I was listening to an episode of Chapo Trap House where they were discussing the "redpill" movement. They briefly discussed the allure of these kinds of worldviews.
The "red pill movement" gives [idiots] this framework for understanding the world around them. They can apply the framework to any given situation, it "explains" both how the world works and how they should relate to it. This makes them feel smart--it feels like they understand things that aren't immediately visible, and therefore can operate at a higher level.
That's part of what's so attractive about belief systems. Take the incel community's framework to understand mating behaviors, especially relating to bone structure (that attractiveness is immutably linked to skull shape or something) - to them, these ideas feel like a key which unlocked a new way of understanding, one that justifies the emotions (namely how being rejected feels unjust) they were already experiencing.
In an effort to be better than that, I wanted to examine my own tendency to get caught in these kinds of mind-traps. Certainly, Discordianism appeared at a time in my life when I was looking for answers, and it provided answers (or at the very least, comfort with uncertainty) while appealing to my sense of humor and existing distrust of organized religion. Becoming a Discordian felt good, and this made me turn all my rational faculties to its defense. It wormed its way deeper and deeper into the golden apple of my heart.
The Gurdjieff work is the same way - it appeared at a time in my life when I was looking for answers, and it provided me with a new a framework for understanding both humanity and myself. It helps me focus on the real shit. And so I'm sure that part of my attraction to it is that it partially satisfies my incurable desire to understand.
And this phenomenon definitely appears in much less esoteric disciplines. When I first started learning about design (thanks Netatungrot, btw), all of the sudden all these design principles became visible, everywhere. I was able to go "ooh that's a bad design choice" or "that's some very clever design", and it made me feel smart. I was able to see things that others couldn't, and that felt good.
Probably every religion / belief system has these tendencies.. for an idea to spread, it must provide a benefit to the person spreading it. This is both how jokes evolve, and how gods are born.
But once we've found one of these "decoder rings" that cracks open a secret layer of reality, we have a tendency to stop there.
Quote from: Cramulus on March 20, 2019, 04:53:42 PM
But once we've found one of these "decoder rings" that cracks opern a secret layer of reality, we have a tendency to stop there.
You mean like "establish"-found, or "stumble upon"-found?
I mean that when you start using a new worldview / belief system, it feels like you've unlocked something, and will continue using it that tool basically forever
when the only tool you have is a "decoder ring", everything looks like a secret code
the part of the mind which learns and is open to things goes back to sleep
the part of the mind which rationalizes and applies heuristics gets obsessed with it
I have to digest this a bit. Definitely interesting to think on. I don't have a lot to say yet, but I certainly have a lot of half formed inchoate reaction patterns swirling about it.
Quote from: Cramulus on March 20, 2019, 08:12:58 PM
I mean that when you start using a new worldview / belief system, it feels like you've unlocked something, and will continue using it that tool basically forever
when the only tool you have is a "decoder ring", everything looks like a secret code
the part of the mind which learns and is open to things goes back to sleep
the part of the mind which rationalizes and applies heuristics gets obsessed with it
This will continue to be the case unless and until a person is exposed to multiple problem solving skills. You see this in industrial maintenance all the time.
I think youre talking simultaneously of two different things/issues.
1) On one hand youre talking about
"reductionism":
Quotethe practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation.
which involves tunnel-visioning on a single set of factors while ignoring all the others in a complex phenomenom... this happens for a number of reasons, be it incompetence or convenience... and sometimes its very hard to override that when the person in question benefits from the reductionism - for example, try arguing with a non-psycho dynamical psychatrist or a pharma representative that depression has subjective etiology that trascends neuro-biology.
2)
The comfort that any belief or worldview offers: be it the "red pill movement" which gives solace to rabid incels, be it religion that gives solace against the uncertainties of death and existance itself, or be it the belief in "unstopabble and continued progress of humanity".
What reductionism and belief have in common, is not accepting reality on realities terms... and although i cant say that i myself or anyone has access to an understanding of "true reality" and least i try to take realities punches to the face instead of hiding behind a pillow of delusions due to cowardice or being lazy.
-Maybe theres no life after death
-Maybe im not getting laid because im not that much of a catch nor as much of a "nice guy" that i think myself to be
-Maybe im too lazy or stupid to approach a complex problem in a complex manner
So maybe im a bit masochistic, but, if any idea or ideology makes you feel gratified or good about yourself, then it probably is just a conglomerate of lies that passes off as truth because its massaging your ego and narcissism in one way or another.
I have thought about this. It bothered me since I first read it, in some small way, and I couldn't pin it down.
I think I was able to pin it down, and I have decided that it feels incomplete. It's an observation of some phenomenon, and it hints (rather blatantly hints, I might add) at a (very vague, possibly only hallucinated) response we can make to that phenomenon, which feels to me like a lead in to a second part where a response (or a few examples of a set of responses) are outlined.
Perhaps I'm just getting too comfortable with the general PD style, where when a problem is identified in this clear, specific, example laden way, some explicit options are outlined and the door left open for more. Perhaps that's the decoder ring I use in this forum, and it's fucking with my ability to view this for the complete piece it is.
But it's kind of like seeing someone walking down the sidewalk, looking down, and realizing they don't have feet, they're floating a couple inches off the ground on stumps. It's jarring, and it makes me think, but it's too clear and easily read of a piece to benefit (IMO) from mental digestion much. And it damn well shouldn't be floating like that, that shit is /unnatural/.
It might help if I could provide something to jump off of for a second part. Maybe not, but I ought to try (and also I just want the answer to this question).
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem resembles a nail. This seems to be no different. So when it comes to the problem of needing to get another tool, what does the hammer-wielder do?
Put another way: when you read this and decide "yes, I need to find another approach to interpreting the world!" what's stopping you from running into the trap of using your original decoder ring to try and find the messages hidden in the others? How can someone dodge that trap?
And are there "broken" decoder rings that put their owners beyond hope of ever finding alternatives? E.g., belief systems too well defended by their own (probably tautological) internal structure to ever allow the believer to find any other belief system worth using alongside them? If so: what can one do to identify these systems before we step in them? If not: why not? And what about incels, etc? They certainly seem (as a rule) broken, inflexible, and probably not worth engaging at all, ever.
B E S U R E T O D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E
Quote from: The Johnny on March 21, 2019, 02:33:33 AM
What reductionism and belief have in common, is not accepting reality on realities terms...
Maybe... a lot of the systems I'm talking about are genuine attempts to understand reality. There's never going to be a master-level worldview that's "correct", but they do have varying degrees of utility.
Take Discordianism -- a lot of us would not take Discordianism as a belief system, but it does have a lot of "decoder ring" properties. I like to say that Discordianism is an
attitude about beliefs and belief systems. We love standing next to someone who is certain, and making turkey noises. Many of us would argue that uncertainty and rejection puts us closer to reality, because reality is complex as fuck and (like the length of a coastline*) very hard to describe.
QuoteSo maybe im a bit masochistic, but, if any idea or ideology makes you feel gratified or good about yourself, then it probably is just a conglomerate of lies that passes off as truth because its massaging your ego and narcissism in one way or another.
I dunno about that. There is a psychological reward for being correct, but that doesn't cancel out the idea's / ideology's merit.
*what I'm saying here is that a coastline is impossible to measure, and so anyone who claims to have measured one is wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
Quote from: nullified on March 21, 2019, 03:19:29 AM
I think I was able to pin it down, and I have decided that it feels incomplete. It's an observation of some phenomenon, and it hints (rather blatantly hints, I might add) at a (very vague, possibly only hallucinated) response we can make to that phenomenon, which feels to me like a lead in to a second part where a response (or a few examples of a set of responses) are outlined.
Perhaps I'm just getting too comfortable with the general PD style, where when a problem is identified in this clear, specific, example laden way, some explicit options are outlined and the door left open for more. Perhaps that's the decoder ring I use in this forum, and it's fucking with my ability to view this for the complete piece it is.
That's apt, Null. You've been real keen, lately.
It is intentionally incomplete. I wrote this based on an observation about how these decoder rings are both problem solving tools and psychological reward systems. I was thinking about why the alt-right redpill fuckwads get so entrenched in a worldview that amounts to carbonating and bottling your own urine, and prostelytizing about the health outcomes of urine-gargling---and the "decoder ring theory" seemed like a useful way of looking at it.
But I can't cleave the redpill decoder ring from basically any other decoder ring out there. Hell,
nutrition is a decoder ring, it gives you a key for how to read the world when you're in a supermarket or kitchen. Any belief that has heuristic utility includes an icing of psychological reward.
So I can't wrap it up in a nice little package and tie a conclusion around it in a bow. I'm sure that Wilson touches on this in his writing about Model Agnosticism. Maybe just having a word for this phenomenon helps us recognize something that's happening.
QuoteIt might help if I could provide something to jump off of for a second part. Maybe not, but I ought to try (and also I just want the answer to this question).
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem resembles a nail. This seems to be no different. So when it comes to the problem of needing to get another tool, what does the hammer-wielder do?
Put another way: when you read this and decide "yes, I need to find another approach to interpreting the world!" what's stopping you from running into the trap of using your original decoder ring to try and find the messages hidden in the others? How can someone dodge that trap?
And are there "broken" decoder rings that put their owners beyond hope of ever finding alternatives? E.g., belief systems too well defended by their own (probably tautological) internal structure to ever allow the believer to find any other belief system worth using alongside them? If so: what can one do to identify these systems before we step in them? If not: why not? And what about incels, etc? They certainly seem (as a rule) broken, inflexible, and probably not worth engaging at all, ever.
maybe we can conclude that
a decoder ring which only works on a very narrow aspect of reality
(but the user perceives that it decodes more than it does)
is more based on psychological reward than utility
my idealistic hope
this crazy werewolf hope that maybe should be shot with a silver bullet
is that there is another decoder ring out there, which decodes more of reality than the Redpill movement, but addresses corresponding psychological rewards
and when presented with this ring, the shithead will toss their existing one over their shoulder because it looks like junk now
let's imagine this for a second
(and I recognize I'm talking about the alt-right phenomenon right here, and not decoder rings in general)
People who have bought into the Redpill movement are vulnerable to be seduced by its more toxic cousin, the Blackpill.
Blackpill is the nihilist version of Redpill. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Black-Pill
Can we imagine an idea system which contains similar
psychological rewards as the red pill / black pill, but without the toxicity? Like, in the redpill movement, there's this concept "The Return of Kings", which is an embrace of this mythic masculine archetype... I'm reminded of the Robert Bly Mythopoetic Men's Movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoetic_men%27s_movement) (asterisk, problematic, but hang on) which encouraged people to resonate with "mature masculine" archetypes: the King, the Lover, and the Magician. Essentially, what's non-toxic masculinity look like?
Can Aragorn save these lost men?
like the incel community, aragorn spends a lot of his time in the woods, alone
but one day he must return to the world of men and provide the leadership it needs
Aragorn is beloved by the comely elven maiden Liv Tyler -- not for his beauty, but for his courage and heroism
wouldn't it feel better to be Aragorn than, say, the Punisher?
Quote from: rong on March 21, 2019, 04:19:32 AM
B E S U R E T O D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E
A crummy
commercial?
I don't know that that works.
There's a seductiveness to the darkness. Being as far into esoteric areas as you are, I'm sure you've at least at some point considered one of the real scary, Chapel Perilous-gone-rancid style LHP pathways.
(Aside: I suspect that my interest in those can be directly linked to my current, consistently awful circumstances in life, but more on that in another place, at another time.)
Here's the thing: a fair few of the modern ones I've seen promise the practitioner /nothing/ but a horrible experience and a corrupted spirit. Like, explicitly. They're outlined as something you can do for a guaranteed genuine spiritual experience without fail, and they are in every other respect simply the woo-woo equivalent of huffing powdered plutonium: insanely toxic, radioactive, guaranteed to kill you fucking dead and poison the ground you are laid to rest in.
Then people do them. I know because you see people talking about how they got lost in their ritual and now their life is collapsing around them, /send help please/. Google any LHP community and it will be riddled with this shit. More telling, though, is you get a hard core of people who are like "Yeah I did this shit and now I have a tumor in my right eye the size of a potato. Stop whining kid. This is what you wanna do if you're a /real/ badass."
The whole theme of the "Dark Enlightenment" garbage is that it's evil.
The Punisher is a role model in popular culture now, as someone (can't recall who off hand) posted a few weeks ago in the Pics thread.
To a certain mentality, evil, dark, brooding loners who suffer and create suffering is its own draw. I admit that I am one of those drawn to that sort of thing. I don't even know why, because I have learned the hard way I don't want to be that person or be around anyone remotely like that person, but there is a certain aesthetic obsession I have surrounding that edgy, dark, violent, lonely vibe.
I don't think the people drawn to these sort of aesthetics find Aragorn appealing. I wouldn't have when I was in a similar mindset to them.
For my part, I've managed to redirect my own aesthetic obsessions, but it took effort. It wasn't something that I just chose to do, I had to consciously decide to divorce myself from this and find something else that sated that (hunger? There's a better word but it's gone missing) instead.*
But good luck getting someone who isn't reflective and self-aware by nature to make those choices.
* For me, it was a certain kind of monster that I identified as a rare but occasionally recurring theme in media I liked. A normal person, warped through misfortune and active malevolence into a hideous, monstrous, dangerous form — but without a connected shift in psyche.
Their suffering, loneliness, and darkness are not of their choosing, they are forced upon them, and violence is a function of trying to survive in a hostile territory rather than some sort of vengeance kick. They're capable of interacting in a healthy way, if only people would let them. It fits the bill for me.
Speaking of aesthetics.
I feel like there's this movement in youth. They refuse the aesthetic of rich and successful. In fact they thrive to be the opposite. Instead of trying to claw their way up the pyramid to be the top dog who they've heard "ruins the stuff for everyone", They choose the path of least resistance and see what happens when they drill down.
Maybe the top isn't rising, but the bottom is falling off.
Examples, please?
Quote from: LMNO on March 21, 2019, 02:15:30 PM
Examples, please?
Doomer meme, overall nihilistic tendencies. You know, the stuff that made Jordan Peterson rich from only saying that people shouldn't do self-destructive things.
Probably just my own skewed perspective, I'm knees deep in shit and trying to convince myself that it is all normal.
Still, I see so much of the attitude that goes "drink and be merry, world is gonna end soon and you're just lucky if you manage to die before that." around me that I can't help wondering; is this shit happening everywhere?
Jordan Peterson became rich for refusing to use people's preferred pronouns.
Or, really, he became famous for the above and rich for what you stated. So, carry on...
Quote from: Frontside Back on March 21, 2019, 01:10:03 PM
Speaking of aesthetics.
I feel like there's this movement in youth. They refuse the aesthetic of rich and successful. In fact they thrive to be the opposite. Instead of trying to claw their way up the pyramid to be the top dog who they've heard "ruins the stuff for everyone", They choose the path of least resistance and see what happens when they drill down.
Maybe the top isn't rising, but the bottom is falling off.
Quote from: Frontside Back on March 21, 2019, 03:27:56 PM
Quote from: LMNO on March 21, 2019, 02:15:30 PM
Examples, please?
Doomer meme, overall nihilistic tendencies. You know, the stuff that made Jordan Peterson rich from only saying that people shouldn't do self-destructive things.
Probably just my own skewed perspective, I'm knees deep in shit and trying to convince myself that it is all normal.
Still, I see so much of the attitude that goes "drink and be merry, world is gonna end soon and you're just lucky if you manage to die before that." around me that I can't help wondering; is this shit happening everywhere?
Ah, I see. I don't consider that refusing to be rich and successful, though. I think of it more as a bitter, ironic realization of how fucked they are to be living in a world of peak capitalism and climate catastrophe brought on by their elders, who don't give enough of a shit to make the world a better place for their kids.
They can't crawl up the pyramid because they aren't even allowed on the bottom tier, even with a 4-year degree and $100k in debt.
You can't live in the city where the jobs are because the rent's too high, and can't live outside the city because you can't afford a car?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZiq32pUUAA_6pg.jpg)
Secret Decoder Rings???!?? I wanna collect the WHOLE SET.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful."
--George Box
Collect as many models as you need, and use the best one for the current situation. They don't have to be mutually consistent. Relativity and quantum mechanics don't mesh together perfectly, even though they each predict certain aspects of reality extremely well. Just use relativity for things that are really big or really fast, use quantum mechanics for tiny particle-wave thingies, stick with Newtonian physics if you're in your backyard, and let the physicists stress out about sorting the mess out.
how is a decoder ring different from a reality tunnel?
does reality exist without the tunnel? can it be perceived without a tunnel?
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 22, 2019, 05:04:06 AM
Secret Decoder Rings???!?? I wanna collect the WHOLE SET.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful."
--George Box
Collect as many models as you need, and use the best one for the current situation. They don't have to be mutually consistent.
THIS. If you are not concerned about how "right" your model is, but only how "useful" the model you are currently using is for the current situation, then it is your tool (instead of you being the TOOL for the B.S.).
Really good thread. Not sure how to apply the above to the problem Cram points out, as the crux of the problem is that the models the groups under discussion use have built in "this model is more right than mainstream models" built in...
Quote from: Telarus on March 22, 2019, 03:17:21 PM
Really good thread. Not sure how to apply the above to the problem Cram points out, as the crux of the problem is that the models the groups under discussion use have built in "this model is more right than mainstream models" built in...
You, rong and CNO all seem to miss that the use of Decoder Ring here implies the "this model is more right" endorphin kick is built in. It's a little list of heuristics that apply to everything ever, and if you have the decoder ring to decode them, you're the smartest person in the room. It's wrong thinking as a lifestyle.
Any model can become a decoder ring, is the risk I think that Cram implies through the sanity checks of his own models of choice. But some models only EVER seem to become decoder rings, which is the talk about incels and the alt-right. No one casually examines a situation through that lens at some times and uses some other, better model for other situations. All messages are secret messages for the decoder ring.
does objective reality exist? if so, wouldn't the existence of objective reality imply that some decoder rings are, in fact, "more right" than others?
Quote from: rong on March 23, 2019, 12:43:30 AM
does objective reality exist? if so, wouldn't the existence of objective reality imply that some decoder rings are, in fact, "more right" than others?
Its easier to speak of a "shared reality" by a majority of humankind than "true and objective reality"... the problem with this tho is the matter of consensus about what we deem real or true - thats the problem with psychosis, they see reality differently from the vast majority of people and some of them think they have access to "truer reality" and that others are just brainwashed or not perceptive enough... but imagine if everyone was psychotic, then a consensus about whats real and true would be impossible... this statement being a testament on how humankind cant agree on so many important issues, which means that the appreciation of reailty and truth is more subjective than objective, and thats as close as we can get to it.
So calling something "more right" (or less wrong, like some wiki named themselves) is dependent on mostly their weltanschauung, needs, emotions and ideology than its relation to reality.
There is a ground floor reality that really exists, and we have indirect access to it by way of meat making electrical signals that tell other meat to process data that other meat creates the sense of knowing about.
For most purposes aside from philosophy and arguably the arts, this is close enough not to have any real difference. Remember There Is A Moon. Archaeology wouldn't be possible without a Really Real Subtrate. Barstools hurt if you are hit by them. We perceive a really really close approximation of reality and we have really really close to our perceived effects on reality when we act.
Belief systems as are being discussed here primarily take three forms:
Comfort, because human thinking meat fears lack of control. By believing something understandable is controlling things rather than random chance, it can have less fear.
Understanding other humans, because we model other humans actions on a combination of how we think and act and the actions we have seen other humans take. When someone doesn't act according to our model, we feel like we are losing control. Believing we have found the root cause of the differences in expectation and reality lets us believe they can be acted upon.
And superiority, because we have the answers and others do not. More of this is innate in picking our belief systems than people might think. Hell, I'm confident I'm more right than the average person on the street and, I gotta admit, it feels good.
We like being better than others, because we have a cultural framework for all that happens then: other people are just stupid, and they hate us because we are not. We are punished for our superiority and all bad things that happen to others are because they are inferior. Even if you actively don't think this way anymore, the good vibes seem to be baked in.
We like understanding other humans, because it makes society something we can learn how to manipulate. No one likes suffering. If you could completely predict everyone you met, suffering would mostly become a thing of the past for you, no matter who you are.
It also provides us with comfort, a feeling of control, and these are things we as a species also enjoy.
These things have little to no interaction with ground floor reality. Talking about them as if they could be more or less accurate in that respect is silly, because they are, at best, responses TO it, and, at worst, responses to human irrationality and cultural difficulties.
Let me be clear here: these things are not ground floor reality.
That lady named Sarah doesn't laugh when you tell an anecdote because you are somehow capital F Funny. There is no lady, no name, no Sarah, no laughter, no telling or anecdotes, no funny, and certainly no Funny. There is a collection of particles acting in a deterministic manner based on how other particles act. All the other stuff is humans trying to make sense of the chaos.
So when you, say, believe that laughter is bad and leads to societal breakdown, you aren't reacting to reality. That isn't real, none of that is real. You're reacting to culture.
Flat Earthers and anti-vaxxers are wrong about reality. They are wrong about things that continue to be true even when we delete all context and human interpretation from the problem.
Belief systems as are discussed here are not like that. If you remove context and human interpretation from Discordianism, it ceases to exist. It is nothing but a bad smell in the electric meat. There is no Objectivity To Maintain. It is not possible to think of divorced from human experience.
That ended up fucking enormous. It's late, I'm drinking, and I thought it was really really fucking important to remind everyone that there is a real reality that can act on you and be acted upon in turn, but also that that is so fucking far from the topic of discussion that it's like talking about the invention of modern citrus fruit when trying to figure out how to manufacture plastic forks.
Also by way of example why objective reality only matters in physics and chemistry:
Look at whatever device you are using to read this. The idea that that device is not you is a human myth, because that device is not a singular entity, there are no singular entities anywhere if you eyeball the quantum foam closely enough. Everything we collectively know about and a probably unthinkable amount more than that, it is all one singular thing.
Division is a human concept. Saying something is separate from something else may convey useful data about reality but it is nothing more than that, a useful falsehood.
Try to remember this fact, and treat yourself as nothing more than the universe and the universe as nothing more than you. Don't divide it up by saying you are "part of" — no, you're the whole thing and the whole thing is you. Try it for ten minutes.
If you can do it, congratulations on experiencing Zen Buddhist enlightenment, new bodhisattva. If you, like most people, found it somewhere between impossible and fucking stupid and useless, now you know why chasing objectivity is a fucking stupid idea.
on the flip side, i think we now live in a post-truth world (a quick search reveals i am not the first person to think this and it was 2016 word of the year) *
but what that means to me is that, for any given set of beliefs (within reason) it is now so easy to find anecdotal evidence to support these beliefs that you can literally believe whatever you want and back it up with FACTS
I think what sets discordians apart from greyfaces (or normies or NPCs or whatever suits you) is that discordians are aware that you can change your beliefs system (BS or reality tunnel or decoder ring) to suit your whimsy while those other lesser types that we are so much better than are unable to realize that their BS is no better than anyone else's BS.
does this make discordianism a meta-decoder ring?
* see? i believed something, and easily backed it up with FACT therefore I AM RIGHT!
good re-frame
All Affirmations are True in Some Sense, False in Some Sense, Meaningless in Some Sense, True and Meaningless in Some Sense, False and Meaningless in Some Sense, True and False in Some Sense, AND TRUE, FALSE, AND MEANINGLESS ..in some sense.
Wilson would have said All Affirmations are Models with Truth Value Ranges of .000000000000000000001% to 99.999999999999999999%, but apply the wrong model to the current context and the results are meaningless.
Or something like that...
Quote from: Telarus on March 24, 2019, 07:27:59 PM
good re-frame
All Affirmations are True in Some Sense, False in Some Sense, Meaningless in Some Sense, True and Meaningless in Some Sense, False and Meaningless in Some Sense, True and False in Some Sense, AND TRUE, FALSE, AND MEANINGLESS ..in some sense.
Wilson would have said All Affirmations are Models with Truth Value Ranges of .000000000000000000001% to 99.999999999999999999%, but apply the wrong model to the current context and the results are meaningless.
Or something like that...
Haha - gotcha! If you believe it is possible to apply the wrong model, you must therefore believe there exists a right model.
Or - alternatively: Funny you should mention meaninglessness as I've been dabbling in absurdism lately. Do you mean to say that all models are wrong (in some sense) and therefore meaningless? (in some sense)
That 'rightness/truth' is a function of 'utility/usefulness', not 'most accurate description of reality'.
Can you really expect a respectful answer after crying "gotcha"? Genuine question.
Quote from: Hoopla! on March 25, 2019, 02:53:48 AM
Can you really expect a respectful answer after crying "gotcha"? Genuine question.
You can expect it, but your model will not match up with reality.
I nominate the three posts before this one for
:potd: