Terrapin Tables

my fortran program is running, so i've got quick sec to post. it may be late, i may have had a lot of soda, but i just can't believe some of the reasoning chris has put forth in recent replies. i'll skip the bit about fabricating the crash at the pentagon and i don't want to get into our nations rights and obligations with respect to the middle east (because i partially agree with him), and i'll even give him the benefit of the doubt on the phrase that seems to equate "one idea" with a "strong case" and i'm way too tired to get into the ridiculous expression about "'Truth' being subjective". to make a long story short, depending on what chris means by it, i contend that it's either self-defeating or untestable, neither of which bode well for its status as a conclusion.

instead, i'll discuss what's in this thread. chris is unsure as to what makes the Wright brothers special. in his statement he argues that accomplishments like flight aren't such a big deal, because if they weren't achieved when they had been by those who accomplished them, someone would have accomplished them. it strikes me that by this logic, no accomplishment is worth anything and no individual is to be praised for their actions (indeed, chris is more critical of our praise for the wright brothers, rather than flight). leibniz, newton, einstein, mozart, ghandi, they're nothing special - because no one is. sure they're actions may SEEM awesome, but if they hadn't done them, surely someone else would have. on what criteria are we praise people then? interstingly enough, chris describes the object of his criticism as "a specific goal" and contrasts this with vaccinations, which i take to mean he is suggesting that vaccinations are not "specific" goals . even if we are to assume this is true (and i have quite a bit of difficulty seeing that) perhaps chris would praise those who stumble upon vaccinations (as they are not subject to his criticism). if this is the case, then instead of praising people who worked toward and accomplished a goal with (at least) insights others didn't have, we're praising those who stumble onto things. seems more than a bit backwards to me.

I think Roy's reply hit the wrong post, but as to Florida, that link is funny. I thought my computer was broken for a second. Then I realized I was an idiot.

I just clicked on George Bush, and didn't get the joke until I tried other candidates...

indeed it did go to the wrong post, becase i continue to run into errors (with homer smacking his head) when i try to post replies, so i just posted it to whatever i could. i tried not to put too much in, considering it was the wrong thread, so i decided against harkening back to other remarks that are either unjustified or patently false.

Heh. I think I just fixed that... you can now post directly from the archive pages....

Whoa Whoa Whoa...Roy, a post at 2:36 am, and another at 8:43 am? What, do you think you have FINALS or something? Good luck. I will drink some rum for you.

What I said was...the Wrights weren't the only ones working on flight. Like Fatboy said, others were in the air within years of their first flight. The Wrights did it better than anyone else, and first, and for that they should be commended. However, it wasn't, to me, the sort of groundbreaking discovery that defines a great invention, nor was it the sort of revolutionizing factor for humanity that other discoveries are - when you spcifically talk about the Wright Brothers.

I mentioned vaccination because it was the work of one man, making new discoveries, and applying them in new ways (unless I'm wrong about that). Just like Einstein's Relativity theory, um I guess pasteurization, and others I can't think of right now. These are more important discoveries to me because they came from a different place. Flight was searched for - a stated goal of a society that initally wasn't even for the greater good. It was a novelty. Hubris, even - man taming the skies.

Pure discovery - synthesis of information to find a totally new path/outlook/whatever, is more meaningful to me than if people present a specific problem and then work to resolve it. Great discoveries of humankind are pulled out of our collective ass. Flight, like the A-bomb example I gave, aren't on that level with me because they were goals, not discoveries. Artists (you mentioned Mozart) were never a part of my initial reasoning, but if I had to classify them, they'd be in with discovery. It goes back to the creativity inherent in what I call "pure discovery." If Mozart hadn't written his symphonies, no one would have. Period. If the Wright Bros. had stuck to bikes, there would be planes in the sky. Period. That's my difference.

And of course truth is subjective, in the sense I was using it - history, politics, war. Briefly: if we had lost the Revolutionary War, Washington would be remembered the same as Che Guevara (sp?). That's what I meant...besides, you're the Philosophy major...everyone's own reality and such, Aristotle's "chair," etc. Everyone knows what I mean when I say "tree" but a botanist and a logger see it in very different ways.

so the distinction isn't that discoveries were happened upon by chance, but rather that they were worked on by only one person. it's not clear to me that einstein's work wasn't the result of the pursuit of a goal and it's not clear that he was the only one thinking about them. interestingly enough, you say that if mozart hadn't written his symphonies, no one would have - how do you know?

more importantly, when you say truth is subjective, what you really mean is that our perceptions and reports are subjective. but truth, that is rather different. think of the way we use the term. we introduce subjective entities with ownership my beliefs, my perceptions, my perspective, my report. when do we ever say "my truth"?

and yes i was a philosophy major, and thanks to that i am now better able to recognize invalid or unsound reasoning, and allows me to discount fanciful notions like "everyone's own reality" and replace them with more accurate expressions like "everyone has their own perceptions of reality" prior to my study of philosophy, i'm fairly certain i wouldn't have recognized the difference, and would equivocate "truth" with "perceptions of truth" as easily as you have.

The distinction isn't chance. It's creativity - I said "the creativity inherent in what I call 'pure discovery'." I never implied the greatest discoveries were by chance, but they come of their own accord. Pure discoveries as opposed to contrived ones - like the Wright Bros. Not that they didn't improvise or create to build a plane, but that invention was as much a product of society as two guys in Kitty Hawk so, to me, celebrating the specificity of where and when it came about isn't all that meaningful.

I also hope you were screwing with me asking howI knew no one would have written Mozart's work. I hate to have to refute that, but music is far too individual - too creative - to ever be replicated. Look at all the sound-alike rock bands in the last 50 years...and no two songs were accidentally identical, which is even more impressive considering the more easily defined parameters and greater accessability of rock music.

The Philosophy major point was never a dig or an insult...I brought it up because I gathered you, more than anyone else, would get my drift. I'm not about to start worrying about how I phrase things, though, when the meanings are clear enough for this purpose. For example, of course everyone has different "perceptions of reality" as opposed to "actual realities." But everyone knew what I meant. I could spend a half hour editing my posts and find syntax problems or vaguely questionable philosophical terms, then "replace them with more accurate expressions," but this is Terrapin Tables, not a term paper.