[extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds

[Lee Corbin]

Samantha writes

> [Lee wrote]
> 
>> Tch, tch, tch.  You don't get it.  The other beliefs are *not* irrational.
>> I wish that you and John Clark could see this. It's possible that they're
>> not even incorrect.  It's possible that it's a "conflict of visions" sort of
>> phenomenon.
>  
> Please define "rational".

No, *you* define "rational"!   [Er, she does later on...]  I gave up on
that months ago as I questioned over and over again the way that people
were throwing the word and the concept around.

I will define (loosely) what "irrational" means, "loosely" because strict
definitions are not possible outside math.  As Cassius J. Kaiser once
wrote "If he says that he has defined all his terms, and proved all his
propositions, then either he is a performer of logical miracles, or he
is an ass, and, as you know, logical miracles are impossible".  :-)

"Irrational" means to me that someone is being inconsistent, or that
their behavior shows signs of instability, or that their arguments over
and over again do not seem to hold together coherently.  By saying
above, as I did, that someone's arguments were not necessarily
*irrational*, all I was doing was chiding those who were not seeing
the actual integrity (wholeness) of their adversary's argument.

> Without a working agreed definition statements about the
> rationality/irrationality of X are without meaning.

Oh!  Here you go on to brave a definition of rationality. This should
be good.

> By my working definition, rationality is adherence to reality, 
> seeking to understand and perfect one's understanding of reality.  

"Adherence to reality" is rather too vague, as I am sure you realized
as you wrote that, and even people who are irrational (on my usage
and yours, probably) are *seeking* to understand---it's
just that they're obviously not doing a very good job of it.

> Beliefs that start with rigorous adherence to a particular dogma without 
> any appreciable evidence and even in contradiction to what is know of 
> reality can in no wise be "rational" by such a definition.  Beliefs that 
> are self-contradictory cannot be based in reality. 

Right.  So long as you have added together "without any appreciable
evidence" AND "even in contradition to what is known" .  One of the
principles of PCR is that one may forward any conjecture for whatever
reason:  what matters is how successful it is in resisting criticism, not
where you got it.  It doesn't matter if your God happened to pass it
on in a dream or whatever.

Lee