h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So how come the Democrats didn't put in an NHS while they were in power?

I'm a little ignorant about American politics I'm afraid.

I guess we just hear about the scary bits.

I'm not trying to take away from your argument badger, but watching you speaking to Nerd is like watching someone repeatedly running into a concrete wall and comming back for more. Or like seeing someone talking to a pet rock

I grew out of believing in the bigG not long after my conviction in the exsistence father christmas, the easter bunny, the tooth fairy and wombles passed. Lately my atheist ideas are seeming more and more shaky and Im begining to suspect that the devil, God or pssibly both of them have sent Nerd42 here to test me.

The Democrats DID try to implement socialized medicine, or at least Bill & Hill did. They did not succeed, thanks to the Conspiracy.

blickybadger, why are you so obsessed with racism? Think the rest of us might want to get on with talking about something else for a change? Sorry I insulted your hero jackson - don't take it personally or anything. sheesh. Get over it and on with it already. One thing this may have taught me though - if I expect you to take an objective second look at someone (rush) then I ought to do the same. (for jackson) Maybe we'll bring up the race issue again sometime - not right now please.

Before I even *try* debating with people - I want to know who does and does not agree with my fundamental belief that truth exists - because there's no point in arguing with someone who does not believe in facts!

So, answer this: Do you believe that there is absolute truth? (absolute meaning unchanging, fact that stands reguardless of anyone's perception of it, if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody around to hear it, it still made a rather impressive THUD) I want to hear a yes or no answer - particularly from blickybadger - unless you want me to rephrase the question to make it more clear, though I don't know how much more clear that can get.
Nerd42

Oh sure there are probably things that are absolutely true. For humans to know that they're absolutely true is a little bit silly though.

There are also certain things that might as well be assumed because there are no remotely probable alternatives. Like we might as well assume that we're all "real", whatever that means.

So what you're saying is you think that there are things that are true, but nothing is really knowable? Would I agree with that? Well, yes and no. I think there are certain things we have to assume most of the time in order to live normal lives - like that we aren't all in the Twilight Zone or the Matrix and aliens aren't watching us waiting to take over. You can't live a normal life and seriously worry about that kind of thing all the time. I would submit that the scientific method is one way to discover truth. The truths we know, we know within reasonable doubt - or in other words when one says something is true, one usually means one believes it is true, or it is true to the best of one's knowledge and thus is assumed true until proven false. But one's perception of truth doesn't make real truth, or in other words, you can't make up your own truth - you can make up your own fantasy, (go right ahead, there's plenty of places even here on h2g2 for that) but you can't really make up your own truth. To think you can is deluding yourself. What's true is true - whether you believe it or not. That's my most basic philosophy: I don't see how a debate over whether or not an idea is truth is possible until both sides already agree that there is a truth for the idea to be.
Nerd42

Maybe if you want to avoid the questions that callers ask you ought to call this thread. "The Show - Your calls ignored here!" ?

In response to your question I have to say that I dont really care much. Finding absolute truth is a bit like chasing your tale. Or in terms of science pinpointing the position of an electron, its difficult and ultimately not very revealing. A little bit like trying to tell which way the wind is blowing during a tornado. Its not the most important or illuminating thing. The questions you really want answered are more likely to be how do we survive this.

So yes I believe there are absolute truths and they will be true whether we find them out or not. Gold was always denser than Lead before Archimedes worked it out. Its how we apply those truths that really count.

Lots of people do "make up their own truth," with so many people disagreeing with each other vehemently that is a statistical certainty. I suspect that in most cases it doesn't really matter that much.

A good lie will often do nicely.

" Maybe if you want to avoid the questions that callers ask you ought to call this thread. "The Show - Your calls ignored here!" ?"

I have not ignored your call in any way. I merely asked if you could temporarily drop your obsession with racism for a while, because it looks like you are incapable of conversing on any other topic.

"So yes I believe there are absolute truths and they will be true whether we find them out or not. Gold was always denser than Lead before Archimedes worked it out. Its how we apply those truths that really count."

Even if you don't see the importance of this idea I'm glad to hear you believe it. Don't worry, you can still be as left wing as you want and still believe in truth. (I think) Anyway, so what you two are saying is yes there is truth but there's no way for us to know what it is. You agree that we have to accept some things on faith? (like that when we press the post message button, our message will be posted, which I no longer believe at least on this stupid machine)
Nerd42

I believe in very little, atleast not in the way that you use the word believe.

I have very little faith. i use a system of relying on what has always been reliable and keeping an eye on what presents itself as unreliable. A system of ongoing review in my experience is always preferrable to FAITH alone.

I am not saying that there is no way of knowing what absolute truth is but that is often a futile waste of resources and time looking for it.

If you know the story of Archimedes for instance you would know that many scholars of the time had been looking for non destructive ways of telling pure gold from alloys containing base metals. he too had pondered on it long and hard and found the "truth" quite by chance whilst sitting in the bath.

What is it that you want to tell us ask us or discuss with us regarding "fundamental truth" anyway?

Faith does not seem to be a good word for what I'm talking about - I'm not talking about religion here when I say "faith" OK? At least not right now. I'm sort of searching through my volcabulary to find a better word for belief that something is true, trust doesn't seem to fit the bill either. Maybe we should invent a new word.

I'm saying we have to assume certain things in order to think clearly. I am reminded of the "filters" organisms have to keep themselves from seeing the whole sort of general mish mash in "Mostly Harmless".

Now that we've established the stupidity of the statement that "nothing is true" I would argue that not only are there things that are true, some of them are knowable. I know, for instance, that England exists, even though I've never conciously been there. (i was asleep at the time I am told I was there) Even though I've never seen it, I have to accept the fact as true.

We have to assume that the things we see (or don't see) and deal with are real and that the world is not a figment of our imaginations - it's here in front of us and the things we observe in it are really there and don't much care whether we want to believe in them or not because they still will be there reguardless.

So if we have a debate, either one side has the truth or the other side has the truth or neither has the truth, but both can't have the truth or else there wouldn't be an intelligent debate. Facts we might bring up may or may not be "real" facts but we have to accept some of them as true even though there will always be reasonable doubt, but if we cannot accept any facts at all, we cannot prove things. If you don't believe in absolute truth, then arguing that an idea is true is hypocritical, because if nothing is true, then the idea you are arguing for isn't true.

So my big conclusion is: Logic cannot exist apart from belief in the existance of absolute truth.
Nerd42

Logic is about internal coherence of an arguement. You can use logic and still come out with a load of complete mush.

And argueing doesn't necessarily have to be about what's "true", but what we believe will give the best results.

I think with your England example that you are wandering into the realms of probability. The probability that England exists seems very high to me, so I call it fact, but I could possibly be wrong, its just I choose to ignore that possibility because then I would be sitting and typing this in the sea.

And of course you could say that England does not exist as an actual physical identity, just an idea. Lines drawn on a map. Yada yada yada...

So if we have a debate, either one side has the truth or the other side has the truth or neither has the truth, but both can't have the truth

So you think that there is only one truth, or do you think that there smaller divisions of the whole truth and that in any argument one side is in possesion of all of these.

In the run up to the invasion of Iraq Bush and blair said Sadam must be stopped. True he was not going to stop himself. Chirac said that the world should wait longer and apply more pressure in order to avoid the present situation. Also true.

In any argument there can be more than two sides and all, one or none of them may be working from a position that is partially true. Very rarely is that any one of them will have exclusive claims to the truth that are ...well...true.

Even if someone does not believe they are right they will always claim to be right just so they dont look like the ignorant bullies that they are.

I think this is true.

If you're arguing policy, you're arguing that it is true that your policy is better than the opposition's policy. So arguing about a course of action to take is arguing for the truth of an idea.

explain "smaller divisions of the truth" please. i'm not understanding what you're saying.

what i'm saying is if one side says yes and the other side says no, either one side is right and the other is wrong OR neither is right, but both can't be right.

I didn't say that logic does not exist outside of truth, I said this: Logic cannot exist apart from A BELIEF IN THE EXISTANCE OF absolute truth. or at least that's what I meant.
Nerd42

Ah Nerd I do not want you to receive this news badly but you have a lot to learn. Dont worry its fun learning I still love to do it and it is my aim to learn something new everyday.

Amongst the things you need to learn are the meanings of the words you use and how they interact with each other to make coherent sentences. This will help you to make sense of what people are saying to you and help you let other people know what you are trying to say.

You should also look at widening your reference points for information. it will not only improve your mind in the long run (although it may be difficult marrying up new knowledge to the old dogma you carry with you) widening your points of reference will make you a nicer person to converse with and be around.



Your brother on a journey of discovery.

Logic does not necessarily have to involve fact.

You can use it to go from premises that you conisder highly probably to a conclusion, and neither the premises nor the conclusion have to be true, you can work with what you think is probable all the way through. You can also use logic with ideas that seem obviously false.

And you can say that logic itself if a process that seems to work quite well, but that doesn't necessarily mean it always absolutely have to work.

Two or more sides can all be right, although probably not completely right. This is the situation with most arguements I feel.

i think we're not understanding each other here... if there is no absolute truth illogical things are just as likely to happen as logical things.

if A then B
if B then C
thus if A then C

that's a syllogism. but without a belief in the existance of absolute truth it doesn't work. without belief in the existance of absolute truth, "if A then C" and "if A then not C" could both be the third statement. couldn't they?

i look at this and do not not think that's very good. will think of a better one....
Nerd42

Its possible to believe that logic works in most cases but not all. Not that its a reasonable position to take, just possible.

Experience of the world might say to you:

if A then B, if B then C, therefore if A then C, assuming you've got A & B right.

Or you could say:

if A then B, if B then C, therefore if A then extremely likely C.

Because sometimes things don't appear to go by logic. So we assume that we've made an error in our premises. But what if logic itself was at fault? Its possible it could be an approximation or something.

Honestly though, I believe in the truth of logic slightly more than the truth of 1 + 1 = 2.

But even if there's only one absolute truth in the universe then math has to be it. It's the only species universal constant (as far as I know).

EX:
While (most) humans realize that it's logical to avoid war and work together rather than obliterate themselves, they still go to war and die. However in the movie Contact (for lack of better representation) the aliens respond using prime numbers and mathematical equations because no matter how many times two apples are subtracted from five apples the end result is that you have three apples.

Without thinking about this conversation (honest! i just happen to like sci-fi) I started reading 1984 a few hours after I posted last. I found out that there *is* a word for trying to reason without believing in absolute truth - doublethink. Doublethink is the nemesis of logic. The idea that something can be both true and not true at the same time, that there is nothing that is really true at all - there's just things coming in our senses that we call the "real" world but there really is nothing that is real. I don't buy that - I believe the real world we can see is real. That is the first thing a reasonable intelligent person has to accept on faith in their worldview - that there *is* a world to view - or in other words a reasonable intelligent person must assume the world he/she inhabits is real until proven otherwise.

A conclusion I am drawing from this chain of thought that I didn't expect, (I set out to say that the first thing that must be accepted on faith is the existance of the real world) is this: Things that are accepted on faith should only be assumed true until proven false.

Are you with me so far? (don't worry, this philosophy discussion won't last forever, we'll get back to politics in a bit)
Nerd42