Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Eric the Green]

(08-27-2016, 12:19 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-26-2016, 02:52 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Since the answer is unclear, this is a fair approach.

The base point is that when working with someone who is really strong into religion or politics, or perhaps other non-scientific ways of knowing the world, science or any form of observation based analysis can be irrelevant to the other guy in deciding a question or analyzing a situation.  I sense I'm stating this in a way you're not satisfied with, but the base point is that you can't expect others to always defer to your own world view and values.  You may think you are using the one and only obvious and correct way to understand something, but not everyone will agree.  You might as well be bringing a table tennis paddle to a football field.  The rules, the ways of scoring points, the size of the ball, are all different.  People aren't playing the same games.  The gears just don't engage.  If the quarterback throws you a football 50 yards in the air, forget the table tennis paddle, you'd best catch the ball.

What you need is the best way of understanding the kind of subject matter you want to know. There are four basic ways of knowing: art, mystical religion, philosophy and science, and possibly gradations in between. Politics is not a mode of knowing, because it's a mode of action, acting on your knowledge, or a kind of subject matter; not a method of knowing it. Knowing politics would be political science, or political philosophy. And it's an art too, of course. Trump is a political artist, or more exactly, an entertainer. To say politics or law is a way of knowing, is like saying the atomic structure is a way of knowing. How you know it, the way you study and observe it, affects the subject matter and your view of it, but knowledge and subject matter is not identical.

Quote:Recently on this thread I've been engaging Classic as the red champion, Eric as the blue, with you championing science.  If all three of you aren't happy with me, perhaps I'm doing something right?    I was hoping, though, that science's champion could be a little more open to new paradigms.  According to my notes, it's supposed to be that way.  When we move towards the subject of guys dancing in white dresses though, your usual scientific objectivity and analysis fades as you operate in the realms of culture and politics.  

That's true. But are you doing something right? You always think so, as fully as those you "engage" might. And you can't see that fact very well. So operating within that realm of self-delusion, you have your limits.

Quote:This illustrates what I mean when I say most individuals don't operate in one realm of knowledge.  Most everyone has to shift between various ways of looking at things.  Stock market cycles and guys dancing in white dresses belong in different mental realms.  Most everyone will have to shift between such realms in the course of living their lives, and not be aware that they are doing it.  Different folks will spend different amounts of time in different realms, be most at home in different places, and shift under different circumstances.  There has to be a paradigm in that somewhere.  If one wants to make sense of the convoluted conversations we have around here, it is interesting to keep track of who is working in what realm and maybe even try to follow.

I agree. Maybe "try to follow;" do you? Not often where I lead, at least.