Science and Rationality are not the end all be all

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Thinking a bit more about my previous post: It can be argued that not even science can be proven to be true, at least not without assumptions - indeed, scientific claims often state their assumptions. But any such argument applies to any other world view; science aims to make the least possible assumptions (Occam's razor).

Makes sense

If the stock market is irrational (being driven by human beings) then not being able to model it scientifically is not the fault of science or reason. It just means that no one can model it, all they can do is get lucky.

This is an interesting question. My opinion nowadays is that it doesn't make sense to say that a moral statement is true or false. At least not without a system of axioms, but then again, it is baseless to say that those axioms are indeed true. I have feelings of what is virtuous, but I realize that it's baseless to say that those feelings hold truth. Similarly, people can make agreements about how they behave, but that's not based on an universal truth but on mutual interest.

I understand

Law of Identity

Quote:

Question: Why can't one both be inside the house and not inside the house at the exact same time? Why can't some things have some truth and some falsity to them?



How do you figure our universe would be nonsensical? Why wouldn't it mean that our logical principles may need to be revamped. I believe it is Graham Priest who studies paraconsistent logic and logical paradoxes.

Certainly people can be both good and evil, but that isn't a contradiction, it's due to the imprecise nature of the words good and evil.

Which means one would have to accept that there are times that contradictions can exist in our existence more specifically human nature. Is that correct?



Science is a invaluable tool and I will grant you that. I have no problem with science and I am a big fan of science. It is when people claim they're being totally objective red flags go up for me.

I would not call humans irrational. Investment bankers do suffer from bounded rationality. They want to make rational decisions, but they are limited by the information they have, and their emotions.
And there's more to stocks than luck. You can't 100% predict the stock market, but there are investment strategies that are much worse than others.

Well, stocks are trend-driven. The best investment strategies for the average retirement investor is to diversify every chance he gets. If I had money to play with, I'd spread it around mostly growth-stock mutuals. You don't want to invest conservatively early on because you won't get much of a return. You can afford to take risks at that stage, so you're fully aware most of your stocks are going to tank; however, among the stocks that don't tank, you've got a few that explode, and you can safely bet that if you have enough money to spread around and you play fast enough and loose enough, the winners FAR outweigh the losers. At worst you break even.

The trick is long-term investing, which even with risky investing up front beats out emotion-driven speculation. The point of long-term investing isn't to "beat the system" and get rich quick. The point (aside from the retirement nest-egg) is simply to stay in the game. You'll beat panics and recessions every single time that way.

I would generally NOT take a company 401k unless I had total control over what's in there. I'm a bigger fan of Roth IRAs. Since you've already paid your taxes before investing in them, there's no tax penalty for cashing them out.

If you want a quick trip to getting screwed, speculate on individual stocks. Put all of your life savings and college fund into one of those. I dunno, maybe some people just get a rush out of watching money evaporate?

To be clear, the law of contradiction on applies to opposites being used in the same sense. The sky can be simultaneously blue and pink at the same time. I might be observing a sapphire sky at noon. Someone at a different part of the planet viewing the same sky from a different angle might see something entirely different at sunrise or sunset. They are both right?only the sense in which it is meant has changed due to a varying context.

If one person says someone P is inside the house and another person says person P is outside the house, this could actually be true if the person is in the same house as P, whereas the second person is in a different house. If you clarify and ask specifically about the particular house P is in, the second person could not answer in the negative and still be right. Contradictory statements can both be true without violating the law of non-contradiction if the senses in which they are meant is different.

The Bible is contradictory only in the sense that if you look long enough you can find statements that are contradictory. The Bible is not contradictory given an understanding of context.

And so on...

Last edited by AngelRho on 28 Jul 2014, 6:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Rationality is only one path toward "truth."

There are times when people arrive at their "truth" through seemingly irrational means.

Sometimes, "rationality" comes out irrational, because it is not the truth.

Just because something makes sense on "paper," doesn't mean it truly makes sense.

In life, 2 plus 2 is not always 4. It depends on the nature of each component of the "2's"

An example ...

California man turns $146 into $495,060.80 by betting on horse names. ?The way I play horses is by name,? Hariri said the morning after his big score. ?I don?t care about odds".

http://blog.twinspires.com/2012/08/twin ... me-to.html

I find the issue lies in people not understanding what it means when someone who thinks rationally and asks for evidence state "I do not know". You will often here me say this and when someone then tries to explain it in supernatural terms I will always ask for evidence. Conjecture is simply not enough for someone to declare they know answer to something, it is not enough to make up an answer that to you is self evident. If an extraordinary event happens that has no known explanation, the ONLY answer a person can give is a hypothesis .I.E an idea that requires investigation to find supporting evidence.

For example:
Ghost's are frequently reported throughout history, and it would appear that something is going on (although curiously since the proliferation of mobile phones with cameras there has not been an correlating increase in evidence of any kind of supernatural activity). Now if people are really seeing ghosts and it is not in their imagination, it is not ok to simple ascertain that it is self evident that these are the visible souls of dead people. The only answer is we don't know what these are, by saying "I don't know" we are not denying the possibility that ghosts are the souls of dead people, we are simply stating that this is an assumption that requires evidence.

There are many things that I am happy to state "I don't know". I find it amusing that it is the mystics who are so determined they do know and get so pissed off when asked for evidence to support their supposition.

You guys just used an example of a gambler as evidence of the supernatural, based entirely upon his statement, with absolutely no challenge to whether or not he was telling the truth. And you wonder why people like me ask for such claims to be verified.

I can accept this. The bible is an excellent example. This why I said what I said in my OP. I may think it is illogical but how do I really know that it is? It is but my interpretation and it may be faulty. Do you understand why I'm skeptical about my own rationality and my own objectivity? How do I really know I'm being these things?

It's why I'm more reluctant to dismiss something. I'm imperfect and prone to making mistakes. So, how do I really know?

BS. Personally I find it a very long stretch to claim physics as a defence for the inconsistencies in the bible, I understand your reasoning but like I said IMO it is a bridge to far using relatively to explain the contradiction s. I challenge you to rationally explain some of the larger discrepancies using relativity. And in so doing demonstrate that the Scriptures are not contradictory.

The website that he won on is who is reporting it, so it seems evident he did win, and it is known he picked long shot horses. He has a story to back up why he picked those horses. So, the evidence seems to favor his story.

Another example ...

Grandmother turns 2 pounds into 154,000 pounds picking horses by "nice names"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -hair.html

The Bible is inconsistent because it is a compendium of different philosophies.

It wants to be an historical work; it wants to be moral work; it wants to be spiritual/revelatory work; it wants to be a philosophical work; it wants to be law-giving work

It is just a great polyglot of a work!! !! !! !!

To verify this he would need to be isolated from all turf information for a period of time, then asked to choose from races where non of the horses had ever run, and whose lineage he had no prior knowledge of. Someone who claims to do this and is regularly exposed to racing data cannot claim this data did not influence their choices. If he could do this and prove that he was getting better than chance he would have a fairly clear route to the Million dollars James Randi has had up for offer since the 80's for anyone giving empirical evidence for the supernatural.

Another example is the often held belief that a dog knows when it's owner is coming home. When studied (camera by the door) it always turns out that the dog is constantly going to the door and is only noticed when this coincides with the arrival of the owner. If the person always comes home at roughly the same time, then there is some evidence that the dog has a very rough understanding of the time of day, which then get wrecked if times are changed.