Size

[Mole]

For 200,000 years our horizon was limited by our size.

But over the last 100 years or so our horizon has extended to include the unimaginably small and the unimaginably large.

Our horizon has extended from the heart of the atom to the shape of the universe.

And we found the atom is not what we thought it was, and nor is the universe.

In fact the atom and the universe are quite counter-intuitive.

While the things we can relate to our physical size remain intuitive.

And so we now have a bifurcation in human culture - those who are intuitive and those who are counter-intuitive.

And those who are counter-intuitive are invariably literate and numerate.

And it is only the literate and numerate that can understand the modern world of science, economics and politics.

And it is the intuitive that are left in the world of astrology, religion, the New Age, pseudo-science and tribalism.

C.P. Snow spoke of these two cultures in, "The Two Cultures", in 1959.

And I hardly need to point out that the illiterate, innumerate, tribal world of Islam is at war with the literate, numerate, democratic West.

And the war is about size.

The intuitive only have to look about them to see they are right. While the counter-intuitive only have to look through a microscope or a telescope to see they are right.

Unfortunately for the intuitive, the cat is out of the bag.

In fact two cats - one very small and one very large.

And the counter-intuitive cats are among the intuitive pigeons.

 

[Virtual ghost]

The point of the story is?

 

[Night]

I thought you enjoyed abstraction, Antisocial.

The point is obvious.

 

[kuranes]

The point is obvious.

He's just being antisocial.

I admit I'm not always clear on what "Intuitive" means versus "Counter-Intuitive".
http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/other-psychology-topics/9550-intuitiveness.html

Does "intuitive" sometimes mean "first impulse" ? or "childish " ?

Interesting that in the "Greed based systems" thread we see a basic human impulse ( therefore Intuitive ? ) being used to drive a system ( capitalism ) that supposedly gives us the infrastructure to be more "civilized" ( the good of the many versus the individual ), which is perhaps "counter-intuitive".

Is the use or invention of cash intuitive or counter-intuitive ? What about "interest" on the cash ?

 

[Virtual ghost]

He's just being antisocial.

I see that memory serves you well.


I fully understand what he says. It is just that I am not fully sure that I know where he stands in this. Since he claims to be religious (as far as I know.)

 

[Mole]

The point of the story is?

The point is that we are of a particular size. But almost everything else is of a different size. Quarks are unimaginably small while galactic clusters are unimaginably large.

However we intuitively judge everything by our own size. And over the last 100 years or so this has been shown to be a mistaken judgement.

Nonetheless billions of people live their lives under this mistaken judgement.

And indeed for this mistaken judgement they have gone to war with us.

And this is a tragedy beyond tragedy.

A tragedy based on an intuitive mistake.

And a mistake based on size.

 

[Mole]

I fully understand what he says. It is just that I am not fully sure that I know where he stands in this. Since he claims to be religious (as far as I know.)

My formal position is this -

There has never been a civilization not based on a religion. I belong to Western civilization. And Western civilization is based on Judeo-Greek-Christianity.

So I am a Judeo-Greek-Christian.

However I am not a Fundamentalist nor a Literalist.

And I am a son of the humanist Renaissance and the English and Scottish Enlightenment.

In fact I am committed to my secular Constitution that guarantees freedom of religion.

And I feel quite comfortable with this.

 

[Nocapszy]

The point of the story is?

I thought you enjoyed abstraction, Antisocial.

The point is obvious.

Yeah. The point is, the scientists are pwning the shit out of religion and other such nonsense, which are only given rise to conceptual existence through poor observation.

We have a poor storehouse of information to thank for poor observation, and the subsequent poor calculation. It's called misinterpretation.
Or rather it's not as much bad storehouse, but instead a faulty metric. Or maybe a biased metric.


You have to remember that victor gives single names to groups characters what's constituents come from sparse or seemingly obscure connectivity. The fidelity of their connectivity, despite what seems so obviously impossible, is irrefutable.

 

[GZA]

This is the first of Victor's posts that I can actually philosophically relate to in quite awhile. I have always sort of felt that the world was counter intuitive, although I called it something else and applied it to different concepts than religion and science and east and west. I've come to notice that everything really is different than what it seems, different in that it likely functions in the opposite way you would have assumed.

I think humanity is the perfect example. If you want people to like you, the last thing you want to do is try to impress them, as nothing will impress them less. The last way to win a girl is to show her your affection. The most charismatic person is the one who needs your attention the least, ect.

I personally apply the counter intuitive paradigm to humanity and behaviour, but I definitely see where you are going talking about atoms and the universe, big and small, ect. I think putting this into east and west cultures is in itself counter intuitive... it's too hard to think about it without being ethnocentric, which we are probably being. Who are we to judge? I wouldn't say everyone in our culture is neccesarily counter-intuitive in thought, but merely educated in counter intuitive ideas. Perhaps in the east there are counter intuitive thinkers educated in the intuitive.

I've always sort of thought of it as sort of the world's magnificent punch line, but I like calling it the unimaginable, the counter intuitive, and the horizon just as much. Calling it nothing at all is great, too.

 

[NoahFence]

And I hardly need to point out that the illiterate, innumerate, tribal world of Islam is at war with the literate, numerate, democratic West.

Sorry...just on this one point here...how many threads have there been, lamenting just how illiterate and innumerate (hehe, never used that word that way) the folk of the west actually are?

I guess, from what the "literate" have continually said, I always figured the big war of ideology right now was in -how- to be illiterate, etc.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I think that one side of the story is not said here.

Time.
Billions of years and hundered millionth part of a second are also counter-intuintive.

 

[kuranes]

I have always sort of felt that the world was counter intuitive................ I've come to notice that everything really is different than what it seems, different in that it likely functions in the opposite way you would have assumed.

Everything ? I wonder what has reinforced our "intuitiveness" ( versus the counter ) through generations, or "evolution", then ?

I think humanity is the perfect example. If you want people to like you, the last thing you want to do is try to impress them, as nothing will impress them less. The last way to win a girl is to show her your affection. The most charismatic person is the one who needs your attention the least, ect.

This is so true, what you are saying. Like the old joke about the bank that is happy to give you a loan as long as you can prove that you don't need it. ( Although I guess they relaxed on this rule more recently. )

It always made sense to me ( because of what I observed ) when people would tell me that the way to attract certain people was to act like they didn't matter much to you. ( This is sometimes termed "playing hard to get" or "ivory tower" etc. ) But it surprised me the first time I heard it, for the very reason that it was counter-intuitive, I guess.

I also noticed that it didn't always hold true. I might meet someone who shared an obscure interest, and ( as soon as we recognized this to be so ) we would be so mutually enthusiastic about stumbling across such a person that it was almost funny. Of course, we weren't trying to "impress" one another, but it could still be said that we offered "too much information" for the liking of most people.

Confession - I keep forgetting that I am supposed to be operating in this counter-intuitive way and thus often screwing up the first steps of meeting people that I really find interesting. When I am being stand-offish with someone who I don't find interesting, I am sometimes on the other side of this "game" without even intending to be. Someone might think I am trying to be aloof just to get them to "give" more, and thus try even harder. But I am not playing the game. I really don't find them terribly interesting.

I will wonder at times how I am supposed to simultaneously reach out to someone new/strange, introducing myself in some way, and yet seem as though I don't really care all that much about meeting them, simultaneously. It seems a contradiction, although I would agree that one doesn't have to be "extremely extreme" just to feel natural.

People have mixed feelings about some related "systems" of meeting people and "negging" them etc. when the subject is singles, and they say ( quite naturally, it seems to me ) that instead of doing this one should "be yourself". Somehow they seem to miss that "being yourself" might mean accidentally "coming on too strong" if you genuinely are intrigued by the other person. Especially if you both are strangers and will likely never meet again.

I almost have to hope that the people I meet are neither those who I have an antipathy for, nor those who strike me quickly as someone that would really be great to know. That way I can apparently strike the balance I am supposed to have - of showing only an intense but extremely brief/abbreviated interest, ....or showing only perfunctory interest.

The question of how a hypothetical someone could strike me so quickly as being "very worth getting to know" comes up, but ( without derailing the thread ) I can only tell you that it does in fact happen often enough that I wish I knew the answer to the quandary. ( Sometimes I may have prior information on the person even though we are only meeting for the first time, and sometimes it may be something I just sense about them ...intuitively. )

 

[Anja]

Yeah. The point is, the scientists are pwning the shit out of religion and other such nonsense, which are only given rise to conceptual existence through poor observation.

As I read the OP I thought about the "original," nature -oriented state of man and also that in many ways science has alienated us from that.

I don't recall a time in my life when my spirituality wasn't connected to the world about me and the vaster Universe which I conceptualize. Also the microcosms.

But I don't think that science and nature have to be opposing inclinations. That kind of black and white thinking IS alienating, from my perspective. It seems to me that everything "fits" together in mysterious ways.

I've frequently read that as scientists get closer to understanding the mechanics of the Universe many of them are clarifying a undeveloped sense of spirituality.

 

[Virtual ghost]

As I read the OP I thought about the "original," nature -oriented state of man and also that in many ways science has alienated us from that.

I don't recall a time in my life when my spirituality wasn't connected to the world about me and the vaster Universe which I conceptualize. Also the microcosms.

But I don't think that science and nature have to be opposing inclinations. That kind of black and white thinking IS alienating, from my perspective. It seems to me that everything "fits" together in mysterious ways.

I've frequently read that as scientists get closer to understanding the mechanics of the Universe many of them are clarifying a undeveloped sense of spirituality.

Some scientists are getting more spiritual because they have emotions and often scientific truth not only that it is very abstract but it is also very cold.


They need spirituality simply to stay in conntact with their "human side".

 

[Anja]

I don't know about the "sanity" part, Antisocial one, but I do believe that most all people have a spiritual component.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I don't know about the "sanity" part, Antisocial one, but I do believe that most all people have a spiritual component.

This fluctuates from part to part of the world.


How does the concept known as "Eternal night" sounds to you?

 

[Synarch]

He's just being antisocial.

I find it interesting that Antisocial posts to a message board, an inherently social medium. Seems inconsistent.

 

[Mole]

I think that one side of the story is not said here.

Time.
Billions of years and hundered millionth part of a second are also counter-intuintive.

This is an excellent point.

 

[Mole]

The Antidote

?
I guess, from what the "literate" have continually said, I always figured the big war of ideology right now was in -how- to be illiterate, etc.

You might say the war for illiteracy and innumeracy is led by Jean-Jacques Rousseau from the Eighteen Century.

Jean-Jacques gave us the ideology of, "The Noble Savage".

This is a powerful ideology that still plays on our guilt and nostalgia.

And it still prevents us from applying the only known antidote to tribalism.

And the antidote to tribalism is literacy and numeracy.

And it is also completely fascinating that literacy and numeracy are also the antidote to the noosphere.

So the noosphere and tribalism have much in common - not least being their antidote.

 

[Anja]

How does the concept known as "Eternal night" sounds to you?

It used to sound terrifying but as I creep closer to what may be "eternal night" it sounds like, if it exists, (which I doubt) a good, long and well-deserved rest!

"However" will be okay, cuz what are my options?