(Untitled)

[alex_supertramp]

"It is the theory that decides what we can observe"
--Einstein

Comments

April is the Cruelest Month: Calling your Bluff

[alex_supertramp]

Just curious then: were racist notions of white supremacy and patriarchal theories of male dominance developed from observations? Or were observations simply used to justify the pre-existing cultural mindset that made those observations possible? In other words, are women really the weaker sex or does this culture just make women appear that way?

Re: April is the Cruelest Month: Calling your Bluff

[loserfacemary]

That just made my brain twitch a little.

[f_aetius]

Does not a theory give us the tools we need to understand and contextualize our own observations? In effect, is its purpose not to help us not only to bridge facts that seem disparate, but as you say, to see the connections where they already exist?

If that is the case, then yes, all observations are inherently flawed, as to make some sort of sense in what we find, we have to apply some sort of working theory to it; but "seeing" more and knowing your own shortcomings can go a long way in helping you understand what it is you're seeing.

[alex_supertramp]

I would rather stay away from the word "flawed." It implies a judgment of value that I don't intend--or that makes me uncomfortable. I am skeptical that whatever lies outside our perceptions (which I think we agree are always combined with our existing "knowledge") is more "valid" or "true." This kind faulting of ourselves seems to me the worst sort of religious leaning, an obsession with the original sin, a fear that the origin of thought has been corrupted. Maybe the beauty of "reality" is that it is a constant allusion to ourselves. To see the world through a thousand theories is to see yourself as a glorious multitude. This is making my nipples hard.

[f_aetius]

I did not mean to imply that anything that lies outside of our own experience is inherently better, merely that we cannot know whether or not we perceive things “correctly”. That is not to say there is only one way to find the ‘truth’, rather, I feel we can use it to realize we are missing a great deal of information in our day-to-day lives, and in recognizing it, we may be able to attempt some sort of correction. I think that a more pluralistic worldview is not only unavoidable, but an integral part of the human experience; that uniqueness can go a long way in making our individual existences more alluring than some arbitrary standard of “normal”.

[alex_supertramp]

Although our language here differs, I think we are very much agreed.

[ktrose68]

So i have to ask, did you hear about the chlamydia epidemic at Anderson?

As far as I have heard, there was a blood drive at the school, and a few days later the Red Cross called the school back and informed them that they could only use 1/3 of the blood donated because the rest of it was tainted with chlamydia.

Someone told me that they heard on the news today that 97 students are infected with the clap, but i couldn't find that anywhere.