Monday, May 25, 2020
How to Think About the Real World
I posted the following comment to the Conservative Treehouse site, in response to someone who advocated mathematics in solving real-world problems, and who used an old chestnut, "Encountering The Truth Teller and the Liar at the Crossroads" as his example. Since my discovery of "The Great Design of the 'gods'", I am a unique expert on the truth about real-world problem solving:
Your example is an old "poser", a trick problem, that I encountered in a book of posers when I was an adolescent, and I regard it as adolescent entertainment, no more. One can't, for example, waste time in the real world trying to come up with a question that always has the same answer, whether from a "truth-teller" or a "liar". More generally, mathematics -- in any form -- does not govern logic, nor science as applied to the real world. The truth is just the reverse. Mathematics by itself is free of meaningful content. (This of course is intuitively obvious, to anyone -- even the most learned scientist -- upon first encountering a strange new equation of mathematical symbols.
Cause and effect is the proper idea; this is the whole idea of science. To truly understand a situation, seek the cause (or more generally, multiple causes, although they all have to come together, to inform the present). And here is the real secret, that adolescent thinkers too often neglect: Real-world situations constitute a complex picture, when all is known, but which, with causes yet unknown, is rather an unassembled jigsaw puzzle. Yet we know all of the pieces have to fit together precisely, at every juncture, in the end, to form that complex but entirely coherent picture. Again, coherence is the mark of the real world. The things of the real world cohere (this is the fundamental truth, the bottom line, that would cure atheism itself, and any and all existential angst), as mere vain imaginings (such as the ideas of the Insane Left Democrats now) never can and never do. We are fighting incoherence (hell-bent and dogmatic) now, in both the Deep State and in our fellow citizens.
Every real-world situation is a jigsaw puzzle, with real pieces that must all fit together. This of course makes solving the puzzle easy, in the end, because that fitting together means there is a wealth of information, in the shape of every piece and the picture details on each piece, that tells one exactly (!) how they must fit together. One need only take the time to consider how well each pair of pieces fits together.
I could tell you just what level of fitting together needs to be achieved, before one can confidently consider two pieces properly joined; it is in my book, "The End of the Mystery". In my experience, however, "leading the horse to water" is the best I can hope for. The answer lies in every jigsaw puzzle, of course; all you have to do is look.
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Things cohere, in themselves and all together in the world, because it was all designed, as my discovery of the world reformation by the 'gods' now makes clear, as never before in history.
I have studied your work and agree with most of your conclusions. You are correct that if the true history of humankind on earth were known to all, we would have a much easier time solving our problems.
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