Philosophy Now Forum

Greylorn Ell wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 5:05 pm Okay..
Care to be transparent about your criterions for:
* nitwit -- Someone smarter than you.
* bullshit -- Everything you write.
* intelligence -- A property that has eluded you.
* contribution -- Something you are too incompetent to make.

Greylorn

Thanks Gaylord, but that is a very 'particularist' solution. Do you have a more methodical approach? Something that meets the bar for testability/falsifiability?

You are a scientist after all. You ought to aspire to higher standards than just your own, biased opinion which certainly don't meet the bar for transparency!

Maybe the particularist/methodist distinction is foreign to you (although I doubt it...)
Here's me 'not contributing'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodism_(philosophy)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemol ... ticularism

Occam's Razor is a useful tool if one needs to settle on a proposition to move on in an intellectual exercise. However, its contingent nature should not be forgotten because subsequent propositions built on such premises maybe rest on foundations of sand.

Reality is often far more complex and counter intuitive than we suppose, which is why astronomers continue to be surprised by what they find and the hard problem of consciousness remains contentious. Still, we can't throw up our hands so we devise draft working models to at least move closer to the truth, and it's in these models' construction where Occam's Razor would seem most useful as far as I can tell.

Me, I prefer: Start with what you know, don't make shit up along the way.

Occam's razor is just a precision-cost trade off.

If a heuristic gives us 2 decimal places precision in 5 seconds, it's may (or may not) be more useful than a heuristic which gives us 10 decimal points in 10 hours.

Diminishing returns.

If precision is paramount then use Hickam's dictum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickam's_dictum

Occam's razor had its day. Now it's just some trumped up bod in an old school blazer that didn't real eyes just how complicated reality actually is.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 30, 2018 7:51 pm Occam's razor had its day. Now it's just some trumped up bod in an old school blazer that didn't real eyes just how complicated reality actually is.

It works fine in unexplored fields. It allowed for picking low-hanging fruit.

As we saturate the field and all the low-hanging fruit has been eaten - it's time to flex those brain cells!

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:25 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 30, 2018 7:51 pm Occam's razor had its day. Now it's just some trumped up bod in an old school blazer that didn't real eyes just how complicated reality actually is.

It works fine in unexplored fields. It allowed for picking low-hanging fruit.

As we saturate the field and all the low-hanging fruit has been eaten - it's time to flex those brain cells!

Yep, and use the leaves to sew garments for our detestable naked bodies, and make fig jam.

Occam's razor isn't a criterion, more like a guiding principle. Many who whine about it merely do so because they want to push their own theories, which tend to be unnecessarily overcomplicated and involve a lot of fantasy. But the simplest explanation usually turns out to be correct (about 60-90% of the time, I'd say).

devans99 wrote:
Time is not metaphysical bullshit : the speed of light speed limit ( speed = distance / TIME ) is obeyed by every particle in the universe and
exists independently of change . To be a normally functioning universe a speed limit is required . Else it is possible to accelerate objects to
infinite velocity and thus straight out of the universe . So time is fundamental to the universe

Nothing in the Universe can travel faster than c even though it itself is accelerating beyond light speed
Eventually the expansion of space will mean no stars will be visible from the reference point of Earth
However by then the Sun will have gone red giant and could have expanded beyond the orbit of Earth

Greylorn
Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.

Translated-- Let's figure out how the universe began, and how it works, by using the real information, the physics, that we actually know about it instead of philosophical principles that are subject to the interpretation of those with agendas.

I regard Russel's Razor as the only intelligent philosophical criterion for determining the respective values of opposing hypothesis, physical or metaphysical.

Please do me and others on this forum the favor of not commenting upon this if you are ignorant, stupid, or both. Thank you.

Well, then you must be a phenomenologist. For phenomenology is the ultimate in efficiency, but then once you have removed the excesses of empty metaphysics, and cease to do what Kant called empty dialectical spinning of wheels, you are left not with positivism, but the possibilities of transcendental deductions. After all, what IS it that is truly given in presence. This is where philosophy starts.
Ignorance? Stupidity? Why even mention such things? Just ignore the posts you don't like and address the ones you do, and forget about how offended you are by those with lesser resources. This is the Occam's razor of plain decency.

Greylorn Ell,

Greylorn Ell wrote:...

Stay on point or go away. The moderators don't care, which is why this is forum is rife with jerks like you. But I care. ...

But apparently not enough to bother to read what the moderators actually say about how they wish moderation to be done. Hence we get jerks like you running your mouth off about us.

AMod.

devans99 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:49 am

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:45 am The DEFINITION of 'speed' is man-made. the DEFINITION of speed is distance over TIME.

So speed is a FUNCTION of distance and time.

What is TIME a function of?

No the definition of speed is built into the fabric of the universe.

time = distance / speed

Really? How do you make such a measurement when the speed changes throughout the distance? It looks like I can count the number of useful physics courses you've taken with the finger growing out of my ear.

Greylorn

AMod wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:38 am Greylorn Ell,

Greylorn Ell wrote:...

Stay on point or go away. The moderators don't care, which is why this is forum is rife with jerks like you. But I care. ...

But apparently not enough to bother to read what the moderators actually say about how they wish moderation to be done. Hence we get jerks like you running your mouth off about us.

AMod.

It seems to me that a moderator's job is to actually moderate, not "say how it should be done." Someone needs to grow the balls to actually do it. You guys ignore thread hijacking. As I and others have proven, ad hominem attacks are fine with you. It's been years and a broken back and lots of pills since I perused your rules, so I no longer recall them.

I hope that they prohibit the aforementioned complaints, for if they do not, they are worthless. But if you and other moderators fail to enforce the rules, so are you. At least as moderators.

If everyone stopped at stop signs, society would not need cops.

Greylorn

AMod wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:38 am Greylorn Ell,

Greylorn Ell wrote:...

Stay on point or go away. The moderators don't care, which is why this is forum is rife with jerks like you. But I care. ...

But apparently not enough to bother to read what the moderators actually say about how they wish moderation to be done. Hence we get jerks like you running your mouth off about us.

AMod.

It seems to me that a moderator's job is to actually moderate, not "say how it should be done." Someone needs to grow the balls to actually do it. You guys ignore thread hijacking. As I and others have proven, ad hominem attacks are fine with you. It's been years and a broken back and lots of pills since I perused your rules, so I no longer recall them.

I hope that they prohibit the aforementioned complaints, for if they do not, they are worthless. But if you and other moderators fail to enforce the rules, so are you. At least as moderators.

If everyone stopped at stop signs, society would not need cops.

Greylorn

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 9:24 pm Me, I prefer: Start with what you know, don't make shit up along the way.

Me too. Excellent paraphrasing. GE