Putting Descartes before the thought

That Rene Descartes, what a slacker, and inventing a whole mathematical system, does not mitigate his failure of nerve at the really important point.

His famous skepticism,is still a useful tool, but his conclusion, is, like all conclusions, fatal to real progress. Recall that Descartes wondered, how can I determine reliable knowledge, and he decided to doubt everything he could.  The story we know is that he found one undeniable thought; "I think, therefore I am."

This was the exact point at which Descartes could have leveraged his consciousness into an area where vision was possible, the glints we all live with, could have been sustained a bit longer, but with his motto, I think therefore I am, he put a skull and crossbones sign, right at the mental geographical point where in fact, any sign should read: "come on in, the water's glorious."

Because you have to keep pushing, and the glimpse that our verbal apparatus is but a mechanical contraption, not even designed to pursue knowledge, but rather just rearrange the external world, is a good step. But it was foreclosed to Descartes, who put himself, right in the way of a clear view.  He trusted in words, when he was close to getting beyond them.

The mind, the ordinary mind, in the presentation Jan Cox used once, is a burglar, who, when the householder is roused to investigate a break-in, the burglar then puts his arm around the shoulders of the householder and says, "where, we'll find him, where could he be?" 

A resolute skepticism is a useful tool, take a thought, any thought that crosses your attention, say a thought like:" I love you, Tom Kelly." There is a landscape beyond the words, you have to try to look through the sentence train.

I think therefore I am, how reliable is that? No "I", no "think", might have allowed a glimpse of "am," 

But not for Renny. He still gets a halo for the tools of skepticism though. And now that I put this together, what if, Descartes meant that sentence, dada, I am, as a joke. A joke he was sure the right people would get. After all, it is manifestly absurd, to someone advertising they will doubt everything.  Really, I think I just got the philosopher's joke. It's on me. 

Thoughts on viewing Newton's Royal Society portrait

Words are just wigs, really. Man made approximations, enhancements, of reality, which do not bear close inspection, 

do not bear close inspection unless, your intent is to discover reality, regardless of what you find, 

reality, 

regardless 

of what you find

Can you spell parousia?

The recent reports that a leading physicist does not believe in god is of interest. Anything you have to believe in is suspect.  What the real inquirer needs is intellectual honesty, the energy to pursue investigations resolutely, and as an aspect of that intellectual honesty, a kind of intellectual humility.  Such a description will not appeal to many, never has, doesn't need to. But it is the only stance from which one can assess certain aspects of the contemporary literature of science.  This link is to an article describing what scientists call "The singularity,"

You may have to have a free account to view this so I think I will excerpt it at my weird facts blog. But basically it describes the idea that at some point in the future human intelligence will have reached its limit, and that then perhaps machines will be smart enough to take over. 

This idea is not a strange as it seems, it is the old religious idea of the end of the world, and then paradise. (Called parousia by people who are hoping good spelling counts in god's final evaluation.)

And for a few people the interesting phenomenon is that scientists have no clue where and how this idea is occupying their crania. They are just repeating some of the more dubious fantasies of millenia of religious thinkers. How can you not smile at this? I suppose we could have been tipped off by the odd circumstance that something like this is even in the news, how many centuries after the debate really ended. This current gasping at old gossip may be a clue that something else is beneath these topical events.

Don't Eat the Silverware

Don't Eat the Silverware, you put it in your mouth and remove the utensil, after you have removed the cake to swallow.  Basic stuff, you would think...
Oh wait, this is earth, right. right....You never could distinguish the map and the terrain. Your earthling habit of assuming words, not what the words denote, are the relevant aspects, keep you confused and fighting so life's broader purposes can continue at the proper rhythm.
Just forget I said anything, I was the confused one, -- obviously--I forgot I was visiting earth.

Canny Valleys

The concept of the "uncanny valley" has come to my attention.  The phrase was invented by a Japanese robotics scientist, Masahiro Mori.  The definition we find in wikipedia, that bastion of belief that anonymous contributors are reliable, and personal knowledge irrelevant, is : 


This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley.


The phenomenon is meant to explain the revulsion felt by people when contronted by a robot which is very human, but not fully human, looking.  Well, you can read the article as well as I can. What interested me was that perhaps we should call this a "canny valley," or perhaps, "uncanny peak." Because this revulsion may derive from the reminder,  a robot presents, a reminder that makes a person  forcibly glance at, this: his own mechanical, robotic, MIND. 

AND, on the third hand, here is binary thought, reduxduxdux

A lovely example of binary, thought, is today's news. Binary thought-- everything is either this or that. The basic construction of ordinary mentation and the means for humanity to -- redecorate the planet. Applied to the interior world binary thought gives us group think. Utterly necessary for most people. Original thought is simply not viable for large numbers of people. The qualities that predict the ability to hear the value of, a message such as that of Jan Cox, or other teachers, Gurdjieff, are, not known to this writer.  Even Jan could not always predict its presence in his listeners. So--our example at this link.
What we have is a narrative at the Skeptical Inquirer website of a person's journey from "new age' ideas to those of the skeptical inquirer. They say "skepticism" in the article. So you have a starting point and destination. New Age to skepticism. That is what they say, but in fact, what you have is the difference between a heroin addict and a methadone addict. Not much difference at all. Because it is based on binary thought, the reality, the vividness, of our world, the between the words, is lost. And lost, because of a total lapse of skeptical thinking. The website we link to is not skeptical at all. The real skeptics were skeptical about their OWN thoughts. None of that here. The 'skeptical inquirers' are not inquiring about anything. They have made up their minds, and stuck their labels according to their unscientific whims, all over their locker of the word world. So you can have new age blather, or dogmatic scientistic repetitive rote ordinary mentation.
Not interested in either, you might like to check out Jan's web site Jan Cox, who said, "if you tell me you're not falling for that, you're telling me you have already fallen for something else." The possibility of original thought is extant.

An example of non binary thought in the last sentence.

The Fields medal is widely considered the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel prize and is awarded by the International Mathematical Union on the opening day of the International Congress of Mathematicians, which takes place every four years....

The last time the event was held, in 2006, it was somewhat overshadowed by winner Grigori Perelman's refusal to accept his prize for solving the Poincaré conjecture.
ICM 2010 kicked off today in Hyderabad, India, with the Indian president Prathibha Patil awarding the prizes...

Cédric Villani of the Henri Poincaré Institute, Paris, France [was one of the recipients of a Fields Medal]...


Villani's work is also related to physics, in particular the mathematical interpretation of the concept of entropy. He has applied this to solve long-standing problems, such as how fast the motions of gas particles converge to equilibrium....


When asked why mathematics has been so successful at finding applications in the real world, Villani – sporting a burgundy silk cravat and a palm-sized spider brooch – said: "It is a very pleasant mystery. Let's continue to enjoy it and explore."