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News Briefs 22-10-2010

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

Merci Beaucoup a Greg et RPJ!

Quote of the Day:

“That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.”

Jonathan Swift

  1. Another Brilliant Collection
    [quote=G.C]“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” [/quote]

    O I C what U did there…

    …and it made my freakin’ day!
    😉

  2. Virtuality vs Reality
    Re: Morality: Do your worst, virtually
    -(excerpted)-

    “Enter immersive virtual reality (IVR). Though you might think people would act differently in virtual situations, studies consistently show that they react just as they would in real life, as long as the environments seem realistic enough.”

    “For instance, take the classic dilemma, in which a runaway trolley is about to kill five people unless you throw a switch and divert it to another track, where it will kill just one (discussed by Peter Singer on page 41). Most people agree that sacrificing one life for five is the right thing to do – but would you actually throw the switch when it came down to it or would emotions stop you?”

    “With its ability to remove the risk while maintaining scientific integrity, IVR opens the door to exploring some of the darker questions in morality research. At the same time, it allows researchers to put their understanding of morality to the test.”

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827822.200-morality-do-your-worst-virtually.html

    This is really amusing… the assumption that people will respond in a virtual setting just as they would a real-life environment.

    I mean, where’s the precedent? How does one know that what is observed in the virtual is the same as would be displayed in the real when reactions would be first, unique to the individual, and then based on a number of minute variables that can’t always be predicted?

    We’ve been talking of late about the morality values of science vs. religion and here we have a good example of exactly why the former is unsuited for the job. You simply cannot create a virtual scenario that replicates every nuance of the random moment of human existence.

    As for the runaway trolley? The virtual contestants know… undoubtedly, both consciously and subconsciously, that their responses will not result in anything good or bad. Their reactions will not be based on the same critical split second of realness that would be before them in a genuine happenstance setting.

    I’m sorry guys but this virtuality is wholly unsupportable.

    1. reality is far away
      We all live in a virtual reality as it is. Our senses see, hear and feel only little bits of the real world, and our mind makes up the rest.

      We already don’t see things that are too fast, too slow, too small, too large. Not because they are physically impossible to see, but because our mind judges them to not be relevant. So they are filtered out. What’s another level of interpretation? It will not make much difference in how people behave.

    2. Mis-assumptions of social scientists
      I think you are absolutely correct. And it’s not just that it is such a glaring, unscientific error to presume a key factor (hell, the essential factor in this scenario): it’s that it is so widespread among the social “scientists”.

      I see the “shockingly shaky presumption” in study after study which sociologists design to study some human trait or another: selfishness, altruism, free will, xenophobia. I just don’t see how truly disinterested researchers could come up with such half-baked scenarios for their studies, in which their “jumping off place” – where the assumption has to be as solid as the earth before their feet – is actually so uncertain and unknown as to be worthy of its own study.

      But maybe I’m answering my own question. Because I can think of at least one reason a researcher might treat a hypothesis or a theory as well-settled fact. And that is because the researcher isn’t really interested in a search for the truth, but really just wants to manufacture some impressive-looking “study” which s/he has designed to give one, and only one, result. Maybe it’s a new theory which will make the researcher rich and famous. Maybe it’s about a cultural or political issue that the researcher cares deeply enough about that s/he would rather act as an advocate or propagandist than a disinterested scientist viz., political races, views about religion, etc.

      Unfortunately this kind of intellectual dishonesty seems rife in the “soft” sciences (I’d rather call them “disciplines”) such as sociology and behavioral studies. But we’ve seen it happening recently in the “harder” sciences, which traditionally have relied to a much greater degree on verifiable data (although the interpretation of that data can be very iffy indeed, and folks can still cherry-pick or put a finger on the scales). The climate wars are a perfect example of a harder science in which it is beyond dispute that scientists’ personal beliefs, political preferences and cultural biases have resulted in altered and hand-picked data and pre-loaded studies which have produced results in which a significant percentage of the scientists in the field have no confidence.

      In short, it looks like we can no longer simply blindly accept the validity of a study’s assumptions, and must use our own judgment as well.

  3. . . . seeing the future
    I’ve often wondered if our brains are continually processing, on a very deep level, infinitesimal bits of data from unfolding events allowing them to formulate and identify the most probable outcomes, which then rise to the surface in the form of hunches, gut feelings, and premonitions.

    But hey, I like the physics explanations a whole lot better because I want to believe we have influence over the future in even the most subtle and passive ways. Maybe it’s because I’m a slacker at heart.

  4. Strange experience
    A few years ago and for a few months I had this really weird feeling that ‘reality’ only existed for as far as I could see and a little bit further, that this ‘reality’ moved with me like a space bubble if I moved. However, if I could have somehow anchored the ‘reality’ and walked to the edge there would just have been a grey nothingness void. Spooked me a bit at first but I became used to it, and then it went away and hasn’t returned.

    Yes, I know – I’m odd!

    Oh! – and I just got around to G.C.’s news list this evening and think it’s format is very smart indeed. Congratulations!

    Regards, Kathrinn

  5. Daily News
    Well done alphabet news compiler G.C. Very neat! Jumped straight out at me and made me smile. I wondered if anyone had picked it up. Good to see there others in the world that see the same way.

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