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« on: July 25, 2017, 01:13:20 am »
Aristotle was a toe-rag, and if his grave is ever located, people should crap on it.
There, I said it.
When approaching a problem, people tend to want to use either inductive reasoning or deductive reasoning, but successful problem-solvers use both. Inductive reasoning is applied to generate a broad range of possible root causes, and then deductive reasoning is used to narrow the list until a solution is found. The trick is to never allow a beautiful theory to blind you to what the data is telling you. Logic relies on the brain structure of weaponized apes, and that structure imposes limitations that said apes must be able to look past by not ignoring what the actual, real-world results are.
In other words, Aristotle had it totally backwards and set humanity back a thousand years because he was one of the "ancients" and everyone had to listen to his stupid ass.
Know your own limitations.
I've been thinking about autism recently, and the perceived upsurge in the frequency in which it occurs. It seems mostly to happen in developed areas, and seems to be a relatively recent thing. In fact, the recorded frequency seems to have a direct correlation with increased calorie intake in a population.
Hypothesis: Autism is related to the human mind's pattern recognition capability (people with mild autism are *really* good at spotting patterns), and people with autism simply have that part of their brain augmented by a decent diet during its development, similar to how well-nourished children tend to have better cognitive skills in general.
And since pattern recognition is so critical to our survival, maybe a higher level of development in that area could actually have adverse effects? Like not being able to do anything but recognize patterns?
BUT: I am not a neurologist. And I am operating off of "data" that is largely not data at all, but rather general impressions. For all I know, autism has always been around, but was referred to as "the village idiot" or "that guy who died from stepping on a bear." Inductive reasoning has produced a really neat-looking hypothesis, but that's all it is...Neat-looking.
And this is the part where a lot of people crawl up their own arse and go full David Avocado Wolfe. The hypothesis is absolutely useless until it has been tested and data has been collected (again, fuck you, Aristotle) and the whole thing repeated, preferably by somebody else who really wants to tear you a very public new asshole. If your hypothesis can survive that, it's probably worth taking seriously.
The universe doesn't lie to you, but YOU lie to you.
The universe follows exacting rules, no matter how it got there. It never breaks its own rules, even when it seems to...If it looks like it's breaking the rules, you just don't know enough about the situation. "Spooky action at a distance" is spooky because it's at a distance, or because you just flat out cannot see enough of the situation. But humans will decide that the rules actually don't work at times, if it fits their comfort zone.
This is exactly why agnostics are so fucking annoying. Everybody hates those guys...They're the only people who are doing it right, because you can't gather data on whether or not an omnipresent God or three are actually there or not. Needless to say, agnostics are smug as hell about the whole thing, and should be kicked up and down the block until they wipe that smirk off of their faces.
To be continued.
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