How much can a person change about themselves?

Can philosophers help resolve the real problems that people have in their lives?

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Advocate
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by Advocate »

The whole Aumann thing is a canard because it presumes rational people. But also because it uses statistical probability to come to that consensus. Statistics is a measurement of Uncertainty, and whatever agreement you reach is therefore guaranteed to be uncertain, and therefore entirely subject to upset by any new information whatsoever.
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bahman
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by bahman »

Gary Childress wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:05 pm I get kind of angry and frustrated at times talking with people on the Internet. I know I shouldn't but there seems to be something inside my mind that propels me in that direction. It's not like I can just flip a switch and turn off anger or frustration and not be angry or frustrated anymore. Some of the time I just walk away and sulk in the proverbial corner but I still feel irritated while I'm away. I suppose I could go to an anger management class or something, but if they're anything like other kinds of therapy sessions I've been to, then I wonder how much they will really help me.

What are some ways that others here handle anger? Do you get angry or frustrated sometimes talking to people on the Internet too? If not, is it something that just doesn't come to your mind or do you somehow diffuse it in some way (and if so, how)?
Perhaps you were not so angery enough. A little of anger won't kill you but makes you stronger if you can manage it. It is very easy to get angery from people.
Skepdick
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by Skepdick »

Advocate wrote: Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:02 pm The whole Aumann thing is a canard because it presumes rational people.
You might have to forego/abandon your preconceived notion of "rationality".

In my world rationality is about the ability to achieve goals. This definition prescribes nothing with regards to a person's mental/intellectual capacities. If it's stupid and it works, then it isn't stupid.

In so far as both of us want to come to consensus, and we have an algorithm for the task at hand, and we are willing to practice this algorithm (adhere to the rules of the game) then we will arrive at consensus.

Advocate wrote: Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:02 pm But also because it uses statistical probability to come to that consensus.
Statistics is a measurement of Uncertainty, and whatever agreement you reach is therefore guaranteed to be uncertain, and therefore entirely subject to upset by any new information whatsoever.
Statistics IS information theory.

Information is precisely that which resolves uncertainty. By definition.

The point about consensus isn't to arrive at any permanent/unchanging answers. The point is to agree on course of action given all available information at the time.

That course of action may well be a mistake - but you don't have the information to know that a priori.
Advocate
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by Advocate »

>You might have to forego/abandon your preconceived notion of "rationality".

>In my world rationality is about the ability to achieve goals. This definition prescribes nothing with regards to a person's mental/intellectual capacities. If it's stupid and it works, then it isn't stupid.

Your pragmatism limits rationality to only that which is immediately possible. Rationality has no such limit. Revolution can be a rational act and it's outcome is always entirely unknown. Also, you're throwing out "preconceived" as though post-conceiving is somehow better? All thoughtful ideas are preconceived! Just like all pictures are of you when you were younger.

If one's goals are simple, no matter how much you achieve them, rationality wasn't required. Requiring pragmatism as an attribute of rationality is not necessary. One can be entirely rational without any idea of the actual outcome of their acts, because predictive power isn't inherently part of a rational train of thought.

>Statistics IS [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle ... py#History]information theory[/url].

OK. My prior point was that it's insufficient for many tasks because it's not providing certainty as most people believe. It provides some degree of certainty, but whether that so-called consensus is actually so, or sufficient, depends entirely upon intent, which is not a rational variable.

>Information is precisely that which resolves uncertainty. By definition.

>The point about consensus isn't to arrive at any permanent/unchanging answers. The point is to agree on course of action given all available information at the time.

Actionable certainty is the purpose of All knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. With regard to consensus, which as i pointed out is Not rationality-bound, it can produce feelings of certainty without addition of actual information, meaning false certainty.

Statistics measures how much we know relative to how much we know we don't know. The unknown unknowns portion which remains means there is an upper limit to how much certainty you can get with statistics, which in turn means (definitively) that statistics are a measure of uncertainty, not certainty. Understood through that lens, everything else about the field makes sense. If it's not in the wikipedia article or the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy or emblazoned in 10000 pt Helvetica over the entrance of the economics department at MIT, they simply don't understand statistics.

I'm not saying statistics doesn't provide some increase in certainty, only that it's not the sure kind of certainty that people treat it as. Saying you're 99% sure of anything means you are not sure. Whether you're sure Enough is where that intent comes in. "All available information" requires accounting for individual anecdotal experience which in turn requires vetting the voracity of each participant. This reason alone shows the insufficiency of the tool for most tasks. Because humans are bound in time and space, meaning amount of information and weight of individual perspectives is always Likely to change, not just subject to change.

The task for decision-making is to eliminate as many variables as reasonably possible without dumping anything relevant to the intent. In other words, accounting for all available information must mean dumping most of it which is not, i think, what you had in mind when you said that. Intellectual progress, whether or not in an individual instance, is the process of Closing your mind by eliminating unnecessary confusion and doubt by eliminating irrelevant information and that which is not sufficiently weighty or sourced to be meaningful.
Eugene Glus
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by Eugene Glus »

And also an important opposite question: how to stop your own changing? As we know we're all not getting younger a day. Another thing is that each eight /twelve?/ days our body looses the last one old molecules /the organism renewing/.

I guess that that 'core' element that allows our bodies to change is anything that is unstoppable completely. If with it anything else - like that is what belongs to a soul, or kinda - is changing too, then there's no way to change it; else, I guess it depends on of some conceptual levels. - Just like a question of the ontological status of fiction characters.
Advocate
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by Advocate »

[quote="Eugene Glus" post_id=495554 time=1612984710 user_id=15960]
And also an important opposite question: how to stop your own changing? As we know we're all not getting younger a day. Another thing is that each eight /twelve?/ days our body looses the last one old molecules /the organism renewing/.

I guess that that 'core' element that allows our bodies to change is anything that is unstoppable completely. If with it anything else - like that is what belongs to a soul, or kinda - is changing too, then there's no way to change it; else, I guess it depends on of some conceptual levels. - Just like a question of the ontological status of fiction characters.
[/quote]

Maintenance is regularly changing things back to the way they should be.
Oakley
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by Oakley »

Gary Childress wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:05 pmWhat are some ways that others here handle anger?
Spend as much time in nature as possible.

Carefully install your computer at the bottom of the nearest swimming pool, pond, lake, river or ocean etc.

Chain your TV to the back of your car, and drag it down a country road for a couple of miles.

Stand on top of the highest mountain you can find, lean out over the edge, and see how far you can throw your phone.

Avoid human beings except in case of emergency.

Don't listen to idiot posters like me on the Internutz. :-)
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attofishpi
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by attofishpi »

Oakley wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 1:07 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:05 pmWhat are some ways that others here handle anger?
Spend as much time in nature as possible.

Carefully install your computer at the bottom of the nearest swimming pool, pond, lake, river or ocean etc.

Chain your TV to the back of your car, and drag it down a country road for a couple of miles.

Stand on top of the highest mountain you can find, lean out over the edge, and see how far you can throw your phone.

Avoid human beings except in case of emergency.

Don't listen to idiot posters like me on the Internutz. :-)
Rather ironic - you want to spend as much time in nature which you appear to want to mess up by dragging all the man made crap into it.
trokanmariel
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by trokanmariel »

The self-evolution idea:

I am in an engagement with meta, however, this makes me subject to the public/private expression logic differences democracy evaluation. The PPELDDE, is a pull of bad weather, sociology inconvenience (domestic disturbance, political warfare of identity, politics per se, the mathematics of study etc), story to written text physics-philosophy-imagination, people as imagination creators over their being creators of the weather, to name a few, for the analysis of matter rearrangement philosophy's link to bad weather being a con artist in waiting for people's mutual awareness meta publication story (Lia Haddock's reference, from Limetown).

The proof system, of bad weather's arc; it was described as being (and this element of mystery can attach itself to Barolo Xylie's visual word as no imagination on condition of word being negative possession as gift) dependent on the saving grace identity construct, of visual words evolving to the point of being like living colours.
Reaching the destination via chronology's inverse, of following up the demonic (via sociology inconvenience, of its own apparatus of demonic interference to abstract meta) with the contrast as computation, can be a twirl of colour combination symmetry in sync with the aforementioned living colour story.

The written text philosophy: can it include the mutual deflection of suspicion of proof via spontaneity act and the standard philosophy matter connecting bridging ideology (bridging ideology ideas including going for a walk meta to geography, chemistry to atomic nucleus being the rearranged manifestation of body glamour's or left-wing transcendence's outward), in the form of offerings by the non-observation artist's ethos of no inferiority to observation's possession of story vs sex vs sociology?

Interestingly, there is the Kelly Brook-Thomas Heath meta combination, of this very text: the twirl-of-colour-combination-symmetry-in-sync aspect, juxtaposed with the story vs sex vs sociology component (a Nadia Bjorlin-Racer Drive offering): the former element is a throughline of yellow (a Hulk Hogan reference), as a mistake (yellow = cowardliness) and the latter element is the Adamski-Sonny-Patricia Montelli green of S, as a perfected art of deliberation.

Kelly Brook, the UK model; her technology-person counterpart, presumably from around the same time of Peek-A-Boo, and Mason Dertry, is an outer space safety (more outward reality philosophy) to the macro universe's need of the non-observation artist; specifically, Keanu Reeves' Jonathan Harker is the non-observation artist as template study offering as also literal embodiment user of said formula.
This is necessary, as a philosophy, due to the inside out parody, offered by Claes Bang's Dracula;

Kelly Brook's technology counterpart, from time immemorial, is a sex club-exempt woman, who only uses as deliberate choice the positive over negative story choices of meta, and the sex club.

To elaborate:
for physics' own story, of emotion, in the detail of being able to keep up with the metaphor machine reality, whilst not harming bad weather's con artist in waiting to mutual awareness publication sex, as still a safe rival in waiting to said bad weather (an animal as metaphor machine safety blueprint), Kelly Brook's meta woman is able to oversee this paradigm, as a top hat aristocrat, who simultaneously protects the emotion validity to positive computation of myself amidst my walking down the stairs meta.
trokanmariel
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Re: How much can a person change about themselves?

Post by trokanmariel »

The public/private expression logic differences mythology, the system to instil the separation between Thomas Heath and Thomas Heath's gravity resistance story of words to meet (in other words, the computation context of the creation of terms by Thomas Heath), is a a safe left-wing transcendence generator, of the safe mutual awareness demonic's belief in body creation horror's safe misuse of person to person (Hayley Atwell to Kelly Brook) mythology science using the time travel truth against the body glamour reality's right-wing politics support for the illegal science, of meta overseeing the surrounding to harm analyst in partnership with body glamour's right-wing tradition of names of name-calling physics using the soul-spirituality generated matter
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