Category: Epistemology

Categories
Epistemology Reason

Sure,

maybe… But basically this is a story created ex nihilo to explain things. It’s rather a “God in the box” sort of theorizing. There are also like a dozen suppositions needed in order to make this thing work.

So yeah, maybe. But it is just as logically sound to postulate that God or space aliens or magic giants just created avocados that way for the sake of looks. You might reject that explanation because you don’t believe in God or space aliens or magic giants.

But all those explanations are every bit as supported by the evidence as postulating that there must have been giant herbivores who did it! At least some people say that they have had recent interaction with God, while the same can’t be said of giant avocado-eating herbivores!

Categories
Epistemology

Epistemically closed.

That’s what Leftists often are. Their mantra is that they already know and simply are not open to other information. You can’t teach them anything they don’t already “know.” They already know, and there can’t be any more knowing! They are epistemically closed…

And the “pleased with themselves” is the key, here. ANY contrary fact or even disagreement is felt as a dire threat to ego integrity, and so avoided with GREAT energy.

And that energetic avoidance is a HUGE “tell” that there is something FAR deeper than just a disagreement going on. Often, a Lefty will just break off contact with anyone not “converted” to the doctrines of the Lefty cult.

Categories
Dishonesty Epistemology Media Flying Monkeys

Folks, you don’t

hate the deliberately dishonest MSM enough!

These folks are liars, plain and simple! Don’t trust them–don’t be fools! But here’s the reality:

The men ran into a crowd, threw IEDs filled with shrapnel, yelling Allah Akbar, and were subsequently arrested. 

Yet the NYT deliberately obfuscates things and it look like the Pro-Iranian protestors were the ones throwing the nail bombs. But it was quite the opposite. It was the Muslim side. The NYT lied to you!

Now ask yourself, “Is that the only time the NYT has published outright lies?” And here is the kicker: And if not ALL is true, just how do you know what is true and what isn’t?

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Epistemology Morality

Unfortunately, most

Leftists simply do not have the moral integrity to say, “Your opinion is every bit as valid/’truthy’ as my own!” But because they don’t believe in God, there can be no moral ground to stand on in saying something is right or wrong. There is only opinion and the power to enforce it. You might like or dislike something, but that in no way suggests that it is right or wrong–that doesn’t exist! All is mere preference and opinion.

Because there is nothing upon which to build that is a sure foundation. It is all personal preference, merely a Nietzschean will to power! As Shakespeare said in Macbeth, life is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.

BUT, if you believe in God at all, you should be very uncomfortable with the Democrats. Because if you don’t believe, like they say, it is all shifting sand, and it is all irrelevant and nonsense. There is no right or wrong. Without a God, the only truth (small “t”) is your own animalistic desires. In legal terms, everything is malum prohibitum, and NOTHING is malum in se. As one source argued,

...every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.

ALL claims of knowledge (whether it be science, religion, empiricism, rationalism, or anything else) are merely expressions of preference. There IS no morality or even knowledge apart from some kind of God! Indeed, without a God, all is vanity, and merely an expression of personal preference. And THAT is what Post-Modernism preaches to us!

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Epistemology Truth

Yeah, it’s getting to

be a real problem in the art world. Fakery is by no means a new thing in the art world, but with modern AI, it is getting very tough to detect! And that almost completely changes the market…

AI means that it is very hard to know what is true; from a video to a sound recording to forgeries, to science, and to art. It’s almost to the point that ONLY a personal relationship of some sort is reliable as a grounding for truth. Back to the future, so to speak!

Is what you are told coming from a truth-teller (or a Truth-Teller)? The truth is grounded in a personal relationship, not only expertise. Expertise of some sort may be necessary, but not sufficient.

Categories
Epistemology

It is the logically

fatal flaw in all Post-Modernism. And it is SO glaring that I am shocked that the theory gained any traction at all in the academic world. Only a cosseted academic could believe this internally flawed dungheap!

And the glaringly obvious problem is this: If everything is merely opinion and will-to-power, isn’t THAT assertion also? If you tell me that there is no Truth, isn’t THAT assertion as unreliable as any other–THAT isn’t Truth, either! So if what you Post-Modernists say is accurate, on what grounds do I believe you? It quickly doubles back on and destroys itself! It is a snake eating its own tail…

If every assertion is merely a will to power, so also is what you are telling me! YOU have no “privileged position” in terms of Truth according to Post-Modernism.

In fact, it can be reasonably argued that there MUST be an independent foundation if there is any non-trivial knowledge. The Greeks called it an “unmoved mover.”

THAT is why the early scientists (like Newton) were all theists. Because they were about the search for Truth. And they rightly saw science as a necessarily Godly pursuit…

Categories
Epistemology Truth

Unreal!

Seeing is no longer believing. The day of the eyewitness is pretty much over. Now is the day of finding truth in personal relationships…

Nothing else is reliable.

Categories
Epistemology Science

A lot of people

are just sick of being lied to. And it’s too bad. Good science is a pretty reliable bedrock of knowledge. Not logically flawless, but pretty dang good.

But bad science is just a 3-card monty scam. And it spoils what could otherwise be a dependable source of knowledge by destroying people’s trust in science and scientists.

I disagree in that some of those items could be just honest mistakes. Science, when done well, is like a bikini–it shows much that is interesting while concealing that which is essential.

But some of those are just damnable and self-serving lies.

Categories
Epistemology Truth

It really IS a

serious problem. Just because you see and/or hear something does NOT mean it’s true. Donald Trump famously said the he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his supporters would still vote for him. Yes, but if I saw a video of Donald Trump shooting someone, the first thought I would have is, “Well, but might that be a deepfake?”

In other words, seeing is no longer believing. We are back to believing that a person is telling the truth because we KNOW the person. It’s thus just crucial that ALL government be as local as possible–you vote for a person because you know him or her! As much as possible. Is it congruent with what I know about the person? Does this “smell” like a political hit job to me–or to you?

Because the audio and video may lie, and there is ONLY your relationship with him or her that will tell you the truth (gee, sounds like how one religiously knows what is true, though I digress).

At the end of the day, we are stuck with the gnarly question of, “How do you know?” And it IS a gnarly one!

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: blackmail, as we’ve historically understood it, may soon be obsolete. The Deep State, global intelligence networks, and political operatives no longer need Epstein-style honeypots to compromise politicians and world leaders. With AI, they can fabricate evidence of literally anything. A senator caught on tape taking a bribe. A governor on video making sexual advances. A president admitting to treasonous deals on a hot mic. None of it has to be real, yet the damage would be irreversible.

… If we fail, the cost will be catastrophic. Elections will become untrustworthy. Journalism will collapse into chaos. Courts will no longer be able to rely on video or audio as evidence. And once trust is gone, freedom goes with it.

I think the day is soon coming when a politician is “caught on tape” doing something bad, and his or her response will be, “It was a deepfake.” And you know what? That might actually be true.

Categories
Epistemology Political philosophy

CA’s unemployment

rate is the WORST in the nation. And that is not a surprise at all. Not one bit.

It’s not a new development, it was also true in June. The change this month is that it appears California has broken the tie with Nevada to hold first place all alone. KRON reports that the Golden State’s unemployment rate has edged up to 5.5 percent. In June, South Dakota had the nation’s lowest unemployment rate at 1.8 percent.

Long experience has shown that Leftist policies are horrible for the economy. It’s not even a question anymore! I mean, Lefties, you can say, “Yes, but it has these other benefits…” OK, they can make that argument and we can discuss it. Fine.

But we have already accepted the ground floor fact that Lefty policies are horrible for the economy. There is just no way to deny the historical facts.

The great thing is that as a conservative, I am a historical empiricist. I want to see what has been shown to work in history. I think there’s a lot we can learn in looking at those sorts of things. I think there is great value in looking at the historical data.

As an empiricist, you don’t fall into the trap of saying, “Yes, I know it has never worked before in the history of the world, but it is so beautiful in its idealistic form! It should work…”

As an empiricist, I am not really concerned about what should or shouldn’t work, I am concerned about what has been shown to work and what has been shown to result in human misery. In other words, I am much more beholden to British Empiricism than to a Continental Rationalism. The theory may be beautiful (Continental Rationalism), but I want to rigorously evaluate the actual outcomes (British Empiricism).

To cite perhaps of the most famous example, I don’t want to talk about how many teeth a horse should have given their eating habits and such; Let’s just open the horse’s mouth and count them. THAT is empiricism.