I am by nature something of a pessimist, or at least a negative person. It has only been through the long term accretion of information and evidence that I have become optimistic about the future. It is simply by the vast amount of overwhelming evidence; from life expectancy, to decreased violence rates, expanding rights, increased democracy, improved knowledge, improved health, greater understanding etc., that I have come to the position that things are the best they have ever been and they are getting better. The alternative is to have a faith-based position, essentially a religious position, that things are bad and getting worse. I can't think of a more stupid position to have than that one.
However, I am coming to the realization that this improvement is essentially the work of my tribe in the face of constant and vast opposition. There is essentially an almost invisible group of intellectuals, academics, bureaucrats, scientists and artists who are working very hard to make the world a better place for people in the face of consistent opposition from the very people they are trying to help.
The great evil that is being faced are not the really stupid people. They are just really stupid and essentially have no voice. At worst some of them can be convinced to vote for something stupid every few years. Most of them do little harm, and their worst crime is that often they need to be taken care of when their stupidity might do them harm.
The great evil are the people with middling intelligence and knowledge, enough to know where the Middle East is and to name the Koran, but not enough to have been there or read it. The people who know that there is a central bank, and what an interest rate is, but who have never taken a college level economics class. The people who know that there is DNA, and it has something to do with genetics, but couldn't explain how evolution works in the simplest manner.
These people are the great evil because they know enough to have opinions on things about which they are not qualified to have an opinion. There is no way that the average American should think that they know enough about global politics to think they know how to deal with China, or Libya. There is no way that the average person should think they are qualified to have an opinion on a government budget. I certainly don't think I am qualified to have an opinion on these matters.
There are vasts areas of knowledge in which the sophistication of humanity's achievements and activities is only apparent to a relatively small portion of experts. These are intelligent people who have studied at great length to reach their level of expertise. Unfortunately, the average person on the street feels quite comfortable in dismissing all this intelligence and expertise because they think they know better. The truth is, they don't.
Incompetent people are incompetent to a large extent because they don't know they are incompetent. Incompetent people hugely over-rate their own abilities. Conversely experts tend to under-rate their knowledge and abilities (perhaps this is how their knowledge becomes so expert, because they check the answers). There is no person quite so completely cautious about the limits of their knowledge than a scientist talking about a subject that borders their own area of expertise.
I have been in the mire of the middling intellect, surrounded by idiots certain in their wisdom for too long. The dross of this idiocy is clogging up my mental works and killing my optimism. Oh how I wish to be able to have a conversation in which at some point I am treated to something new and useful, something kind and good, but most of all something based in real knowledge and expressed with a love of learning rather than a love of one's own self importance.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Black is White, Up is Down.
One of the most amazing and frustrating things for me is the use of words as the opposite of their meaning. Now, I understand that words are simply tools, and that an arrangement of letters or sounds is not required to have a particular meaning and that the meanings of words can change over time. I'm not so much concerned with the morphing of criticism, in which the merits or faults of something are considered, into the modern criticism, which simply means being negative about something. What I am concerned with is when the meaning of a word is used to mean the exact opposite of what it had originally meant.
I have mentioned this ridiculous activity with regard to politics in which liberalism is used by some as a quasi-fascist, totalitarian movement designed to put the largest amount of power into a government that then controls every aspect of our lives. Or when conservatism is used about those who wish to entirely change the present system of government.
The example I was floored by today was the assertion that it was easy to argue that humanism is a religion.
From those dictionary definitions let us look at the first and therefore most common meaning for the two words, humanism and then religion.
1. A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth.
I have mentioned this ridiculous activity with regard to politics in which liberalism is used by some as a quasi-fascist, totalitarian movement designed to put the largest amount of power into a government that then controls every aspect of our lives. Or when conservatism is used about those who wish to entirely change the present system of government.
The example I was floored by today was the assertion that it was easy to argue that humanism is a religion.
From those dictionary definitions let us look at the first and therefore most common meaning for the two words, humanism and then religion.
1. A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth.
1.
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
So, we have an assertion that a system of thought that rejects religion and its use, is a religion. By logic this would mean that humanism rejects itself, and that's too clove-smoking french philosophy student even for me to take seriously.
What actually is going on is that people look at humanism and see people that look like they are behaving much as they see people in religions behaving. That is that they get together and talk about how things are, have strong opinions about things, and are rude to people with different opinions. It is perhaps illuminating to know that the person making the comment is a Quaker, and that is their opinion on what is the fundamental aspects of religion.
People talk past each other and mistake the appearance of things for what they actually are. People are so good at this that they can in all honesty claim that something is the exact opposite of what it is.
So, we have an assertion that a system of thought that rejects religion and its use, is a religion. By logic this would mean that humanism rejects itself, and that's too clove-smoking french philosophy student even for me to take seriously.
What actually is going on is that people look at humanism and see people that look like they are behaving much as they see people in religions behaving. That is that they get together and talk about how things are, have strong opinions about things, and are rude to people with different opinions. It is perhaps illuminating to know that the person making the comment is a Quaker, and that is their opinion on what is the fundamental aspects of religion.
People talk past each other and mistake the appearance of things for what they actually are. People are so good at this that they can in all honesty claim that something is the exact opposite of what it is.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Book Report
It's been near twenty years since the last time I felt that I needed to do a book report. However, just recently a reader of this blog thought I should read a book, and sent it to me. Under those circumstances what can one do except read and report?
The book in question is entitled Tinkers, a first novel from Paul Harding, the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.
The first thing to understand about this book is that it is an attempt at high art. This book is not aimed at the common denominator, but rather it is aimed at those who consider themselves experts, connoisseurs of literature. This book is about the artistic use of words. That is the primary objective and any reading of the book must start from this understanding.
Usually a report on a book would give some idea of protagonist, character and plot. This is largely missing the point with Tinkers, the book contains moments from the lives of three generations of men, from the childhood of the oldest to the death of the youngest. The time frame skips around, perhaps justified from the fading abilities of the dying man that is the core of the book, so that place and people can easily become confusing. If you require fully developed plot and a story, this book is not for you.
It is a little difficult to say what the book is good at because it doesn't aim for conventional results. The book produces a mood, a dreamy sense that is yet remarkably consonant with the feeling one has (or at least I have) with the experience of memories. I have never read a book that was so faithful to the proximate feeling of remembering. The book does this by a combination of extreme depth of description of certain aspects of a scene with an extreme lack of narrative detail. When we remember we remember the senses and the mood, only later does the narrative of where we were and what we were doing come in. The book goes straight to the heart of what it is to remember.
If I were to say what the book reminded me of in terms of other writers I would say Gabriel Garcia Marquez in terms of form, and Herman Hesse at his most esoteric in terms of style.
The book has a commentary about what life is about, conveniently encapsulated in a single sentence on page 72.
Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in the world, it is all that we have, that it is ours but it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and Hid grace towards you and that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted by the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: you will be dead and buried soon enough.
The book is rather more poetry than novel, and a very modern form of poetry at that. You can see in the above paragraph that the "rules" of grammar and "good writing" are deliberately flouted. There are insertions of purported other books within the novel (perhaps a tribute to Moby Dick?) and these demonstrate quite clearly the author's ability to write conventionally. The unconventional nature of the writing is clearly deliberate. If you enjoy modern poetry of this nature, without rhyme, meter, or form, this book may well appeal to you simply for this aspect.
There is a simple metaphor for life in this work, that of clocks. This seemed contrived, which is odd for such a conventional metaphor. I think the book would have been better without it.
I would recommend this book to those interested in literature for the sake of literature, for poets who are poets for the love of words rather than for the emotions they provoke, for those who have never thought about how we think or what life is about, and for those who wish to have read a recent Pulitzer Prize winner in order to be able to sound clever at dinner parties.
I would not recommend this book for those who wish to feel something deeply from a book, or who want conventional plot and character, or for anyone who doesn't like loose ends.
For those who like this book I would recommend the writings of Herman Hesse's, particularly Journey to the East, which will hopefully lead you to Siddhartha.
The book in question is entitled Tinkers, a first novel from Paul Harding, the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.
The first thing to understand about this book is that it is an attempt at high art. This book is not aimed at the common denominator, but rather it is aimed at those who consider themselves experts, connoisseurs of literature. This book is about the artistic use of words. That is the primary objective and any reading of the book must start from this understanding.
Usually a report on a book would give some idea of protagonist, character and plot. This is largely missing the point with Tinkers, the book contains moments from the lives of three generations of men, from the childhood of the oldest to the death of the youngest. The time frame skips around, perhaps justified from the fading abilities of the dying man that is the core of the book, so that place and people can easily become confusing. If you require fully developed plot and a story, this book is not for you.
It is a little difficult to say what the book is good at because it doesn't aim for conventional results. The book produces a mood, a dreamy sense that is yet remarkably consonant with the feeling one has (or at least I have) with the experience of memories. I have never read a book that was so faithful to the proximate feeling of remembering. The book does this by a combination of extreme depth of description of certain aspects of a scene with an extreme lack of narrative detail. When we remember we remember the senses and the mood, only later does the narrative of where we were and what we were doing come in. The book goes straight to the heart of what it is to remember.
If I were to say what the book reminded me of in terms of other writers I would say Gabriel Garcia Marquez in terms of form, and Herman Hesse at his most esoteric in terms of style.
The book has a commentary about what life is about, conveniently encapsulated in a single sentence on page 72.
Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in the world, it is all that we have, that it is ours but it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and Hid grace towards you and that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted by the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: you will be dead and buried soon enough.
The book is rather more poetry than novel, and a very modern form of poetry at that. You can see in the above paragraph that the "rules" of grammar and "good writing" are deliberately flouted. There are insertions of purported other books within the novel (perhaps a tribute to Moby Dick?) and these demonstrate quite clearly the author's ability to write conventionally. The unconventional nature of the writing is clearly deliberate. If you enjoy modern poetry of this nature, without rhyme, meter, or form, this book may well appeal to you simply for this aspect.
There is a simple metaphor for life in this work, that of clocks. This seemed contrived, which is odd for such a conventional metaphor. I think the book would have been better without it.
I would recommend this book to those interested in literature for the sake of literature, for poets who are poets for the love of words rather than for the emotions they provoke, for those who have never thought about how we think or what life is about, and for those who wish to have read a recent Pulitzer Prize winner in order to be able to sound clever at dinner parties.
I would not recommend this book for those who wish to feel something deeply from a book, or who want conventional plot and character, or for anyone who doesn't like loose ends.
For those who like this book I would recommend the writings of Herman Hesse's, particularly Journey to the East, which will hopefully lead you to Siddhartha.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Living Pastiche.
I was originally going to call this post, Mid-Life Crisis? Essentially at the moment I have the feeling that I've done enough living, that I have pretty much seen what I need to see and done what I needed to do to feel that I haven't missed out on life. On the other hand I am forty years old, and so the chances are that I am less than halfway through my life. I look around for something new to grab my attention, but I don't really find anything. The things that give me pleasure are the same things that have given me pleasure, just that they are slightly more faded, slightly more comfortable. The alternatives that people might suggest are ones that I have considered and have little appeal, and I tend not to complete tasks that hold little appeal.
Then I realized that this wasn't a Mid-Life Crisis because I have thought and felt exactly like this before, in fact I regularly do so. This is just an aspect of my personality, just as being a hyper social fun-loving person in crowds of people is an aspect of my personality. The tricky thing for me, and even more for the people around me, is that I have so many aspects of my personality. This particular feeling will pass in time and at some point I will have scorn for those who feel hopeless and useless and just sit in their houses doing the same thing over and over again.
There is a very common personality test called the Myers-Briggs. Today I scored as an ENFJ but I have at various times had all possibilities except being an S or sensing. The chances are high that next week, on the same test I will have a substantially different result. Essentially, according to the most commonly used personality test, I can be a different person depending on the day. My existence is a pastiche, a combination of divergent ingredients, each day or week like a bite without knowing what today's flavor will be.
The thing about mood and personality is that it colors everything in your life. It colors what you remember, how you remember, and how you respond to that memory. It colors what you expect, what you hope, what you think might be for the future. While right now intuitively it feels as though my life has been a rather monotonous train, chugging along from suburb to suburb of minor disappointment, I know that this is not how I always feel, or even usually feel.
This change of who I am on a regular basis is what I believe has prevented me from actually achieving very much. Pretty much everyone who meets me sees great potential in me, and yet what I have accomplished in my life would not impress anyone. This is because success in the modern world comes from picking something at which you are talented, and then working consistently hard at it, something that generally only happens if you consistently derive pleasure, meaning or satisfaction from that task. I c
an, and do, have a million ideas of what I could do and do well, but by the following week I'm a different person with different potential and different motivations.This leaves me as a living pastiche, something that it behooves me to remember as I work through the different flavors and textures that make up who I am. I think at least I can claim one thing with honesty, I am at least interesting.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Clear Light Mind
The Dalai Lama says that the goal of Buddhism is to achieve the state he calls, "Clear Light Mind." If you can do this then you will be free of suffering. It therefore seems important to understand what is Clear Light Mind if you are interested in relieving yourself of suffering and you think the Dalai Lama someone
who might know what he is talking about.
I will get to some ideas on Clear Light Mind, but I first want to start by asking you to imagine what you think Clear Light Mind might be?
I am guessing that you are thinking about it being a higher level of experience. A soaring, brilliant, blissful state. Something that you construct through practice until you have a new ability to see the world in a different way. If so, this is because you are a western person.
The Dalai Lama says that Clear Light Mind is the fundamental nature of the mind, and exists independently of material existence. This means that (and he expressly says so) those mental actions that require the brain are not part of Clear Light Mind, in fact he calls them gross or course aspects of the mind. This includes all of our senses, all of our thoughts, all of our memories, all of our emotions.
The Dalai Lama also says that although he is certain that amoebae have Clear Light Mind, he is unsure about whether plants have it or not. So, the proximate goal of Buddhism, according to the Dalai Lama is to achieve the same state of mind as an amoeba, and this takes a vast amount of practice. If you can readily do this it will release you from suffering.
I find this fascinating. The "highest", "best" goal of one of the most stringently applied, longest lasting philosophies in the world is to remove all of what the west thinks of as the "highest" and "best" from ones mind in order to remove suffering. The counterpoint in the west to this concept is probably Stoicism in which happiness is achieved by the moral and intellectual perfection which removes the errors that lead to emotions.
If you think about this for a bit you realize that from a western perspective what Buddhism is about is mental suicide, explicitly the destruction of the ego, what is considered to be "I". Once there is no you, there is no suffering. Buddhism posits a Universe whereby this Clear Light Mind is eternal, being reborn in body after body until a perfect realization of its own state is achieved, and then Nirvana, release, extinction.
This fundamental goal is the reason why I am not a Buddhist. I spent several years in sporadic meditation until I found myself at one point in a traffic jam coming home from work. I was totally at peace, without thought, without emotion while around me was frustration and anger. I realized that I hadn't been frustrated or angry in weeks. Then I realized I hadn't been ecstatic, or sad, or wildly happy in weeks either. I realized that if I kept doing what I was doing it would become a permanent state. A state without much emotion, a state without suffering but also without passion. I decided I would take the suffering if it meant I got the passion too.
As an aside, I don't claim to have been a great Buddhist. It may be that I am missing a great swathe of Buddhist teachings and understanding that leads to a greater richness of life in addition to the removal of suffering. I also want to say that from my experience Buddhism really, really works. It probably saved my life in that it has stopped me from becoming deeply, deeply depressed since I started using it. Even at the dark times in my last job, when I would get to the point of weeping frequently in public, I wasn't in the darkest depths of despair because I was suffering in sympathy for others. It was compassion that led to the trauma of my last job, not depression. I still meditate infrequently to this day when I feel the Darkness coming on. I still concentrate on Mindfulness, which I believe to be the greatest gift you can give someone.
I think an important thing to think about when looking at any philosophy or religion is to place it into the circumstances in which it was produced. Buddhism was produced in India 2500 years ago. I have talked about the paradigm of the ancient world before, in which life was short, death was everywhere, inexplicable and sudden. There was no concept of rights or freedom, justice simply meant that you did what the powerful told you or they killed you. Under these circumstances the First Noble Truth, Suffering Exists (or life means suffering, or etc.) makes nothing but sense. In the modern western world I think an objective, reasoned look around would show that life really is mostly not suffering, but rather wonderful.
I bring up this matter in the main because I think it interesting. I also think it useful for people to think about the way they think by introducing concepts so foreign to our basic understanding that at first glance they seem incomprehensible. I also bring up this idea as a possible tool for people to use - sincerely think that anybody who has heard of Buddhism and not spent
two weeks, fifteen minutes a day, trying it to see what it is about is a fool.
On the other hand I am greatly wary of those who say that something is the highest truth, the only way, the best view of things. We are all different, in different situations. The great wisdom of the ancients applies differently to all of us. As advised by the Buddha, you should examine all of the teachings that are given to you, try them, and if they don't work for you, reject them.
who might know what he is talking about.I will get to some ideas on Clear Light Mind, but I first want to start by asking you to imagine what you think Clear Light Mind might be?
I am guessing that you are thinking about it being a higher level of experience. A soaring, brilliant, blissful state. Something that you construct through practice until you have a new ability to see the world in a different way. If so, this is because you are a western person.
The Dalai Lama says that Clear Light Mind is the fundamental nature of the mind, and exists independently of material existence. This means that (and he expressly says so) those mental actions that require the brain are not part of Clear Light Mind, in fact he calls them gross or course aspects of the mind. This includes all of our senses, all of our thoughts, all of our memories, all of our emotions.
The Dalai Lama also says that although he is certain that amoebae have Clear Light Mind, he is unsure about whether plants have it or not. So, the proximate goal of Buddhism, according to the Dalai Lama is to achieve the same state of mind as an amoeba, and this takes a vast amount of practice. If you can readily do this it will release you from suffering.
I find this fascinating. The "highest", "best" goal of one of the most stringently applied, longest lasting philosophies in the world is to remove all of what the west thinks of as the "highest" and "best" from ones mind in order to remove suffering. The counterpoint in the west to this concept is probably Stoicism in which happiness is achieved by the moral and intellectual perfection which removes the errors that lead to emotions.
If you think about this for a bit you realize that from a western perspective what Buddhism is about is mental suicide, explicitly the destruction of the ego, what is considered to be "I". Once there is no you, there is no suffering. Buddhism posits a Universe whereby this Clear Light Mind is eternal, being reborn in body after body until a perfect realization of its own state is achieved, and then Nirvana, release, extinction.
This fundamental goal is the reason why I am not a Buddhist. I spent several years in sporadic meditation until I found myself at one point in a traffic jam coming home from work. I was totally at peace, without thought, without emotion while around me was frustration and anger. I realized that I hadn't been frustrated or angry in weeks. Then I realized I hadn't been ecstatic, or sad, or wildly happy in weeks either. I realized that if I kept doing what I was doing it would become a permanent state. A state without much emotion, a state without suffering but also without passion. I decided I would take the suffering if it meant I got the passion too.
As an aside, I don't claim to have been a great Buddhist. It may be that I am missing a great swathe of Buddhist teachings and understanding that leads to a greater richness of life in addition to the removal of suffering. I also want to say that from my experience Buddhism really, really works. It probably saved my life in that it has stopped me from becoming deeply, deeply depressed since I started using it. Even at the dark times in my last job, when I would get to the point of weeping frequently in public, I wasn't in the darkest depths of despair because I was suffering in sympathy for others. It was compassion that led to the trauma of my last job, not depression. I still meditate infrequently to this day when I feel the Darkness coming on. I still concentrate on Mindfulness, which I believe to be the greatest gift you can give someone.
I think an important thing to think about when looking at any philosophy or religion is to place it into the circumstances in which it was produced. Buddhism was produced in India 2500 years ago. I have talked about the paradigm of the ancient world before, in which life was short, death was everywhere, inexplicable and sudden. There was no concept of rights or freedom, justice simply meant that you did what the powerful told you or they killed you. Under these circumstances the First Noble Truth, Suffering Exists (or life means suffering, or etc.) makes nothing but sense. In the modern western world I think an objective, reasoned look around would show that life really is mostly not suffering, but rather wonderful.
I bring up this matter in the main because I think it interesting. I also think it useful for people to think about the way they think by introducing concepts so foreign to our basic understanding that at first glance they seem incomprehensible. I also bring up this idea as a possible tool for people to use - sincerely think that anybody who has heard of Buddhism and not spent
two weeks, fifteen minutes a day, trying it to see what it is about is a fool.On the other hand I am greatly wary of those who say that something is the highest truth, the only way, the best view of things. We are all different, in different situations. The great wisdom of the ancients applies differently to all of us. As advised by the Buddha, you should examine all of the teachings that are given to you, try them, and if they don't work for you, reject them.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Admission, Acceptance.
Just before Christmas we told everyone we were getting them a present. That present was going to be a donation to Video Volunteers. Because we are human part of the reason for telling everyone was to get some credit for thinking of others, and of course for being nice charitable types. Well, we haven't donated any money to them.
Here is the sequence of events. We had a house warranty that expired in early December which cost $400 to renew. Our plan was that in order to make sure we could make the donation we wished to make we would wait on renewing this warranty for a month or so. The our furnace broke down in the only cold portion of the year down here. Then the galvanized steel pipes in our attic (yes, they put the hot water heater in the attic down here and they used galvanized steel pipes in new construction) started failing, one after the other. Right now a very nice young man is replacing our third separate leaking pipe of the last few weeks.
I still think that the plan was a sensible plan. The chances of this happening were really low, a furnace and three leaks in a month is just unlucky. We still intend on making the donation to the worthy cause, but we are just not intending on going into credit card debt in order to do so. That is the admission.
Acceptance is how I feel about this whole process. This is nothing but unfortunate. There is no silver lining. Things broke and we have spent a very large amount of money trying to make things as they were before. In the past I would have felt angry, upset, depressed, moody at a situation where bad things happened for which I am not responsible. In the past I would have been upset because this isn't fair.
Well, life isn't fair, as can be seen by the fact that I am rich, rich, rich compared with most people (and so are you). I have the money to fix these problems (just about), and I have managed through experience to understand that fixing problems is the main reason to have money, it isn't to get nice things, it's to get through. I'm not angry. I don't feel cursed. I have accepted some of the things that I cannot change.
Here is the sequence of events. We had a house warranty that expired in early December which cost $400 to renew. Our plan was that in order to make sure we could make the donation we wished to make we would wait on renewing this warranty for a month or so. The our furnace broke down in the only cold portion of the year down here. Then the galvanized steel pipes in our attic (yes, they put the hot water heater in the attic down here and they used galvanized steel pipes in new construction) started failing, one after the other. Right now a very nice young man is replacing our third separate leaking pipe of the last few weeks.
I still think that the plan was a sensible plan. The chances of this happening were really low, a furnace and three leaks in a month is just unlucky. We still intend on making the donation to the worthy cause, but we are just not intending on going into credit card debt in order to do so. That is the admission.
Acceptance is how I feel about this whole process. This is nothing but unfortunate. There is no silver lining. Things broke and we have spent a very large amount of money trying to make things as they were before. In the past I would have felt angry, upset, depressed, moody at a situation where bad things happened for which I am not responsible. In the past I would have been upset because this isn't fair.
Well, life isn't fair, as can be seen by the fact that I am rich, rich, rich compared with most people (and so are you). I have the money to fix these problems (just about), and I have managed through experience to understand that fixing problems is the main reason to have money, it isn't to get nice things, it's to get through. I'm not angry. I don't feel cursed. I have accepted some of the things that I cannot change.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Critical Thinking, Reason, and Logic.
In my ongoing exploration of people's brains I have recently become interested in the differences between the three ways of thinking in the title, Critical Thinking, Reason and Logic, and the problems that confusing them cause. I'll start with giving them my own definitions, and then the problems caused by the confusion between them. I hope to end by looking up the actual definitions to see if perhaps the problem is my own perception.
Reason is a type of thinking. It isn't the only type of thinking but it is the type of thinking that people usually consider to be thinking. Reason is answering questions by using a systematic approach, looking for cause and effect, working out probabilities, weighing evidence. An example of reason would be if your car stops running, you think of the probabilities and make an assumption that the most likely thing is that the car has a mechanical failure. You then think of what you wish to happen to give you the greatest gratification, decide that this would be to have the car fixed. You then from experience work out roughly how much money it costs to fix cars. You find a mechanic, because they know how to fix cars, and you will tend to choose a mechanic with a good reputation if you can find one, and so on.
As I have said before, we hugely exaggerate how much we use this type of thinking. Most of the time a situation occurs and we feel emotionally about it in some way and then react to that emotion. Reason comes in later to explain to ourselves that it the decision was sensible.
Critical thinking is a portion of reason, it is the portion whereby we examine what our thoughts, or the thoughts of others, are and subject them to analysis to see if these thoughts are in fact reasonable. We can examine the path with the broken car and see whether having a functional car did actually make us happy, whether mechanics actually can fix cars, whether the reputation of the mechanic actually has anything to do with how happy the process makes you. it is an evidence weighing process, assigning value to pieces of evidence and comparing different thoughts or concepts through the value of that evidence.
Logic is also a part of reason, but it is an abstract part of reason. In logic all the terms in a position must be completely defined, the definition of those terms means that certain conclusions must, and I repeat that must, be true or false.
The problem comes when these different processes become intermixed without it being known. A great example of this for me is Lewis' trilemma about Jesus.
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."
So, here we have an attempt to prove Jesus was the Son of God through logic. You can tell that it is an attempt at a logical proof because it uses the word, "must" so often. It means that the conclusion must follow from the assumptions in the premise by the nature of those assumptions. Well, let us take what the assumptions are,
1. What is reported that Jesus said, he said.
2. There are only three sort of people who could have said what Jesus said, a lunatic, a devil, or the Son of God.
3. From what he said he cannot be a lunatic or a devil.
This leaves you with the logical proof that since only the Son of God could have said what Jesus said he must be the Son of God. I hope you can see that as a logical proof this leaves a lot to be desired. That is that the assumption is the conclusion, a tautology. If we accept the assumption that only the Son of God could have said what Jesus said we must conclude that he is the Son of God since he said what he said.
What actually is going on here is reasoning in the guise of a logical proof. What is actually happening is that the assumptions are not iron clad facts, but rather they are good guesses. There is a determination that there is a high chance that what Jesus is purported to say he actually said. You can make your own determination on the probability that this is true. For the sake of argument I will set all these probabilities to 90%. Then let us go to the next step, let us say that there is a 90% chance that there are only three sorts of people who could say such stuff. let us say that from those three there's a 90% chance a lunatic wouldn't say what Jesus said, and the same with a devil.
Once you have assigned probabilities you can make the calculation as to what is the probability that Jesus was the Son of God. 90%x90%x90%x90%=about 66%.
This leaves us with two different positions. On the one hand the assertion that you must, 100%, say that Jesus is the Son of God, and on the other is a two thirds chance that it is so. The difference between certainty and probability is at the root of many of our problems. Barak Hussein Obama having a foreign name, and him being a Democrat, therefore he must be a Muslim being a wonderful example. Another is that you get ahead by working hard and trusting in Jesus therefore anyone on the dole is a lazy heretic. Another is that because someone is a conservative, believes in the superiority of the free market and has been elected that they must be operating for their billionaire cronies rather than trying to make the world a better place for everyone.
The trilemma of Lewis' is still one of the most widely used "proofs" used to convince people that Jesus was the Son of God. I have repeatedly seen the faults in the proof demonstrated clearly to others and still have them accept it as a good proof. I have seen the three examples above given, and then seen them resist any movement based on the explanation of other evidence or the idea of probabilities. Why do people confuse reason and logic?
The reason why logic and reason are confused is a three part process. The first is that all of us do logical thinking by feel most of the time. Given three girls of different relative heights we can all put them in the right order as in the classic word problem, but I think most of us would have extreme difficulty in explaining in a clear way how we know the answer must be true, but we know it must be true.
Anne, is taller than Jill. Mary is taller than Jill. Mary is shorter than Anne. Who is the tallest? How do you know that? I bet the first answer that comes to your head is that it just must be. It takes a little while before you start talking about the assumed characteristics of the relationships defined as "taller" or "shorter" that are unspoken in your logical proof. Over time we became adept enough with logic that we do it largely by autopilot.
The second portion is that in order for us to think through enough steps our brains cannot manage to keep multiple possibilities going at the same time. So we say, "for the sake of argument let us assume that X is true" and then we solve the problem logically. We are putting aside complications in order to get at what the consequences of something might be. However, often this simplification is simply forgotten in order to get a useful answer, and this is quite sensible because in real life you need to act as if the thing that is most likely is going to happen most of the time.
The third part is that people don't critically think about their conclusions. People run the information through the assumptions they have, and through the reasoning process they use (usually unconsciously) and arrive at a "right" answer. What scientists do at this point is then let everyone else try to show that their answer is wrong. What most people do is defend their opinions to the point of anger, frustration and contempt. Clearly the scientific method comes up with better right answers. However, the protection of one's idea comes up with higher self-esteem, a better social ranking, and a comfort with ones own place in the world.
So, people make giant errors about how things are while simultaneously being sure they are correct. They do this by confusing the assumptions in a logical argument for real fact (a lunatic cannot give good moral advice), they then unconsciously come to conclusions based on these assumptions which to them feels like how they do logic, and then they do not put those conclusions through a process to look for errors (quite the reverse).
This is why so often you come across people who think they know something for a fact because it's clearly logically true when actually it is idiocy. These people will get very angry at you if you try to point out the errors, usually calling you an idiot.
Lewis' trilemma is so effective because at each step it seems reasonable. It seems reasonable to think that Jesus pretty much said what we have recorded. It seems reasonable that what he said was largely great moral teachings. It seems reasonable to think that calling yourself God is the act of a lunatic (just don't tell any Hindus that). it seems reasonable to think that Jesus wasn't lying. It seems reasonable that lunatics don't provide a lot of great moral truth (although I think this to be far less true than most). Given enough reasonable assumptions it is easy to see that a conclusion from these would be thought to be reasonable. But the error margins of reasonable add up and multiply with each other, which in the real world makes a certain conclusion very difficult to make from a set of reasonable assumptions.
Looking up definitions. I have confused the term logic with a portion of logic known as deductive reasoning. Logicians have had a very difficult time in defining the term logic, to the extent that my definition of reason and the various definitions of logic come quite close. My definition of critical thinking, that of criticizing thinking by passing judgment on the merits of that thinking, is actually now just a very small portion of the dictionary definition of critical thinking.
It would seem to me that the consequences of the confusion of these three types of thinking have reached the stage where the meaning of the very words themselves are confused. While these are three types of thinking, in general parlance logic, reasoning and critical thinking are synonyms. No wonder the confusion.
Reason is a type of thinking. It isn't the only type of thinking but it is the type of thinking that people usually consider to be thinking. Reason is answering questions by using a systematic approach, looking for cause and effect, working out probabilities, weighing evidence. An example of reason would be if your car stops running, you think of the probabilities and make an assumption that the most likely thing is that the car has a mechanical failure. You then think of what you wish to happen to give you the greatest gratification, decide that this would be to have the car fixed. You then from experience work out roughly how much money it costs to fix cars. You find a mechanic, because they know how to fix cars, and you will tend to choose a mechanic with a good reputation if you can find one, and so on.
As I have said before, we hugely exaggerate how much we use this type of thinking. Most of the time a situation occurs and we feel emotionally about it in some way and then react to that emotion. Reason comes in later to explain to ourselves that it the decision was sensible.
Critical thinking is a portion of reason, it is the portion whereby we examine what our thoughts, or the thoughts of others, are and subject them to analysis to see if these thoughts are in fact reasonable. We can examine the path with the broken car and see whether having a functional car did actually make us happy, whether mechanics actually can fix cars, whether the reputation of the mechanic actually has anything to do with how happy the process makes you. it is an evidence weighing process, assigning value to pieces of evidence and comparing different thoughts or concepts through the value of that evidence.
Logic is also a part of reason, but it is an abstract part of reason. In logic all the terms in a position must be completely defined, the definition of those terms means that certain conclusions must, and I repeat that must, be true or false.
The problem comes when these different processes become intermixed without it being known. A great example of this for me is Lewis' trilemma about Jesus.
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."
So, here we have an attempt to prove Jesus was the Son of God through logic. You can tell that it is an attempt at a logical proof because it uses the word, "must" so often. It means that the conclusion must follow from the assumptions in the premise by the nature of those assumptions. Well, let us take what the assumptions are,
1. What is reported that Jesus said, he said.
2. There are only three sort of people who could have said what Jesus said, a lunatic, a devil, or the Son of God.
3. From what he said he cannot be a lunatic or a devil.
This leaves you with the logical proof that since only the Son of God could have said what Jesus said he must be the Son of God. I hope you can see that as a logical proof this leaves a lot to be desired. That is that the assumption is the conclusion, a tautology. If we accept the assumption that only the Son of God could have said what Jesus said we must conclude that he is the Son of God since he said what he said.
What actually is going on here is reasoning in the guise of a logical proof. What is actually happening is that the assumptions are not iron clad facts, but rather they are good guesses. There is a determination that there is a high chance that what Jesus is purported to say he actually said. You can make your own determination on the probability that this is true. For the sake of argument I will set all these probabilities to 90%. Then let us go to the next step, let us say that there is a 90% chance that there are only three sorts of people who could say such stuff. let us say that from those three there's a 90% chance a lunatic wouldn't say what Jesus said, and the same with a devil.
Once you have assigned probabilities you can make the calculation as to what is the probability that Jesus was the Son of God. 90%x90%x90%x90%=about 66%.
This leaves us with two different positions. On the one hand the assertion that you must, 100%, say that Jesus is the Son of God, and on the other is a two thirds chance that it is so. The difference between certainty and probability is at the root of many of our problems. Barak Hussein Obama having a foreign name, and him being a Democrat, therefore he must be a Muslim being a wonderful example. Another is that you get ahead by working hard and trusting in Jesus therefore anyone on the dole is a lazy heretic. Another is that because someone is a conservative, believes in the superiority of the free market and has been elected that they must be operating for their billionaire cronies rather than trying to make the world a better place for everyone.
The trilemma of Lewis' is still one of the most widely used "proofs" used to convince people that Jesus was the Son of God. I have repeatedly seen the faults in the proof demonstrated clearly to others and still have them accept it as a good proof. I have seen the three examples above given, and then seen them resist any movement based on the explanation of other evidence or the idea of probabilities. Why do people confuse reason and logic?
The reason why logic and reason are confused is a three part process. The first is that all of us do logical thinking by feel most of the time. Given three girls of different relative heights we can all put them in the right order as in the classic word problem, but I think most of us would have extreme difficulty in explaining in a clear way how we know the answer must be true, but we know it must be true.
Anne, is taller than Jill. Mary is taller than Jill. Mary is shorter than Anne. Who is the tallest? How do you know that? I bet the first answer that comes to your head is that it just must be. It takes a little while before you start talking about the assumed characteristics of the relationships defined as "taller" or "shorter" that are unspoken in your logical proof. Over time we became adept enough with logic that we do it largely by autopilot.
The second portion is that in order for us to think through enough steps our brains cannot manage to keep multiple possibilities going at the same time. So we say, "for the sake of argument let us assume that X is true" and then we solve the problem logically. We are putting aside complications in order to get at what the consequences of something might be. However, often this simplification is simply forgotten in order to get a useful answer, and this is quite sensible because in real life you need to act as if the thing that is most likely is going to happen most of the time.
The third part is that people don't critically think about their conclusions. People run the information through the assumptions they have, and through the reasoning process they use (usually unconsciously) and arrive at a "right" answer. What scientists do at this point is then let everyone else try to show that their answer is wrong. What most people do is defend their opinions to the point of anger, frustration and contempt. Clearly the scientific method comes up with better right answers. However, the protection of one's idea comes up with higher self-esteem, a better social ranking, and a comfort with ones own place in the world.
So, people make giant errors about how things are while simultaneously being sure they are correct. They do this by confusing the assumptions in a logical argument for real fact (a lunatic cannot give good moral advice), they then unconsciously come to conclusions based on these assumptions which to them feels like how they do logic, and then they do not put those conclusions through a process to look for errors (quite the reverse).
This is why so often you come across people who think they know something for a fact because it's clearly logically true when actually it is idiocy. These people will get very angry at you if you try to point out the errors, usually calling you an idiot.
Lewis' trilemma is so effective because at each step it seems reasonable. It seems reasonable to think that Jesus pretty much said what we have recorded. It seems reasonable that what he said was largely great moral teachings. It seems reasonable to think that calling yourself God is the act of a lunatic (just don't tell any Hindus that). it seems reasonable to think that Jesus wasn't lying. It seems reasonable that lunatics don't provide a lot of great moral truth (although I think this to be far less true than most). Given enough reasonable assumptions it is easy to see that a conclusion from these would be thought to be reasonable. But the error margins of reasonable add up and multiply with each other, which in the real world makes a certain conclusion very difficult to make from a set of reasonable assumptions.
Looking up definitions. I have confused the term logic with a portion of logic known as deductive reasoning. Logicians have had a very difficult time in defining the term logic, to the extent that my definition of reason and the various definitions of logic come quite close. My definition of critical thinking, that of criticizing thinking by passing judgment on the merits of that thinking, is actually now just a very small portion of the dictionary definition of critical thinking.
It would seem to me that the consequences of the confusion of these three types of thinking have reached the stage where the meaning of the very words themselves are confused. While these are three types of thinking, in general parlance logic, reasoning and critical thinking are synonyms. No wonder the confusion.
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