Comments on: RAW quote: disobedience was man’s original virtue

By: RoofusKit

RoofusKit — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:29:00 +0000

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. - Oscar Wilde

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:49:00 +0000

Just because someone claims a thing is “common sense” does not make them correct. Nor is common sense universal; there is frequently an outgroup to which the sense is not common. This does not undermine the principle; it simply highlights that reasoning depends on observations and premises as well as deductions. That acceleration is the second time derivative of motion is trivially obvious common sense at a physics conference, not so much in a kindergarten classroom, even though in principle the kindergarteners have more than enough data to make the deduction.

Though we do not all share the same premises, we do all share a great deal of history and observations. We are subject to the same physical and chemical laws. Our minds are constructed in much the same way, so that we nearly always share premises like “care for your relatives” and “enjoy the company of friends” and “fight back against insults and offenses.” We look back on the same world history- Not just Roosevelt and Lincoln but Locke and Confucius and Buddha and Christ and Mohammad and Alexander the Great… we share quite a bit, so much that we don’t even notice it- we tend to focus more on differences.

By: redjujube

redjujube — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:08:00 +0000

On a macro scale it is a billiard ball universe and the fact that you can even use the billiard ball analogy proves it. An engineer can tell you how much a bridge will expand/contract for a given temperature change. Artillery officers can tell you where a projectile will land given the current state (projectile weight, wind speed and direction, muzzle velocity, elevation, etc.) of a cannon. If he misses a target it’s usually because one of the parameters in the trajectory calculation was incorrect ( too much/too little powder, wind changed, etc.). I know that if I heat a closed, non-expandable container of gas to a certain temperature it’s pressure will rise to a predictable level. On a micro level, nobody can predict the velocity or kinetic energy of any any given molecule/atom of gas but the average state of all the atoms/molecules *can* be predicted. Predictability in some realms, not so much in others.

By: redjujube

redjujube — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:22:00 +0000

Common sense tells me if sense were common there would be no disagreements. In America republicans and democrats share cultural history but they disagree on nearly everything. There is disagreement even within each party. There is no common knowledge or shared cultural experience. We all experience and interpret reality differently and what you call fact and sensible is often fiction and ridiculous to another. Yet if you examine small pockets of culture you will find sense and knowledge that is common within that culture. Or is it that members within those cultures are simply taught that X is common sense and Y is common knowledge and out of a sense of wanting to belong members of the culture subscribe to what they are taught to believe. If so then yes, perhaps disobedience is man’s first virtue but then why do adults rebuke young people for driving recklessly. Why is that kind of disobedience not considered a virtue? Well ask a teenager who wrecks a car why he was driving 100 mph in a 30 mph zone and he/she will often respond that they didn’t know or they didn’t think anything harmful would result. Adults have witnessed the effects of speeding so to them it’s common sense to obey the speed limit. Teenagers haven’t witnessed what adults have witnessed so they don’t understand all the reasons why accidents happen. Again, what makes sense depends on one’s personal experience even within a culture.

By: awjt

awjt — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:58:00 +0000

I like it. It’s as good a theory as any! But I’m sticking to my invisible magic elves theory.

By: Kim Cascone

Kim Cascone — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:33:00 +0000

like how we thought the earth was flat? or the sun revolved around the earth?

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:24:00 +0000

I would remind you that this is something physicists still aren’t sure about. It seems to me that many worlds would settle the problem of collapse, decoherence, and measurement quite concisely. The different parts of the wavefunction (the various pure states) move apart in configuration space, reducing the strength with which they interact, such that we end up only observing one part, and this naturally happens faster for large systems than small ones.

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:19:00 +0000

I think they also mean, “And I think it should be obvious to others on the basis of our common knowledge and shared cultural history.”

It is an expression of the belief that there is a short inferential distance between what is known in common to all (or commonly believed by all) and some particular conclusion.

By: travtastic

travtastic — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:54:00 +0000

…!

By: hypersomniac

hypersomniac — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:43:00 +0000

They laughed at Rudolph. All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. Giuliani too.

By: hypersomniac

hypersomniac — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:41:00 +0000

“All perception is a gamble” – RAW; Or gambol, as it were.

By: hypersomniac

hypersomniac — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:39:00 +0000

Kill the Buddha when you meet him!

By: Matthew Petty

Matthew Petty — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:39:00 +0000

“When I told my friends I wanted to be a comedian, they laughed at me. Here I am on stage! They’re not laughing now!”

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:28:00 +0000

Esoteric philosophies sometimes interpret the Fall as something like the Big Bang, where the perfection of the singularity is ruined in order to create the material universe.

By: Avram Grumer

Avram Grumer — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:22:00 +0000

“Copybooks” were notebooks in which students used to practice their penmanship. At the top of each page there’d be printed some maxim (chosen for its presumed effect on the student’s moral development), and the student would have to copy it over and over down the page.

By: noen

noen — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:07:00 +0000

“States *seem* to give rise to later states, but are actually unpredictable.”

No, they really are predictable. IF what you say were true nothing around you would work. Not your PC, not your car, *nothing*.

You don’t actually know what “scientific explanation” means.

By: noen

noen — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:04:00 +0000

@ awjt (not Wrekrob8)

“If you can prove it otherwise, I am fully listening.” — That’s not how science, or even being rational and coherent, actually works.

By: petertrepan

petertrepan — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:20:00 +0000

They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. – Carl Sagan

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:58:00 +0000

That too.

By: An Infinitude of Tortoises

An Infinitude of Tortoises — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Xor…?

By: awjt

awjt — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:47:00 +0000

I think the universe is changing itself around our understanding, to subvert us. Like the magic elves moving the scenery each time we go from room to room. If you can prove it otherwise, I am fully listening.

By: Matthew Petty

Matthew Petty — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:44:00 +0000

Great, yes, fine, but there comes a point when disobedience, or just disagreeing with established orthodoxy, no longer makes sense. For example there are many people who will jump straight to this defense when they present their perpetual motion machine, or reasons why vaccines are poison.

By: Bob N Johnson

Bob N Johnson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:44:00 +0000

werd.

By: Matthew Petty

Matthew Petty — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:41:00 +0000

Common sense does not exist. When someone says, “It’s just common sense!”, they mean “It seems obvious to me!”.

By: Ian Wood

Ian Wood — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:35:00 +0000

That quote is from Wilde's 1891 essay, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," written after he'd decided to become an anarchist for awhile. "High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people." Radical individualism, the anarchist as aesthete. All very lofty.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:32:00 +0000

In physics we keep finding that the laws we use to describe the universe have a more limited application than previously thought – Einstein has not replaced Newton simply refined our understanding.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:40:00 +0000

I am beginning to see that there is more to RAW than I thought – the first people to recommend him to me were too fucked up with Aleister Crowley and drugs for me to take them too seriously. The Illuminatus Trilogy it will have to be then.

By: McGauth925

McGauth925 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:37:00 +0000

Ok, I’m stupid and/or ignorant. WTF *are* the gods of the copybook headings? Is that something that it helps to be British, to understand?

By: McGauth925

McGauth925 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:29:00 +0000

“noen
That doesn’t make any sense. The whole point of physical laws is conformity to the past. The world is understandable *because* it is obedient to prior states. If particles were not, science would be impossible.”
——————

My limited understanding of Quantum mechanics is that, quite often, the current state of particles is NOT directly related to prior states. I. E., “they” can predict the LIKELIHOOD of future states from current ones. But, it ain’t a billiard ball universe where, if you know the current state of everything in it, you can predict with certainty any future state. Remember Einstein, who couldn’t accept that god played dice with the universe. And, Bohr told him to stop telling god what to do.

About that, it seems to mean that there is absolutely no reason at all why an electron will be over here, instead of over there. I have a very hard time letting go of the idea that there’s a reason for everything, so I always amend that, in my mind to, “no known reason”.

By: calf

calf — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Sure, but I think his overall point, though, is that we don’t contravene authority enough.