Epiphany of the week

Just to say you will really want to tune in During December. We will be gift wrapping and wrappnig up all the rest of the great philosophical mysteries of the ages ONE PODCAST A DAY TIL about Dec 25

In both the common use of speech 'it's the gold standard!' and as a philosophical view, Gold Standards do not have to be correct.

I have been busy. I am working on publications related to the Nerdpocalypse. I am doing a critique of Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" which created the fieldsynopsis of History of Science and really helped the philosophy of science. But I think I can improve upon it mainly due to 60 years of intervening science. Yes, again, it is the nerdpocalypse. specifically, Kuhn felt paradigm shifts created scientific progress, I show how it is building multidimensional structures..i.e., the nerdpocalypse.

I have been busy. I am working on publications and doing peer reviews. All of them come down to how meaning depends upon everything being connected (i.e., the nerdpocalypse net) Therapy sets up barriers physical, cognitive, emotional and in status between patient and therapist. Having a stupid piece of paper between the therapist and patient embodies a cooperative endeavor and I don't see how you do Motivational Interviewing without this framework.

I have been busy. I am working on publications and doing peer reviews. BUT, I can at least do an epiphany of the week. I was doing a review of a paper describing the rate of people leaving methadone or suboxone treatment. This makes a mathematical distribution. This is due to a seriesvolnums of events. A series of events is a story. Therefore, Math is a Story. Wow, total transcript longer than the show oopsie.

The Theseus ship paradox was from Plutarch: Famous Lives, The Life of Theseus. Plutarch relates that Theseus sailed around the Medditeranean Sea so much, his boat wore out. Every plank of it had to be eventually replaced. Was it the same boat. Hobbes made it sillier by supposing some poor Greek took all the throwaway wood and made another boat. His name was "Ikea". His friend Allen had a tool to build it--a wrench. But I digress... Which boat is the Theseus boat? Various solutions have been made. They are wrong. We, of course, have the only right one. Check the webpage associated with this one.

Propaganda is part of a very long history of mind control. The entire Western Philosophical Canon is about having people do the right thing and why they don't. Basically, we take the view that emotion bad, rationality good. Yes, it is NOT that simple. BUT Russian propaganda and mind control techniques are about getting people angry. A LOT of evidence shows they are actively doing this to detrimentally influence US. and it is working.

Why are we here can be an existential question and You would have to give ME that answer. Or, it can be why we are here and not the Neanderthals even though they were bigger, stronger and likely, smarter. That one is an answer I can give YOU.

There are two forms of happiness, fast and loose like drugs, sex and rock and roll which we will use the usual term-of-art and call 'vice' and happiness as envisioned by the classic philosophers who we will term 'morons'. This corresponds to the two forms of drug optimization because it is all brain chemistry anyway, happy holidays!

He just wanted it more. Ok, they say the best way to get the job is to not need it, but this is extreme. There's the theory that Trump really needs this election or he's going to jail. It doesn't explain Stormy Daniels initially and Trump really cares about 130 grand It doesn't explain why he worked that hard to stay IN the Presidency when his attempts were the biggest crimes and he could have just not done them. No, he just wanted the Presidency that much he would, and did, anything to get it. Not even mentioning acting like a total buffoon. Ok, that I would do to get the office but very few other people would

Socrates said if we knew better, we would only choose good choices. But our knowledge is necessarily incomplete so are we totally screwed ? Kant said we could choose what we desire OR we could make the right choice and the highest good is to make the right choice. Not only is that no choice at all, it isn't any fun! So, is choice defined by only doing bad? This leaves out the possibility of improvements. We can choose badLY and learn from it. we can choose badLY with the idea of improving. We don't need perfect knowledge to act badLY. Science, progress and fun are only from failure and improvment.

This is actually both in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy somewhere and the core of both stoicism and Camus's existentialism. I am inundated by it daily in the methadone clinic. People come in after horrific events that put them into opiate addiction with legally diminished capacity in the vast majority of patients--it would be judged Not Their Fault. The identical triggers with many ups/downs/relapses trigger them to Stop drugs. Same events, opposite outcomes-->free will. It's a tight five

The Dunning Kruger effect is more important as a meme than as a psychological finding. The original paper didn't have very good results (see webpage links in purple). I've heard they've been replicated many times in the context of other skills. what the Dunning Kruger principle is NOT is a statement about held beliefs. I think it even more likely that people with dogmatic beliefs are unshakeable even in the presence of strongly opposing facts. Scientists, on the other hand, hold opposing views, often multiple ones, at the same time and always set up opposing hypotheses to test their views. see www.nerdpocalypse.net/w2bpositive

Surprisingly, for distinguishing misinformation, the easier it is to identify it, the more commonly you see the error. The most common is anger/yelling/triggering/shouting (which is hard in print, but there it is). The next easiest is there's no truth claim. This is the third--structurally unsound arguments fall down like structurally unsound buildings. You can always find someone saying something. One person making a claim, is kinda sorta never quite enough to take for a whole truth. Likewise, making a generalization about ALL/Every or use of a broad abstraction like 'liberal' often without even defining the term is going to be structurally unsound.

Just the way a argument is proposed can mean it isn't worth listening to. If the statement depends upon causing anger or other mental anguish, just don't listen to it. Likewise, if it is based on a structure of divinig people into groups, or getting people scared about scarcity, arguments can be invalid just because of how they are contrurcted.

Season 10 of Epiphany of the week--Review This is a REQUIRED digression.We go over the paradigm of how anything has meaning. It also happens to be a good model for the meaning of life (it is an abstraction out of the paradigm of one's own life)

Season 10 of Epiphany of the week--Lizard brain This is a REQUIRED digression. Deep brain structures take in all internal and external sensory inputs. They process, distort, store and responde to sensory input withcognitive emotional , and physical responses. These processes are run by chemical signals that are tautologically drugs of abuse. Wakiness Ensues. Anger, social media, advertisement triggers these centers and triggers release of neurochemicals exactly like you were on crack/meth/opiates. This IS why they call it 'dope'. See the Tim Hartford podcast. It is the ultimate proof of it

Season 10 of Epiphany of the week--Lizard brain This is a digression. Deep brain structures were retained throughout evolution for their survival benefits. They are mis-identified as the Lizard Brain after work by Dr. MacClean hypothesizing that different deep brain structures popped up in different species. It's more complicated BUT these deep brain structures take in all internal and external sensory inputs. They process, distort, store and responde to sensory input withcognitive emotional , and physical responses. These processes are run by chemical signals that are tautologically drugs of abuse. Wakiness Ensues.

Season 10 of Epiphany of the week--answering the great philosphical questions. Karl Popper raised the question of what to do about tolerating interable people. He didn't answer it. We do! Twice! AFTER they become intolerant the engineering criterion of tolerance is 'the limit til something breaks', go with that one. People who break discourse or talk about breaking it to the point where discussion is impossible or who make reference to murder are beyond the limit. AND one can head off fruitless discussion through Popper's own falsifiability criterion...if they cannot say when they would change their opinion there is no discussion

Season 10 of Epiphany of the week--answering the great philosphical questions. Episode 8--what to believe. This is a different question than "what is truth?" A consensus is building around the simultaneity philosophy I have already introduced. I will do a few episodes on truth merely as filler and for entertainment. The question of what to believe is separate. The answer is "everything you can; all at the same time!"