[ExI] Belief in maths (was mind body dualism)

[Mike Dougherty]

2010/7/6 darren shawn greer <dgreer_68 at hotmail.com>

>  > Even after finding no hypercubical golden dragons there, I reserve the
> possibility that they may have only gone out for lunch while I was
> visiting.<
>
> I'm a newcomer to this list, but I had to ask this question: how long are
> you willing to wait before drawing a conclusion, based on belief in the
> absence of phyisical evidence, that the HGD either don't exist, or take
> extremely long lunches? Even if they do come back, logic could dictate to
> you that they are a hallucination or simulated by an advanced species that
> live on Alpha Centuri and like playing with the minds of humans who have
> the gall to visit Titan. Logic is great stuff, but eventually we must close
> off our logical processess with conclusions and shut out the
> endless possibilities that human logic offers. As some writer said once,
> keep too open a mind and nothing will stay in it.
>
> If I'm intruding in the conversation, I apologize.
>

You cannot intrude on a public conversation with topical and even insightful
additions; welcome.

Yes, I considered the absurdity of maintaining too open a mind such that
nothing can be accomplished because no conclusion can be drawn.

I am a software developer during the day.  Most of my time is spent
anticipating the extremely unlikely cases and making sure the program does
not encounter those conditions.  If I defend against 99% of the truly absurd
cases of should-never-happen inputs, my boss (or QC, etc.) will surely try
something from the 1% that I did not imagine.  Most code can be broken
(whether cryptographic or procedural)  I can't be sure enough to say that
all code can be broken - because that supposes that I have the time/patience
to prove that to be true.  I dare not say one example of code is unbreakable
(the exception to the previous statement) because I am unable to guarantee
or warrant that assertion.

Is it tedious to always assert that my conclusion is within a good-enough
confidence that a principle holds for a majority of observations such that a
sufficiently useful model can likely predict future scenarios?  Yes.  I
imagine John Clark's shoot-from-the-hip style addresses this point
matter-of-factly.  ( something like, "Mike D. is just being pedantic over
word choice, I don't care to mince words with such a weaselly character"
:)   For the record I enjoy John's point of view (most of the time) and
respect the fact that verbal fencing is rarely taken personally.

So Darren, I think the answer to your question is that I'm not willing to
wait very long.  As I said to Ben, I would accept his assertion regarding
dragons to the degree that he has previously proven to be reliable on
similar assertions.  Given what I already know regarding the general
whereabouts of dragons, the reliability of his statement is further
modified.  I may be sure enough that there are no dragons on the far side of
Titan to go there, but I'm certainly not going to disbelieve direct
experience in deference to the opinion of someone else.

btw, I know early cartographers frequently identified "there be dragons
here" at the embarrasingly vacant edges of maps.  So I surmise that dragons
are usually found in and around uncharted regions.  Once we've fully
explored the underground on the far side of Titan, I'll be relatively secure
there are in fact no dragons there.
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