Everybody has their own point of view which is basically a physical/neural data structure. Our memories and experience inform our POV on a continuous basis.

The promise of conscious continuity is the underlying attraction to religion (eternal life), but culture itself is predicated on the same urgency — it exists in the minds of its cultural minions. That explains everything to me — war, hate, corruption, love…you name it — it is all subservient to the quest for continuity, and it overwhelms all “logic”.

There is a conflict between the individual and the collective. What profits the individual usually injures the group. It’s nothing new and is especially gratifying when the rich benefit at the expense of the poor. The poor don’t mind because they live under the illusion that someday they will be rich and do unto others. That a few actually make it every generation keeps the game going.

This is the Iraq test as well. Obviously the NeoCon/Bush understanding of the Iraq occupation and war is wrong. Why? Because it isn’t working. They’re losing.

I gotta play Devil’s Advocate and disagree with you.

…

It all depends how how you define winning and losing.

Consider the soldiers who are dying: are they ‘losing’?

IIRC someone mentioned this to Bush and he said we shouldn’t presume a particular soldier who had died in combat would’ve had a better life if he hadn’t gone there.

So, dying in Iraq is the best of all possible worlds or at least you can’t prove it isn’t.

eCAHNomics @ 67

There’s a Rumsfeld quote in there somewhere.

There is a newish learning disability diagnosis (my son was found to have it) on teh sharp rise in US called NVLD — Non verbal learning disability. One of the key features of this right brain malfunction is tha t” ….you don’t know what you don’t know”. sseriously, for example, a student will dutifully nod their head in “comprehension” all through the lecture, and will not know until tested whether or not he actually ‘got it”. Can’t put the info together, right left brain not communicating. The diagnosis for this is soaring in schools in the us. Any conclusions?

I understand this “you don’t know what you don’t know” problem. You can bounce around inside your box all you want, do double summersaults, bounce off the walls, dance like Fred Astaire and the like, but if the box is too small the solution to your problem might not be found there. But, how do you know it’s not there until you’ve exhausted all the possibilities? How do you know you have to look elsewhere? And, since elsewhere is pretty big, how do you know which direction to go looking?

Observing how someone else has done it might lead you to a better backhand or nicer handwriting, but not necessarily. If the thing you want to do better is thinking, problem solving and creativity, then observing doesn’t get you anywhere.

Curiously enough, even if you listen to someone who has done it (whatever that might be) and consider the words they use, the ideas they say they use, the methods they use, it still doesn’t mean your definitions of those words means the same thing as what they’re doing. What we do and what words we use to describe it aren’t always communicable.

It’s a problem.

Cogito ergo sum. I am no longer concerned with whether the light goes off after the refrigerator door closes or naught.

Don’t worry. Schroedinger’s cat will turn it off later.

eCAHNomics @ 70

Oh year, we’ve come this far without the most important quote on this subject from the horses mouth:

When you start there, where do you suppose you’ll end up?

19 guys…boxcutters…from Afghanistan Iraq Iran….and they lived happily ever after….

19 guys…boxcutters…from Afghanistan Iraq Iran Pakistan CIA Blackwater (maybe) ….and they lived happily ever after….

Oh year, we’ve come this far without the most important quote on this subject from the horses mouth:

You guys live in the reality-based community. We make our own reality.

When you start there, where do you suppose you’ll end up?

People who make up their own reality are likely to forget gravity and will tend to fly off into space for no reason whatsoever.

Failing that, they must still be bound by reality, despite their protestations to the contrary.

In that fight “Reality” tends to win.

GordonM @ 36

…
bush and cheney are morons who are clueless puppets, stings being pulled by their marionttes who laugh and laugh and laugh

Question is, who are the marionettes and what is justice with regard to them?