Hulver's site || Because cows have feelings too

But it's the question of what you actually do with the circumstantial evidence. Most of the links posted in a few diaries today and yesterday go to places where people elevate circumstantial evidence to truth, selectively manipulate data far beyond where it can be reasonably manipulated.

I am a scientist. I am trained to take data and analyze it to work on hypothesis. The difference between myself and many of the links there is that I accept when my hypothesis is shown to be wrong. The scientific method is one of doubt, not of truth, and that's why it works.

----
I just ate about 7 pounds of meat
-theantix

that because something falls outside a view, that the view is narrow, and wrong, or that the one who holds it is siloed.

Is siloed a word? It seems like it shouldn't be.
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_{"Nature is such a fucking plagarist."}

Any of it is OK, in so much as any judgment can be applied to something subjective. In the end, we live and die forming alliances with our perceptions, finding what we think are facts and absolutes in a world of chaos and unrestrained noise.

We create approximate models of the world in our minds that are either good enough, or not, for our purposes. Your ideas on increasing crop yield either work or they don't - they are easily testable. A lot of theories, though, are not testable due to a lack of data, or lack of technology: theories of mind are nearly impossible to test.

Many aspects of our modern life are:

completely out of our hands, and their mechanisms opaque: growing food, security, and energy production in particular, with few exceptions,
too complex for us to understand without intense, long term study: economics and medicine come to mind in particular.

Humans do not enjoy this, so it's emotionally easy to decide that "shady organization x" is controlling my future against the will of my ego and desires. Rizzo's other comments reflect this: he clearly wants to "take back" control of his life by growing his own food, producing his own energy, and living in a country that exercises less control over his life. These aren't silly desires at all, I just think he falls toward the end of the human spectrum that has a lot of trouble with the modern arrangement, probably more than most, and it's leading him to some questionable claims that operate in the realm of the unknown: a lot of fourth hand information on how the government rigged the WTC, for example.

Rizzo revealed his core assumptions in a comment he made earlier this afternoon (emphasis added):

We could be solving energy, hunger, homelessness and addiction to free up humanity's resources for our destiny of inevitable space migration, but instead here we are letting criminals waste all our money paying for people to kill each other. Where to begin?

Rizzo believes in technological progress: we have an "inevitable destiny" in space travel.

Starting from this belief, Rizzo went looking for evidence to fit this belief, and he found it. Since the evidence actually points toward the opposite conclusion, he went looking for various conspiracies that demonstrate who stands in the way of our "inevitable destiny." His exchange with joh3n, in particular, was telling: fitting with his belief in our inevitable destiny of space travel while the evidence shows we have been moving in the opposite direction since the moon landings, while the material wealth that sustains this civilization is bringing the window of possibility of interstellar space travel to a rapid close, NASA must therefore be intentionally thwarting our "inevitable destiny" through their own selfish goals.

For the rest of us, wading through all the disinformation out there to find the documentable evidence and logically induce the only narratives that fit the data becomes a practice of discernment, or perhaps what the inimitable blogger Jeff Wells calls "rigorous intuition". Discnernment, like any imperfect art, takes practice and lots of humility to admit to yourself when you're wrong, and like any skill it improves with time, as long as you can keep from becoming as invested in any narrative as in that of your own solutions.

Rizzo has the right idea, but he hasn't done enough questioning of his core assumptions. He's suffering from confirmation bias.

Either way, the fundamental questions about belief, politics, country, doctrine, and faith are all a blast to see played out by a group of people so violent about outsider thinking.

I didn't see that at all. I saw people mocking his presumptuous tone that pretty neatly fits with most tinfoil hat sites that use the comic sans font. Most of the stuff he talks about - fascism, energy issues, etc, - these have all been taken seriously on this site since its inception.

I'd also like to note that a conversation between businessmen on the street is a conspiracy. It's a nearly meaningless concept.

When I'm imprisoned as an enemy combatant, will you blog about it?

Very well said. You have an amazing way with words and putting things into perspective.

-----------------------------------------
"Buttons aren't toys" -- Trillian

I seem to have detected a pattern in blixco's follow-ups and since he's been showing more insight than the rest of you chukleheads, I figured I'd risk it.

ATTENTION BLIXCO INFIDEL:
Please to be enumerating whether my comment topic or body is incorrect. And for fuck's sake, please let it be the fucking topic.

I mean, really fucking arrogant in the way that only an undergrad can be, I pronounced that "Everything is true, but not in the way you think it is." Om mani padme hum, or something.

Every so often I bring this up again, so either there's something to it, or I have this disorder where I periodically think I'm the messiah.

--
"Late to the party" is the new "ahead of the curve" -- CRwM

When my grandfather became ill, my grandmother rubbed goose-fat into his back. He went downhill quite quickly after that. - Milton Jones

..."Wisdom comes from knowing contradictions exist and feeling no need to resolve them."

HDTV is a neutral medium and some people use that medium to sell you things. Bush is an is an idiot but idiots can be clever and know things, too. The sun, may look yellow and be accepted as such even though, literally, there's far more to its color than just that. Maybe I'm wise because I don't feel the need to resolve the contradictions. Maybe I'm a moron who doesn't know what he's talking about. Maybe there's different metrics for wisdom and I've chosen one that suits me.

Does that help?

_{He sails from world to world in a flying tomb, serving gods who eat hope.}

I'm always right¹. However, I'm having a bit of trouble focusing on text more complicated than the comment threads on icanhascheezburger.com, so I actually didn't read much of this. If I had, I'd say something relevant and insightful, and I'd be right.

¹Except when I'm wrong².

²Which is never.
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If you don't get a Bonnie, my universe will not make sense. --blixco

Someone says, hey, murder is immoral. It's not, not at all. But they say it is, and the majority of the world believes them. So anyone who says, hey, murder is actually morally ambiguous, or, hey, sometimes it's necessary, or hey, who cares because we're reincarnated after death, these people are "not right" according to popular authority. But what if, say, almost everyone said "Hey, reproduction by rape makes genetically stronger children" and almost everyone said "Hey, rape is a terrible crime" and both groups had compelling evidence.

How compelling? No actual proof, but damn fine circumstantial evidence, third-hand stuff, stuff from scientists etc. Who do you believe? Which chain of fictions do you bind to?

So, how do we even form a consensus? Well, we have to agree to shut the fuck up. We have to concede, give up, exchange or change, improve, but generally twist our view.

Twisting philosophy to justify emotionally driven actions makes me all giggly.

When I'm imprisoned as an enemy combatant, will you blog about it?

doesn't have to be about compromise. It can be about being stubborn and aggressive too. But then again, and I say this just because I think it would be harmless to do so, I concede that I may be wrong. :)

"Stabbing someone in the head with a pitchfork is rarely beneficial to the relationship." - MereKat

You've got to learn to live with your life decisions not being based on certainties. You've got to live with getting it wrong by other's judgements, and even harder, by your own.

Just because something is not a certainty doesn't mean it can't be a starting point for an action.

I just wanted you to know that I agreed completely with what you had written about Anna Nicole Smith.

Even if he believes it, it's a good troll.

But, with the USian political season upon us, and with some of the things I've seen in the Hole lately, I hope we don't turn into K5.

Earth First!
_{(We can strip mine the rest later.)}

The Universe is the way it is. I'm just designing my life to run in a way I feel comfortable using the tools given me by the Universe.

Man, I want to go hiking this weekend, but my sister and b-i-l and nephew are coming to town. Bugger.


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