Positive and Negative | Ricardo Milkowski

There is a significant difference between what I will call ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ thinking. Positive thinking rests on the assumption that a solution’s past success (the ‘is’) guarantees or increases the probability of the solution’s future success (the ‘ought’): past success ought to show future success. Negative thinking, however, does not run into the is/ought problem: if a universal statement contradicts an existential statement, and the existential statement corresponds with the facts, then the existential statement is false.

I know very few things, but I do know that the future is both unknown and unknowable. If there is one thing I’ve tried to make clear, it is that past confirmation through experience teaches us nothing about the future success of proposals for action. Future problems are not identical to past problems, for they occur at different times, different locations, different circumstances. If the circumstances are similar, this can only be known retroactively, the recollections of their similarities may be in error, and even then similarity does not indicate that there are no confounding factors in play.

As in lower-order animal behavior, “habit” or repetition, is no guarantee of future success; it is a psychological drive towards the feeling of certainty about the status of a choice and a guarantee of failure when confronting a new and unexpected problem.

These positive think has the following dogmas:

1. infallibilism (certainty can be obtained, or at least approximated enough for practical use). Increasing the certainty in a proposal’s future success is actually a psychological burden.
2. justificationism (past success of theories indicates future success). The fact that the current success of a solution to a problem in no way guarantees its future success counters this dogma; furthermore, this means that corroborations do not increase the probability of a theory’s future successes.
3. dogmatism (ignoring the infinite number of alternative proposed solutions or criticisms). If one sticks to their expectations, they will reach a point when the solution is inadequate.On the other hand, negative thinking follows the negative proposition put forward by David Miller:
   

   “Refrain from any practical proposal that does not survive critical scrutiny as well as others do.”

   To behave rationally, one must openly and critically evaluate linguistically proposed solutions to pertinent problems. All attempts to solve a problem must necessarily be forms of trial-and-error elimination processes. The best way to solve problems is then through a cooperative (or competitive) effort of trial and error, uncovering the worst available solutions, eliminating these solutions from consideration, and retaining the solutions that survive criticism.
   (If it should turn out that this evaluation of solution was faulty (for we are fallible), we are implicitly accepting the objectivity of problems and solutions: some solutions are objectively better at solving problems.)
   If recent studies on brain structure and language acquisition tell us anything, it is that humans are born prejudiced. I mean that in the broadest sense: we pre-judge the face of a mother, the sucking reflex, the gripping reflex, the reflex to learn language, and so on. We are hardwired to behave in certain ways in response to the environment, and one of these behaviors is the ability to learn, to make guesses, and to eliminate guesses that do not solve our problems. Humans may want to confirm their prejudices, as in the child that refuses to use grammar in the culturally appropriate way, or they may want to correct their prejudices. This desire to correct prejudices leads to the negative theory of rationality, a mirror-image of positive theories of rationality.
   This negative thinking is then a biologically evolved predisposition to openness of different solutions to problems that thrives in specific cultural environments. It is the willingness to accept that a solution is unsuccessful in certain contexts. It abandons striving for certainty or even probability in the assessment of guesses. Thus, negative rationality is a different attitude towards background beliefs:
   
4. fallibilism (denial of certainty), which leads to an openness to criticism, and of appropriate responses to criticism;
5. negativism (exclusively negative method of testing), meaning that past success of a solution is irrelevant to future success;
   
6. skepticism (utter impossibility of ever justifying anything), since there is no way of telling in the present which of several solutions will be successful: only in retrospect will the best proposal be revealed.

Review of Boaz Miller’s ‘Rationality Principle Idealized’

Just found this review. It’s worth checking out.

It’s Worse Being Green

In It’s Not Easy Being Grue, I argued for skepticism — or at least incredulity — towards any inductive inference made solely by appealing to a posteriori evidence. Two hypotheses, as long as they have a logical content greater than the evidence and are not yet refuted are, as a matter of following the rules of logic, necessarily equally favored by the evidence. Even if one should appeal to one of the two hypotheses having a natural property, this problem still stands, since it cannot be uncovered through a posteriori investigation. Of course, more than two hypotheses fit this criteria — any number of empirically adequate hypotheses with greater logical content than the evidence may be constructed. In sum, favoring one hypothesis over another, even with an a prior warrant, cannot be determined from a posteriori evidence at all.

Jessica is different than James. She sees the failure of his program and preemptively seeks out some a priori warrant for favoring some inductive inferences over others. Is there an a priori warrant that would allow Jessica to favor one hypothesis over another? For the time assume that such a warrant exists. Assume that if Jessica finds this warrant, the problem is solved. I will not go into the other problems that face Jessica — whether or not she can know that she has the warrant, whether or not she can know that she knows that she has a warrant, &c.

Some predicates, such as ‘green’ intuitively (so it is said) fit the list of natural properties while others, such as ‘grue’, intuitively do not. Call those grue-like properties ‘ill-behaved’ properties for now. What metaphysical standard sets natural properties apart from ‘ill-behaved’ properties?

We might say that it is solely intuition that guides us; we reject ‘ill-behaved’ predicates like ‘grue’ because they are disjunctive: they involve spatio-temporal properties that, like a cat that turns into a dog after whistling, cannot function within our commonsense ontology. If we assume that we are warranted in rejecting disjunctive predicates due to our intuition, this does not solve the problem, since it begs the question as to why our intuitions are warranted. How then can we give warrant to our intuitions? But first, some historical case-studies:

1. We can take ‘leopard’ as not having spots before a certain time, and having spots after that time. Any other ‘Just-So’ story by Kipling is an example of a possible variation on English (call it ‘Kipling-English‘) that takes a number of animals as having a ‘ill-behaved’ list of properties.
2. Christians take transubstantiation, the transformation of bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ after a specific incantation by a priest, very seriously. The term ‘Eucharist’ is then an ‘ill-behaved’ property that has been ingrained into the English lexicon and the Western mind for almost one thousand years.
3. Aristotle took elements to be of two classes: the worldly elements would move linearly towards their natural place unless acted upon, while the heavenly element, known as ‘æther’, was incapable of change other than rotation. Natural motion was then for hundreds of years an ‘ill-behaved’ property as well: just in some cases linear, but in others rotational. It took the work of Newton and others, through imagination, scientific investigation, and questioning Aristotle’s metaphysics, to link these two classes under one unifying force.

Thus, the English language already has several well-established ‘ill-behaved’ spatio-temporal properties in its lexicon. Of course, they are few and far between, so this is far from a convincing argument. It might be said that they’re works of fiction, or strange imaginings, and do not belong to commonsense talk. However, the predicate ‘grue’ is a disjunctive predicate only according to the colors expressed in standard English. If there was an alternative history where all colors were expressed in predicates that are ‘ill-behaved’ in English (call it ‘Engrish’), the predicate ‘grue’ would not be disjunctive or ‘ill-behaved’ in that language; we could not say the same about the predicates ‘green’ and ‘blue’ in Engrish.

It is plausible that, had Engrish been the lingua franca today, we would intuit that any ‘ill-behaved’ property according to English was a natural property, since it did not express a spatio-temporal property, while any natural property according to English was ‘ill-behaved’. Imagine that Jessica and James both decided to base their favoring of one hypothesis over another on their list of (supposed) natural properties. As it so happens, Jessica speaks Engrish and James speaks English. Both Jessica and James see X number of emeralds. Jessica and James both look to their intuitions, and each of them decides that the emeralds are ‘grue’ and ‘green’, respectfully. Each claims that the other is adopting a language that functions with ‘ill-behaved’ properties. How can we decide?

We cannot say that our list of natural properties is obviously true, and choose between Jessica and James on the basis of this list. We are not an outsider with privileged access to the list of natural properties. This would immediately assume the solution to the problem at hand, since like Jessica, we could have been raised speaking Engrish and not English. An accident of birth, rather than a strong metaphysical or epistemological argument, is (as I see it) the only thing that leads to favoring one unfalsified hypothesis over the other.

Success and FailureSuccess and Failure

 

Things that succeed teach us little beyond the fact that they have been successful; things that fail provide incontrovertible evidence that the limits of design have been exceeded. Emulating success risks failure; studying failure increases our chances of success. The simple principle that is seldom explicitly stated is that the most successful designs are based on the best and most complete assumptions about failure. (Henry Petroski, Success Through Failure)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Italian painter born at Vinci, next to Florence, died at Chateaux de Cloux, in France, near Ambroise. He is mostly known as a painter, having authored the "The Virgin and the Child with St. Anne", "Mona Lisa", (also known as "La Giaconda"), "The Last Supper", "St. John the Baptist", "The Madonna Of The Rocks", etc.

Leonardo da Vinci was a savant sketch artist, a wonderful colourist, excelling at mixing mild tones with the technique of chiaroscuro. He was also a sculptor, a physicist, an engineer, philosopher, writer, poet and musician. He was distinguished in all these branches of art and science.

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most complete and accomplished geniuses of the Renaissance. Legend has it that he died in the arms of King Francois the 1st (the alleged scene serves as an inspiration for the painting "The Death of Leonardo" by Giroux). 

 Anatomical Study (heart and vessels) by Leonardo da Vinci, 1500

  The heart is a hollow muscle that pumps blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions. It is found in all animals with a circulatory system (including all vertebrates).^[1]

The term cardiac (as in cardiology) means "related to the heart" and comes from the Greek καρδιά, kardia, for "heart".The vertebrate heart is principally composed of cardiac muscle and connective tissue. Cardiac muscle is an involuntary striated muscle tissue found only in this organ and responsible for the ability of the heart to pump blood.

The average human heart, beating at 72 beats per minute, will beat approximately 2.5 billion times during an average 66 year lifespan. It weighs approximately 250 to 300 grams (9 to 11 oz) in females and 300 to 350 grams (11 to 12 oz) in males.^[2] 

The God of Small Things | Ricardo Side

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale.... Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family - their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen. With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it."

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The Price of Freedom: The Unfinished Diary!

The value of a thing is not determined by what you can do with it, but by what price you are willing to pay for it.

Freedom means that we take full responsibility for ourselves, our people, and our country; freedom means that we maintain the distance that separates us from others; freedom means that we are no longer afraid of hardship, difficulties, privation or death: he who has learned how to die can no longer become a slave or a colonial subject.

He who wants to be free must always be ever ready to go to war and to die for his freedom.

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The Battle For God-Karen Armstong

Armstrong's central case rests on the confusion between mythos and logos, using these in the technical sense suggested by Johannes Slok.^[2] Myth concerns "what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence...Myth was not concerned with practical matters but with meaning".^[3] By contrast "Logos was the rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world". In religion, logos appears in legal systems and practical action. By the eighteenth century, "people in Europe and America began to think that logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious." Armstrong suggests that fundamentalists have turned their mythos into logos using the mindset of the modern scientific age.^[4]

The first part of the book, "The Old World and the New", compares the progression of the three monotheistic faiths between 1492, when Columbus discovered America, and 1870, when "The Franco-Prussian War had revealed the hideous effects of modern weaponry, and there was a dawning realisation that science might also have a malignant dimension."^[5] It traces the way Jews and Muslims modernized during this period.

This leads to the modern period described in part two, “Fundamentalism”, when there was a growing adoption of a literalist interpretation of scripture in the United States, which eventually gave rise to The Fundamentals, a series of 12 volumes refuting modern ideas published shortly before and during the World War I, of which 3 million copies were distributed to every pastor, professor and theological student across America by the largesse of oil millionaires. Though this led to a distinctive ideology, it was not till the 1980s that it emerged as a political force.

In Judaism, the growth of Zionism was given its biggest boost by the Holocaust which led to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Although many traditional Jews migrated there, the most conservative rejected the secular interpretation of Zionism and it wasn't until the emergence of Gush Emunim after the Yom Kippur War in 1974 that fundamentalism emerged in Israel as a political force.

In Islam, fundamentalism did not emerge until modernization had taken hold, first in Egypt with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood by Hasan al-Banna. Armstrong traces the development of Sunni fundamentalism under Sayyid Qutb and Shia fundamentalism under Ayatollah Khomeini.

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The God Delusion Richard Dawkins Free Download

The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling^[1] non-fiction book by English biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford,^[2][3] and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion".^[4]

As of January 2010, the English version of The God Delusion had sold over 2 million copies.^[5] It was ranked No.2 on the Amazon.com bestsellers' list in November 2006.^[6][7] In early December 2006, it reached No.4 in the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list.^[8] It remained on the list for 51 weeks until 30 September 2007.^[9] The German version, entitled Der Gotteswahn, had sold over 260,000 copies as of 28 January 2010.

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Roberto Mancini hails 'incredible' Joe Hart after Manchester City draw

• The Guardian, Thursday 4 October 2012

Joe Hart, the Manchester City and England goalkeeper, pulls off a save in the 1-1 draw with Borussia Dortmund. Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Bongarts/Getty Images

Roberto Mancini hailed an "incredible" performance from Joe Hart after the England goalkeeper produced a string of exceptional saves to keep Manchester City's Champions League hopes alive on a night when the Italian conceded his side were fortunate to pick up a point against an excellent Borussia Dortmund team.
Mario Balotelli's late penalty, awarded harshly after Neven Subotic was penalised for handling Sergio Agüero's close-range shot, earned City a 1-1 draw that Mancini believes could be vital come the end of the group.
Yet it was Hart, rather than the Italy striker, who was hailed as City's saviour, after the 25-year-old made eight superb saves in a pulsating game that had chances from the first minute to the last. Hart denied Mario Götze on three occasions in the first half alone and, at times, it felt as though he was single-handedly keeping Dortmund at bay. He was so impressive that there was even acclaim from Old Trafford. "Have to say Joe Hart has been incredible. For me best keeper in the world," tweeted Wayne Rooney.
Mancini had expressed his frustration with Hart less than a fortnight ago, after the goalkeeper criticised his team-mates for allowing a 2-1 lead to slip over Real Madrid. On this occasion, however, there was only praise from Mancini, who recognised that he was indebted to Hart for preventing Dortmund from being out of sight by the time Balotelli scored in the 90th minute to cancel out Marco Reus's opener. "Joe Hart is incredible because he saved everything and we should say thank you to him," Mancini said. "He did a fantastic performance. I don't know if it's the best performance in football history but he did very well."
Hart admitted that he could not recall being so busy in goal before. "It could have been 10-all tonight. I thought their keeper was fantastic," he said, acknowledging the contribution that Roman Weidenfeller made in the first half, when the Dortmund keeper made a hat-trick of saves to thwart Agüero. "Off the top of my head, I can't remember making as many saves before. I thought Dortmund were different class tonight. It took a good defensive effort by us to keep it to just one. I hope this result is important and that it is not a waste of effort."
It remains to be seen whether that will be the case, although City will clearly have to play much better if they are to have a chance of reaching the knockout phase and avoid a repeat of last year's elimination at the group stage. Third in Group D with one point from two games, they have not kept a clean sheet since the penultimate game of last season and there was little doubt that Dortmund were going to extend that record on an evening when City never got the balance right between attack and defence.
"The Champions League is totally different from every championship," Mancini said. "When you play, you play against the best players, so when you have a chance you have to score. If you don't score, and after you concede, like we conceded this evening, it's difficult that we can win.
"First half we had three or four incredible chances and I don't know why we didn't score but this can happen. The problem was our performance. This is the problem. In the Champions League we can't play with all players that attack. We need to defend with all players. If you don't defend, if you don't run like Borussia Dortmund did this evening, it's difficult."
City lost Javi García to a thigh strain in the first half and it seems certain that the midfielder will miss Saturday's league game at home to Sunderland. Yaya Touré also appeared to be struggling and was well off the pace in the second half in particular, although Mancini claimed there was nothing wrong with the Ivorian's fitness. "Yaya didn't play well. He is not injured. But it was not only Yaya; all the team played a poor game. We didn't play well. We didn't deserve to take this point, but in the end it could be important. Borussia Dortmund played better than us and at this moment they are a better side."