the end and i let myself out of my mental cage and went down some scary roads that my mind had blocked myself from, removing blinds about parts of the city that lay beyond the narrow repeating "why does x keep happening" area that i'd been keeping myself in.


funny that "awake" is when things are least clear.
take a random playing card or other thing like that and hold it to the side without looking at it. look straight ahead (but focussing about arm's length). slowly move your arm so the card gets closer to the direction of your focus. motion is easy to see, but when can you see the color? when do you know if it is a court card or not? when do you know exactly what card it is? clear conscious vision is just a tiny cone going in one direction. my metaphor is now the inverse of what i want i think. this may indicate back-to-bed time.