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Tom Welsh's avatar

Just yesterday I was thinking about how some philosophers tell us that what we perceive is not necessarily reality. In about one minute I concluded that it doesn't matter, because it's the best we are getting. If I see, hear, and smell a bull in a field, it may really be a nine-dimensional yellow and blue octopoid floating in a tank of methane on a different time axis. But as long as all my senses tell me it's a bull, experience says I won't go wrong by treating it as a bull.

Channelling Sam Johnson, "I refute it *thus*!"

illya kuryakin's avatar

The late great Philip K Dick asserted that if only two people agreed on something then that thing, however preposterous, was real.

Tom Welsh's avatar

Although Donald J. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu (and others) agree on many things that are decidedly not true...

Maybe PHD could have added the qualification that the two people must be honest. Being who he was, that would not have occurred to him.

Motley Motson's avatar

Our brains are designed for survival not for perceiving reality. I take the Bergson approach our brains act as a filter.

Tom Welsh's avatar

But if "reality" is something we can't perceive and that can't affect us, why concern ourselves with it? It would be like the postulated infinite universes in a multiverse - just an intellectual game.

Mark Oglesby's avatar

Seyed M. Marandi is totally wrong as it would be foolish if not dangerous to NOT have nukes, just ask North Korea what can of noise they've been hearing from the West (mostly the US)? SILENCE! POINT-SET-MATCH!

Tom Welsh's avatar

Seyed Marandi is amazingly calm and diplomatic. He has raised my estimation of Iranians quite as much as the creators of the Lego movies.

Someone like that could be key to persuading Westerners. He comes across like one of us. Rather as some Israeli spokesman seemed to me to do many years ago... what was his name? Something Yahoo... His English was perfect, with a very slight American accent. he didn't sound foreign at all.

Tony Leibbrandt's avatar

I find Prof. Marandi highly engaging, likeable, persuasively moral, passionately patriotic and honest. I "think" he is genuine. So much so that I find myself wondering if he might not rather be the greatest propagandist on the planet and is actually employed by the Iranian government, but maybe they figure he is doing more for the cause exactly where he is.

Rather like Nima Ashorkid at Dialogue Works YT channel.

I feel, with absolutely no justification, that they offer a true insight into the Iranian psyche. If so, then to listen to either speaking is to fully understand just what Israel and the US are up against, that they have bitten off more than they can chew. It is also to understand just how fantastically ignorant, stupid and wrong they, Team America, were to think they could ever defeat them - exactly the same mistake they made with the Afghans.

Tom Welsh's avatar

Remarkable, isn't it, how "backward" people living in "shithole countries" routinely turn out, when you see something of them, to be smarter, braver, wiser, and more attractive than the billionaire plutocrats and politicians of the West - and their servants.

The Alarmist's avatar

LLMs “hallucinate” (lie) because their programming does not include the possibility to respond with “I don’t know” or “I do not have enough information.”

That’s but one difference between “Artificial Intelligence” and Actual Wisdom. Only fools would blindly trust AI.

gültekin kaya's avatar

Bahsettiğiniz düşünce biçiminin tam ve yetkin biçimi diyalektik düşüncedir. Eski Yunan filozoflarının iyi bildiği, Alman filozof Hegel'in sistemleştirdiği, Büyük dehalar K.Marks ve F.Engelsin en mükemmel hale getirip uyguladığı diyalektik. Üstelik bunu sadece beynin özel bir fonksiyonu olarak değil, bilginin doğasında örtük olarak bulunan gerçekliği yani iç bağıntıları ortaya çıkarmanın yöntemi olarak öğrenilen ve uygulanan en yetkin, dünyayı anlamamız ve yorumlamamızı sağlayan yegâne düşünce biçimi olarak ortaya koymuşlardır Rizomatik gibi afilli isimler koyarak orjinal olduğunu ileri sürdüğünüz bu tür biçimler arayacağınıza, hem bir düşünce biçimi hem de düşüncenin olgulara ve nesnelliğe uygulama biçimi olan diyalektik düşünceyi önermek isterim.

the suck of sorrow's avatar

I have avoided Larry Johnson for quite a while despite our growing up in the same County and graduating from the same university.

I don't share his political conservatism nor his love for the 2nd amendment. He has dangerously incorrect views of aerosol viral spread and mask efficiency. He conflates diseases spread by personal contact with those airborne.

For Mr Johnson to be shocked by Mr Trump's behavior and cognitive deficiencies is too great a chasm for me to span.

I don't always agree with Julian, but he is not disingenuous and argue in bad faith.

Loon's avatar

Nothing like having two share a hallucination. Heaven on Earth.

No judgement whether good or bad .

The outcome of Russia’s inflicted War by the Medieval Banker Bonkers will bring into being a better world for Russia’s patience, and willingness to save innocent lives .

The outcome after the last 2 W Wars is a continued disaster .