thought experiments

[hermanntrude]

I have just bought a book, called "the pig who wanted to be eaten, and 99 other thought experiments"

Now I understand it'd be big trouble if i were to copy out the experiments, as some of them are copyrighted and some belong to the author of the book, but I figure I can put them in my own words, because i believe it'd be good to discuss some/all of them here. Please let me know if i'm wrong in thinking such a thing.

Experiment 1:

this one comes from descartes and is very close to the "I think, therefore I am" quote.

It suggests that if there were a demon which played with our minds to make us believe that which is not true, in the same way a hypnotist can make a man forget that 6 comes between 5 and 7, how can we know anything to be true, since we can't trust our minds to be thinking straight how can we reason anything out at all?

The author (Julian Baggini) likens this to using a set of dodgy scales to weigh things to test if the scales are working. I prefer the analogy of opening a box with the key that's inside it.

This thought experiment points out something very important to anyone who plans to do any reasoning at all, so could be very useful to some of us.

 

[Curiosity]

Hermann

WOW - now you've done it again! First China and now you!

Nobody has responded because they are all away thinking about it eh?

I truly believe basic, primordial fear can direct our thinking, our preferences, our biases, our dislikes.
It is that fear which in our moments of being unaware can cause us to believe things which are not fact.

If we still have courage and curiosity, we can "weigh to test the scale" but generally we react autonomically from old lessons learned early which we might have to overcome to continue questioning reality.

 

[MikeyDB]

Oh gosh I was hoping for something like....


Doc Doc owner: Bertrand Russel...

Russel's paradox....

And no I'm not a comedian

 

[Curiosity]

MikeyDB

You gonna translate for the regular folk???

 

[Curiosity]

MikeyDB

I looked up Russell and got this quotation: To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom - Bertrand Russell.

Is that where you are going?

 

[hermanntrude]

most of the famous ones are in the book. maybe i should make this a regular thing and we can discuss each in turn. there is a lot to learn i think

 

[MikeyDB]

No I was remarking on Russel's Paradox a philosophical construct orignating in mathematics, the birthplace of philosophy at least in terms of forms of logic. Russel's Paradox is fundamentally about "set theory" but of course the only way human being's have available to them to conjure meaning is through words, semantics, lexicography...communication where in words are the means to meaning....

 

[hermanntrude]

anyway since no-one caught on. the point of the experiment is that any judgement we make, any opinion we form, must remain flexible, and we must re-evaluate our opinions regularly, as everything EVERYTHING is subjective and may be due to the demon affecting our mind (or any other distorting factor)

 

[MikeyDB]

Hermie Baybeeeeeeeee

Words are the clay that we use to sculpt meaning and purpose from our experience and although many words are nouns and dependent on word structures like adjectives and adverbs and so on, all a thought experiement is is abstraction without the benefit of feedback....

Nothing to "get"....

 

[hermanntrude]

not true. A thought experiment can help you think more clearly. It is not supposed to provide specific answers as a physical experiment does, but clarify the way we think about the problems we face. the feedback we receive is a better understanding of reason itself.

 

[hermanntrude]

let me give you another example, one with a more obvious lesson

Imagine that a man and a wife live in the desert, miles from civilisation and amongst people who rarely travelled. the man goes away and travels the world. when he comes back he tells his wife of the amazing things he has seen... robberies and wild animals and oceans and so on.

One thing that really fascinates him is known as "ice" and is water which has become solid. it is slippery and white and very strange indeed. and the weirdest thin about it is that it seems to go from water to ice at a single temperature rather than happening slowly... you can even have a pond with water in it and ice in it too... there seems to be no state in between... the ice doesnt obviously soften but just shrinks as parts of it spontaneously become water.

His wife didnt believe him. don't be rediculous. everything he told her about ice was against her experience so she wouldn't believe him. When travellers from afar told her of fire breathing dragons and two-headed dogs, she didn't believe them, so why should she believe that water magically changed at this magical temperature?

Julian Baggini points out that the important part of this story is not whether or not ice melts at zero, but the fact that the woman was reasoning correctly but coming to a false conclusion. He shows us that it is important to remember that reasoning by previous experience can give us a pretty firm idea of what is true and what isnt, but is not always correct, even if the past experience is totally dependable up to this point, after thousands of years in some cases.

 

[Curiosity]

Hermann

Why was it acceptable for the story to have the wife disbelieve the man's tale of the temperature of the water turning it into ice?

There is a 50% chance she could believe him regardless.

Fear of being lied to and made a fool kept her from being confident in accepting his wild story even when it was indeed fact. Even if common sense belied her knowledge of liquid water becoming a solid.

I truly believe our fear or "wariness of things" keeps us from moving forward in many of life's challenges unless someone "proves" the path will be smooth before us.

 

[hermanntrude]

The story is told in better words than mine. Basically the way it is told shows that the idea of the water freezing, and more, the fact that despite it seeming to be a temperature-related phenomenon, ice and water coexisting, and the change being so sudden rather than gradual, flies totally in the face of everything the wife has seen before.

This kind of scenario happens quite frequently, on a small scale in science. Something happens that seems totally unbelievable, so no-one believes it. All of them are being sensible in making the assumption that since this phenomenon cannot be explained by past experience it cannot be true. Human error is much more common than things which fly in the face of experience.

the point of the story is that everything we know is an assumption, but some of them can be shown to have been true for millions or even billions of years, but that they could all be turned upside-down tomorrow. despite this it is perfectly reasonable to assume you will wake up in the morning and not fall onto the ceiling. In fact we usually call this fact.

 

[fuzzylogix]

Fact is only a neuronal pattern that our brain has taught us to accept.

 

[hermanntrude]

so we can be right in our reasoning and yet wrong in actual fact, when the truth is against experience. If we don't know this then we may miss things by sticking to our reasoning all the time.

be unreasonable

 

[feronia]

Your story reminds me of the story of the world being flat. Until new data is introduced a false perception is held on too.

so we can be right in our reasoning and yet wrong in actual fact, when the truth is against experience. If we don't know this then we may miss things by sticking to our reasoning all the time.

be unreasonable

That a very reasonable unreasonable thought.

 

[fuzzylogix]

Apparently I am unreasonable all the time at work. Can I quote you?????

 

[hermanntrude]

there is another story which points out that reason does not always leads us to good. reason should always be slave to emotion. Psychopaths do not lack reason but feeling.

 

[Curiosity]

Hermann

Having a lengthy discussion with a high IQ schizophrenic would expose you to thoughts never dreamed of... which is based upon faulty logic, some emotion and yes: experience.

Experiential life as viewed through schizophrenia is quite real, however not empirical in our world.

Another thought which has always plagued my need to have proof.... religious writings....are they real, imagined or prompted through some hallucinogen-driven epiphany?

Common sense tells me they are kindly fables at most and hyperbole representing reality to the authors to provide mystical unavailable testament for the masses.

 

[hermanntrude]

you'd be surprised the thoughts i can think on my own. but yes i have heard such things of schizophrenics before.

My father told me recently that when he was a child he used to be able to freely enter and leave a state of mind which sounds to me a bit like a trip. he could make it so he didnt know what anything was, he couldn't label anything and only saw them as the objects they actually were, he didnt even know who he was or what he was, but could easily leave this state of mind as well.

I think this explains a lot about him, and me