[mercuryrising]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

How familiar are you with Lovecraft?

More than the average bear, less than the average Cthullhu nut.

No, value itself is not a subjective quality. It is defined, objectively, as a measure of how much a person is willing to pay for a good or service. This does not change from person to person.

As it measures the perception of individuals or their aggregates, it varies from person to person. Thus, the value of a particular good or service varies from person to person because of their subjectivity.

Economics, like any other branch of knowledge, takes certain axioms as a priori and then builds a system from that basis. The measurements used to track the variables in the system do not make the system itself objective. And the original assumptions about human behavior are just that: assumptions.

Americans, for the most part, have no problem with miles and miles of billboards advertising toothpaste with naked ladies. We act in this way because we are told that our survival is largely due to us spending money on crap, which goes back to the Keynesian model of economics.

The map is not the territory. We could easily choose a different set of axioms and build a system off of that.

Prove it. Last I heard, the soul weighs about 3/4ths of an ounce.

Can I buy one from you? I could always use a spare.

Definitions are a necessary means for communication. If you think that theology is cavorting with witches, and I think it's studying old bones, then how are we supposed go agree on a conclusion?

I "put things into little boxes" because I don't want people to need a personal, revelatory experience in order to have any idea what I'm talking about.

This has nothing to do with Knowledge. This is just a dictionary.

I don't have a problem with clear communication. Words stand for real world phenomena, but do not replace them. Reason can not go beyond words. Knowledge, however, can and does go beyond the symbols we use for reality.

People don't know what you are talking about without the "personal, revelatory experience". They may agree or disagree, but the argument is nothing more than an exercise in semantics. It might win you the master-debater award on this forum, but that's about it.

Neither have I. I have written as much here.

Speaking of dictionaries.

I have written about falling in love here. I am a highly intuitive person, and have much difficulty in being reasonable.

However, as jsam remarks tangentially above, we are not a reasonable people. We rely on perceptions that are more likely to be false, than true, because it's easier and more convenient. We rewrite our memories to our whims. I "reduce everything to its lowest possible meaning" because meaning is necessarily a cultural bias. I remove my biases, as much as possible, in order to extract what is real, not what is imagined.

If I wanted to make you imagine something, I would write fiction. (I'm doing that, btw.)

Considering what jsam pointed out and what you are saying here, it is all fiction. What are "you" without the genes that made you or the society that conditioned you? An object? A machine? I doubt it. Is that what you take for being real?

The willingness to be ignorant is, perhaps, the most abhorrent choice human beings can make, in my view: it defies the very nature of being human and being alive: to explore, discover, and grow.

I agree, but if you look too far into things, you're liable to be looking at the backside of your own head.

Are you? Have I mischaracterized what you've said?

We feel/experience (Observe) first. Then we come up with a logical explanation afterwards (by hypothesizing what it happened, testing that hypothesis in an experiment, analyzing the results of the experiment, and drawing conclusions from that analysis).

Is that so farfetched? Is it so wrong that you are a practitioner of science even as you emphasize the important of religion? It is not a incorrect to be; I applaud it.

I am fine with being a practitioner of science. I think your definition makes every human experience into the scientific method, though.

That's almost cute, to ascribe the binary number system to the I Ching. And even to think that the I Ching as a source of divination. Hah. The I Ching, first of all, deals with hexagrams built from symbols for Yin/Yang, and draws a system of meaning. That Chinese bibliomancy later used the I Ching as a ouija board does not mean the I Ching itself, or the philosophical system it was written about, was a source of divination or magic.

Nice try, though.

Is it possible that you do not understand everything and other people's point of view may in fact be valid even if you don't 'get it'?

I got this relationship between the I Ching and the binary system from Leibniz, who invented the latter (along with differential calculus). He was quite excited about this discovery. I bet he said, "Ha" as well. This is from Wikipedia:

"In his article Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire (1703) Gottfried Leibniz writes that he has found in the hexagrams a base for claiming the universality of the binary numeral system. He takes the layout of the combinatorial exercise found in the hexagrams to represent binary sequences, so that ¦¦¦¦¦¦ would correspond to the binary sequence 000000 and ¦¦¦¦¦| would be 000001, and so forth."

Yin and Yang, the pa kua, chi kung, the five elements, the merdians. These are all part of Taoist metaphysics and they were used in what could be called magic.

This is probably your best example on what you meant. I originally thought you were misquoting Clarke, but I see you are not actually referencing him. I'll speak to this at the end.

Actually, I'm referencing Ouspensky.