It appears you may be overemphasizing peripheral events as central to existence. Furthermore, you seem to be making a fundamental error common to many grand theories, which is to offer an explanation for phenomena that are inherently inexplicable. Might your theory also serve as a coping mechanism?
Whatever his opinion is, I don't think he argued it cogently enough for me to know whether to agree or disagree. I'm quite used to understanding paradoxical reasoning, but if he were my philosophy professor I'd think he needs to sharpen some of his skills His example of thousands of people dying because of a random vacation taken by a couple needed some amplification. It wouldn't encourage me to buy his book, though I might check out a preview on Amazon to see if this lack of cogency is typical of it.
A question that has confronted philosophy for a long time is what to do when you can make a decision that will destroy five people or only one. The question is posed without any other information. One can destroy - or save - the lives of five human beings.
Michael J Sandel is an American political philosopher who teaches a course titled Justice to all freshman at Harvard. It the first course of the university to be made available online/TV. It is available as a book.
Brian Klaas is not telling us WHAT to think. He offers a different WAY to think from the one with which we are most familiar. One thing I will do, now, is look for a discussion of Chaos Theory. I have been reading in Eastern philosophies and spiritualities as well as reading in the Abrahamic faiths and practicing Judaism. I am an agnostic Jew.
My understanding of this world in which I live has expanded. I can think too many things about which I might like to know more. I have reached the 26th day of the 100th year of my life. I have learned to "make each day what I want it to be." Margaret Coulomb. And this is the way I do it.
I remember seeing this on your YouTube channel. Really great. I think people have a hard time with randomness. That's why they don't particularly like the points he's making. But to me, it speaks to how lucky I must be. Counting blessings.
"You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails" comes to mind. Certainly the Western concept of exploitation feeds the belief in human subjugation of the natural world. But our reach is really flimsy in the big picture over time, and climage change is already imposing the reality of our fragile position in the larger picture. Written words codify processes over which we don't have as much control as we would like to believe. Indigenous people understand this because they embrace, rather than coerce, the surrounding environment.
I agree with the idea of personal influence that our actions or thinking or contributions have an impact on the world whether small or large. Yet, I didn't really get where this ties up with the scientific method or religion. People realize that there is chaos in the world and that's why they came up with rules and laws and governing principles. People also realize the impact of trends and not only random events. The idea of randomness has been in circulation for a long time.
I think the key is knowing what you can control and can't control. Despite the randomness in the world, certain rules generally apply. For example, working hard will improve your life. Treating people the way you want to be treated will help you build a strong relationships that can come back to help you. Etc. You can control these behaviors that will inure to your benefit 95% of the time. But as they say - **** happens.
Your biggest mistakes and burdens can end up being your defining strengths... and your privilege can weaken you. It's important to live with intention, and avoid simply chasing money and status.
Kinda made up. Scientists and engineers are well aware of randomness. One of the most successful scientific equations of all time, Shrodinger's Wave Equation, is predicated on the idea that the state of particles is random. And before him Newton and the three-body problem. I won't go on.
I was never told I had “a profound influence on the world.” And I never thought so myself. So, I agree that that idea is false. But causation is another matter. The scientific evidence DOES SHOW us that everything happens for a reason. And so does logic.
Religion here is irrelevant. Religion is about belief. Science is about proof. Belief about how the universe works is not an explanation. Belief in a god does not mean that that god exists. People who have claimed to see Big Foot or the Locke Ness monster or E.T. does not mean those things exist.
Likewise, our intuition and experiences and understandings offer cogent explanations for our behavior in certain circumstances. But all of those things are unique among individuals, and they were all caused. And they are beyond the control of each of us.
Our understanding of how the universe works is based on a series of causes and effects flowing along the arrow of time. The idea of causation suggests that everything, every event, every action, can be determined. But determinism requires perfect knowledge, including knowledge obtained in real time. Take, for example, the flipping an honest coin and the ability to “determine” with certainty — not probability — whether it will land heads or tails. To do this, you have to be able to measure a number of things in real time: The force of the flip, the dimensions (size, weight) of the coin, its trajectory and velocity, the distance above sea level, properties of the landing surface, and the direction and speed of any wind, among other things. All of those factors will combine as a series of causes and effects that will ultimately determine whether the coin will land heads up or tails up.
Likewise, this theory of causation prohibits free will. Each of us are the sum of our histories – our genes having come from our ancestors all the way back to the first forms of life. So, we come into this world with a lot of history already made an inherent part of our selves; a history over which we had no choice. As we mature from infants to children to adults to old age, our exposure to, and our perception and processing of the external environment, adds to that history, along with any infirmities we may have along the way. We are each unique. Thus, free will is not free, it is irrevocably tied to our history, i.e., to a series of causes and effects. As Sam Harris writes in his book “Free Will,” “You can do what you decide to do, but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”
And so, the world turns. Our actions do not control the world, but they do contribute to the causes and effects that drive it by virtue of our being a part of it. See “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The issue really is that we're always trying to be in charge of knowing everything, instead of just living our life. How are we the ones to decide who created us, or how the universe came to be, when we have only found ourselves in it now and so obviously cannot have been there at the beginning (if there was one, haha!)?
Why must we insist on trying to manipulate things that are obviously beyond our control by guessing, lying, worrying, etc?
Interesting article but I had to stop reading because of numerous typos, grammatical errors and repetitive phrases. Not important enough for the author to proofread, then not important enough for me to finish reading. Sorry.
This feels like a logical tangle of yarn to me. Interesting stories, sure, but on one hand arguing against a narrative interpretation of a person's life and in the next breath, using a narrative interpretation to give weight to randomness. And his definition of individualism seems flawed. I suspect (hope) the book is more coherent.
It appears you may be overemphasizing peripheral events as central to existence. Furthermore, you seem to be making a fundamental error common to many grand theories, which is to offer an explanation for phenomena that are inherently inexplicable. Might your theory also serve as a coping mechanism?
Whatever his opinion is, I don't think he argued it cogently enough for me to know whether to agree or disagree. I'm quite used to understanding paradoxical reasoning, but if he were my philosophy professor I'd think he needs to sharpen some of his skills His example of thousands of people dying because of a random vacation taken by a couple needed some amplification. It wouldn't encourage me to buy his book, though I might check out a preview on Amazon to see if this lack of cogency is typical of it.
A question that has confronted philosophy for a long time is what to do when you can make a decision that will destroy five people or only one. The question is posed without any other information. One can destroy - or save - the lives of five human beings.
Michael J Sandel is an American political philosopher who teaches a course titled Justice to all freshman at Harvard. It the first course of the university to be made available online/TV. It is available as a book.
Brian Klaas is not telling us WHAT to think. He offers a different WAY to think from the one with which we are most familiar. One thing I will do, now, is look for a discussion of Chaos Theory. I have been reading in Eastern philosophies and spiritualities as well as reading in the Abrahamic faiths and practicing Judaism. I am an agnostic Jew.
My understanding of this world in which I live has expanded. I can think too many things about which I might like to know more. I have reached the 26th day of the 100th year of my life. I have learned to "make each day what I want it to be." Margaret Coulomb. And this is the way I do it.
L&B&L
I remember seeing this on your YouTube channel. Really great. I think people have a hard time with randomness. That's why they don't particularly like the points he's making. But to me, it speaks to how lucky I must be. Counting blessings.
"You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails" comes to mind. Certainly the Western concept of exploitation feeds the belief in human subjugation of the natural world. But our reach is really flimsy in the big picture over time, and climage change is already imposing the reality of our fragile position in the larger picture. Written words codify processes over which we don't have as much control as we would like to believe. Indigenous people understand this because they embrace, rather than coerce, the surrounding environment.
I agree with the idea of personal influence that our actions or thinking or contributions have an impact on the world whether small or large. Yet, I didn't really get where this ties up with the scientific method or religion. People realize that there is chaos in the world and that's why they came up with rules and laws and governing principles. People also realize the impact of trends and not only random events. The idea of randomness has been in circulation for a long time.
I think the key is knowing what you can control and can't control. Despite the randomness in the world, certain rules generally apply. For example, working hard will improve your life. Treating people the way you want to be treated will help you build a strong relationships that can come back to help you. Etc. You can control these behaviors that will inure to your benefit 95% of the time. But as they say - **** happens.
Your biggest mistakes and burdens can end up being your defining strengths... and your privilege can weaken you. It's important to live with intention, and avoid simply chasing money and status.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/two-weeks-in
Kinda made up. Scientists and engineers are well aware of randomness. One of the most successful scientific equations of all time, Shrodinger's Wave Equation, is predicated on the idea that the state of particles is random. And before him Newton and the three-body problem. I won't go on.
I was never told I had “a profound influence on the world.” And I never thought so myself. So, I agree that that idea is false. But causation is another matter. The scientific evidence DOES SHOW us that everything happens for a reason. And so does logic.
Religion here is irrelevant. Religion is about belief. Science is about proof. Belief about how the universe works is not an explanation. Belief in a god does not mean that that god exists. People who have claimed to see Big Foot or the Locke Ness monster or E.T. does not mean those things exist.
Likewise, our intuition and experiences and understandings offer cogent explanations for our behavior in certain circumstances. But all of those things are unique among individuals, and they were all caused. And they are beyond the control of each of us.
Our understanding of how the universe works is based on a series of causes and effects flowing along the arrow of time. The idea of causation suggests that everything, every event, every action, can be determined. But determinism requires perfect knowledge, including knowledge obtained in real time. Take, for example, the flipping an honest coin and the ability to “determine” with certainty — not probability — whether it will land heads or tails. To do this, you have to be able to measure a number of things in real time: The force of the flip, the dimensions (size, weight) of the coin, its trajectory and velocity, the distance above sea level, properties of the landing surface, and the direction and speed of any wind, among other things. All of those factors will combine as a series of causes and effects that will ultimately determine whether the coin will land heads up or tails up.
Likewise, this theory of causation prohibits free will. Each of us are the sum of our histories – our genes having come from our ancestors all the way back to the first forms of life. So, we come into this world with a lot of history already made an inherent part of our selves; a history over which we had no choice. As we mature from infants to children to adults to old age, our exposure to, and our perception and processing of the external environment, adds to that history, along with any infirmities we may have along the way. We are each unique. Thus, free will is not free, it is irrevocably tied to our history, i.e., to a series of causes and effects. As Sam Harris writes in his book “Free Will,” “You can do what you decide to do, but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”
And so, the world turns. Our actions do not control the world, but they do contribute to the causes and effects that drive it by virtue of our being a part of it. See “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The issue really is that we're always trying to be in charge of knowing everything, instead of just living our life. How are we the ones to decide who created us, or how the universe came to be, when we have only found ourselves in it now and so obviously cannot have been there at the beginning (if there was one, haha!)?
Why must we insist on trying to manipulate things that are obviously beyond our control by guessing, lying, worrying, etc?
Q
Interesting article but I had to stop reading because of numerous typos, grammatical errors and repetitive phrases. Not important enough for the author to proofread, then not important enough for me to finish reading. Sorry.
This feels like a logical tangle of yarn to me. Interesting stories, sure, but on one hand arguing against a narrative interpretation of a person's life and in the next breath, using a narrative interpretation to give weight to randomness. And his definition of individualism seems flawed. I suspect (hope) the book is more coherent.
It’s for this I say, “There’s a reason things happen”
Wonderful!