xork said:
Same thing happened te me and my cat, I was convinced he'd gotten into my stash, I was freaked out, but every time I'd go away, I'd give it a minute and peek around the corner and he'd be acting completely normally. It's a little easier to traditionally rationalize a cat for me though because they pick up on your vibes so strongly, I think it's likely he was just freaked out by my energy. Still, what he was doing was yowling and then slamming his face into the floor and seeming to try to walk through the floor, it was really weird, I've never seen him do it any other time.
OMG, if I had a dollar for every time I thought a cat or dog knew I was tripping...8(
Our pets are more acutely sensitive to our mental states than we are wont to give'em credit for!
Maybe humans would be too, if we weren't so cluttered with projecting our preconceived notions, and minding the verbal content of communication above all else. However, I for one am glad they're not that perspicacious, I wouldn't want people to know what I was up to.
tranced said:
There are so many misconceptions about science and what it means. Really it's just the validation of the known.
Kind of the opposite. The scientific method, which is substantially based upon collecting data that is both empirical and quantifiable, is a method for creating truth claims out of conjecture and supposition. Also, consider the importance of
predictive power.
tranced said:
The unknown is so ridiculously vast, especially if we're talking about a single specie's efforts to validate it, or even a single individuals knowledge or interpretation of that.
Our species evolved to survive and reproduce, just like other terrestrial lifeforms. We can't intuit the Navier-stokes equations, or the atmospheric composition of Jupiter, but the mental and physiological tools that we have at our disposal are such that we can produce testable theories that predict the behavior of empirical phenomena.
That's the great thing about the scientific method, it is neither esoteric nor abstruse (though the hypotheses it tests might be). Any other individual, or species of individuals, should be able to falsify our truth claims.
poseman said:
I suggest leaning your head close to the point where you can read what you are typing. Pay attention to how people interpret what you are saying.
Would you care to explain how empiricism is often conflated with scientific realism (which ought to be contrasted with instrumentalism, which is no less empirical)? 'cause I feel like this subforum has a number of potential converts to an instrumentalist way of viewing truth claims, since they could adopt that school of thought without trampling on their irrational personal convictions. I have my own irrational personal convictions, but I am not as inclined to flippantly proselytize them as some folks are, 'cause I know enough to recognize my own ignorance, and respect the results of a method of inquiry that produces falsifiable claims upon reproducible, measurable data, and that does what it can to eliminate sources of bias.
As things stand, the hoi polloi see your arguments as justified by circular or tautological reasoning. We know why rational thought is necessary, but to people who don't, it sounds like we're saying "We have to be rational because it is the rational thing to do." or that our critiques of errant ways of thinking are in some sense subjective, 'cause some folk have yet to learn the difference between the validity of the results of purely qualitative research (that they have, in some capacity, performed), and quantitative research. I hope I'm not misusing any terms.
