Quote:
Originally Posted by outback  Let's say you are overweight, and have always been more or less overweight, and I tell you if you exercise, lose some weight and eat healthy, you will feel more energetic and have a clearer mind... You can either have faith in me, take my word for it and give it a shot, or ignore what I say because you've never experienced such things, or don't believe it is possible to be any more energetic and have a clearer mind. |
I think we are talking past each other. I'm not trying to say that people should be closed to new experiences, or only extrapolate from what they have already learned. That would make no sense... one might ask when the "right" time to stop learning is, which is just silly.
I'm only talking about a very narrow slice of the example you've outlined above. And that is, even after trying something new, and expanding my personal realm of experience, I am no closer to knowing whether what I have learned is true for anyone but myself. I can never be any closer, really, because no matter how many new experiences I have, they are still only
my perceptions filtered through
my beliefs. Polling 2 people, 100 people, whatever the number, is not proof of universality, even if I assume that they understood what I was asking correctly and that I understood their responses correctly.
I think in the end you just have to apply induction, and assume that something probably is true universally if it's true in all the cases you can find. To me, this says that SR and other "pseudoscientific" points of view could now all be on equally firm ground with objective reality. They all require a bit of faith to accept.
before we're done I will be a full-on nihilist
