Re: Thomas Covenant series

David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1hf6h91.gat904jmnsvzN%zeborah@xxxxxxxxx>,
zeborah@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:

I don't think my view of the world is correct; it just happens to have
arisen and is useful to me. I've modified it in the past and see no
reason not to continue modifiying it given the need, so it follows that
either it's incorrect now and/or will be incorrect... or possibly (which
feeling I tend towards) both will be correct in their own ways.

The first version fits my understanding. Thinking something is correct
doesn't mean thinking it with probability of 100%--merely that it is
your current best estimate. And when I modify my view of the world, that
means that I have changed my opinion of what is the best estimate, hence
that I now think I was probably wrong in the past.

It's the "correct in their own ways" that I don't intuit. I change my
view precisely because I conclude that the old version wasn't correct.

I don't always change my view. Sometimes I just add a view. Different
views are useful for different purposes. A hammer is useful for banging
nails in, but if you want to paint a landscape you're better off with a
brush and paints.

And I certainly don't think other peoples' views of the world are wrong.

None of them? The people who think it is flat--all the way?

I have a map which shows the world with south on the top and north at
the bottom - created by the Wizard of Christchurch. On the reverse side
is a perfectly plausible argument that we live on the *inside* of a
hollow Earth, that the rest of the universe is therein contained, and
that space-time is merely curved in such a way that it appears to us
that we live on the outside of the planet.

I don't see any reason, then, why the Earth could not be described as
flat in a universe whose east and west edges happen to border directly
on each other, whose north and south edges tend to length zero, and
which has an appropriate space-time curvature to account for the various
other observations we can make.

I don't see any particular *advantage* to believing in this, mind.

The Nazis?

"Wrong" isn't a good word to use there; "morally repugnant" is far
better. Can't say more on that unless you tell me what particular
belief/view you're talking about.

The religious cults that expect the world to end next Thursday?

How do you know it won't?

Or do
you only mean that there are some people whose views of the world are
different from yours but you don't think are wrong.

<ponder> I think it's not so much that I think their views are not
wrong as that I don't think they're wrong. This is a little similar to
not considering the question at all. Mostly I don't think the question
is relevant.

But also I tend to believe that there is a kind of... hmm, you'll
misconstrue the word 'truth'. "Resonance", perhaps. I think there's a
kind of resonance even in worldviews which, if one were to look at them
factually, one would be hard-pressed to say they fit with reality. If
you don't *try* to fit them with reality... if you just look at the
pattern of them, and lift that pattern up (shaken loose of anything
masquerading as 'fact') and put the pattern down into your own worldview
and see what it does... Interesting things can happen.

True vs untrue doesn't interest me nearly as much as new and
interesting.

Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: "Happy Thingymas"
    ... Still other interpretations are possible. ... they all fit the following pattern: ... reason to believe are the ones that aren't very interesting or ...
    (uk.religion.christian)
  • Re: [PATCH] proc: pagemap: Hold mmap_sem during page walk
    ... But the problem with the deadlock is not that "same physical page" issue, ... reliable in the array doesn't actually solve the bug I was pointing out. ... pattern is a valid pattern, but it is _only_ valid if you then do the ... So there is a very real reason for that pattern existing. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: And you thought "Christians" hated Harry Potter before
    ... The unborn child has the right to live as it sees fit. ... then we have no good reason for interfering with the woman's ... But it doesn't mark the time when the baby's brain is assembled ... Immediately after birth, babies are protected by the homicide laws. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: PC building tips?
    ... some of those parts are cusomized and won't fit standard cases or ... that won't fit a standard case, so if you were to switch cases, you'd ... Antec "Solo Quiet" is a tougher, ... I don't see any reason not to go with the Core-2 (I've been asking here ...
    (rec.audio.pro)
  • Re: memset question!
    ... parameter is also a *byte* fill pattern. ... So, filling an integer with ... 11, like above will fill it with hex 0x0B0B0B0B, or decimal ... For that reason, memset's middle parameter is best passed ...
    (microsoft.public.vc.language)