Comments on: Only Idiots Don’t Think They Are Right All The Time

By: Drew Hempel

Drew Hempel — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:49:03 +0000

speaking of zoologists and ethics biology professor PZ meyers just had me banned from the Loom blog for SEED science magazine. Meyers doesn’t like me responding to peoples’ comments about me — especially if I provide strong scientific support for my arguments. Why not tell him how you feel about science and censorship? http://pharyngula.org

By: Zeno Izen

Zeno Izen — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:28:09 +0000

A rational person knows that all information in the real world is generally incomplete, therefore knowledge which is based upon that information must be considered provisional. A person who *talks* about rationality, and what rational people should or should not do ought to know the difference between deductive and inductive logic.

Therefore: this guy ought to be teaching the ethics of juggling, prat falls and how to walk in big floppy shoes.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:23:08 +0000

this guy is a professor of ethics though

To clarify, he is a professor of ethnobotany teaching ethics

By: Jenn

Jenn — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 17:03:55 +0000

My concern is that he attempted to over simplify something that could have both a positive and negitive side to it. Believe it or not, people have given me a rough time whenever I change my mind, and my response is always “I have a mind to change”. My reasoning is that I acknowledge I will never see the issue from all sides, and there will always be things I don’t know. I love to hear another’s point of view if for no other reason than it will add texture to my own arguments or present myself with an angle that I didn’t previously see or know. However there is a difference between saying “I aknowledge I don’t know everything” and “I acknowlege I could be wrong” The latter implies (at least to my own subconscious) that as a whole my own jusgement and perception is unreliable, as opposed to a particular context that I know little about. I think the point he should be presenting is that we too easily compramise our own perception entirely.

By: Gyrus

Gyrus — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:57:13 +0000

That guy sounds like he’d be a pain to debate with! The kind of rationalism he describes seems to be largely a belief system based in fantasies about the world. Descartes’ angelic vision where this seems to have started - and people very quickly forgot the imaginative roots of the mechanistic, rationalist vision. Acknowledging the primacy of imagination seems to me to be the only basis for true rationality, or true anything, and people who dismiss this just seem to be fodder for delusion.

The “rational self-interest” concept in economics seems to be as fictional as this guy’s image of a rational person. Even stopping for a moment to inspect your own consciousness seems to completely level this fantasy overlay of discreet, consistent, rational thought processes, identity and decision-making, let alone seeing how complex things get in interactions with others.

Obviously statistical observations can be made that make the fantasy of us being rational agents more believable - economics can be forgiven a little for its false extrapolations on these grounds… But this idea about beliefs and models of reality being like discreet switches that get flipped into one state by one argument, persist over time, then flip another way without fuzzy between-states - does this guy teach humans or computers?

By: Yves

Yves — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 07:10:28 +0000

Sorry did not listen to any of the podcast - I never do. But I agree totally with your verdict on the ethical dilemma in the cinema. Both were equally ethical because both were compassionate. You waited for a signal that he could cope with your breaking the rules, whilst he put himself as much at risk as he dared.

Oddly, in my own blog I posted this morning about uncertainty, before seeing yours. I think we all live with uncertainty more or less all the time, and it’s a great step forward not to fill it with probably spurious reasons and explanations.

By: alistair

alistair — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 02:57:26 +0000

the uncertainty is only there for a flash. i do see your point though tim. he is ignoring the moments where uncertainty propels you from one belief to another. he may argue that the flash is so small a period of time as to not count as uncertainty at all…merely, um, changing one`s mind.
i would hope that my flexibility in thinking wouldn`t be seen as a state of uncertainty either. this guy is a professor of ethics though…….big ego…huge.

By: Mr. Blind

Mr. Blind — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:49:21 +0000

http://www.frostburg.edu/ungrad/catalog/supp06-07.pdf#page=11 (another undergraduate ethnobotany program)