Models and Ideas
 

I don't like beliefs. I always challenge others beliefs, even if I happen to agree with them, and I try to stamp out any i find in myself.

I like models and ideas.

I think a true key to understanding is the riddance of belief, and the fostering of models and ideas.

Beliefs are fixed. Models and ideas are flexible.

Once you have a belief, its very difficult to change or get rid of. So, if do you happen to be wrong, its very likely you will continue to be wrong, and will reject information to the contrary by closing off to it. If an M&I becomes outdated or offtrack, it easy to change or simply discard.

Belief is based on emotional reasoning and wishful thinking to an unhealthy degree over rationality.

Models and ideas come from imagination and experience.

Beliefs are static. Models and ideas evolve.

Beliefs are not to be questioned. M&I can only work if they are questioned.

Beliefs, models and ideas are not to be confused with knowledge, which is the 'stuff' that they work with..

What do you think?

It occurs to me you have expressed 7 beliefs you have about beliefs, models and ideas ;)

How about you give an example of something you consider to be a 'belief' (other than, say, God) and something you believe to be a 'model' and say in what way they meet your criteria?

I like your sig by the way and it might find itself onto a facebook status very soon :D

I expressed ideas, not beliefs. ;) There is no 'Truth' here, only consideration...

Can't do it. I can only illustrate the difference between the two. The reason is that a belief and an idea look the same on the surface.

For example, lets say I make the statement "Obama is a good (or bad) president."

This might be an idea or a belief. No way to know without clarification.
The difference is in how and why I think what I think. Whether I cling to my thought. Whether i'm open or closed to considering that i might be wrong.

If I have an emotional attachment, then it's probably a belief. If I genuinely seek to know, even if it means letting go of a particular viewpoint, then its probably an idea...

here's another way to put it.

If I think that what I think is exactly true, i.e completely corresponds to whats 'out there', then its a belief.

If its a provisional acceptance held as accurate until better data, experience and reasoning come along, its an idea.

This is crude and simplistic, but might help.

Its just an idea, anyway...

I think it's important to have this quality of being able to look at your own beliefs objectively rather than using your beliefs to screen out any threats to them, like the traditional dogmatist does. However, I think you're just using a different word for something that is still a belief.

You might like this little clip.

Zizek on love, deconstruction and "cynicism" - YouTube

He picks on deconstructionist language, and yet I do see the value in such language as it can be more accurate when that's necessary. I believe however that it's a mistake to think we don't still believe with that same strong naivety. It's only hidden deeper.

For example check out recent thread:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/s...blowing-7.html

You'll notice that while the OP is rigidly dogmatic on the surface, almost everyone else seems just as rigidly dogmatic but their dogma is hidden behind screens of science, tolerance, or humor. If you are objective enough to see this of course. It's a tendency for our assumptions to be invisible since they do their work in the background.

A belief is a belief.

The content or style might be different, but the underlying mental construct is the same.

I did, I don't think I'm deconstructing, and I love you.

I really don't think so. That's my point. I know it will open a can of worms to bring formal scientific method into it, but so be it. A scientist can accept quantum mechanics as being 'true' without ever 'believing' it.

At the heart of this is fundamental thought process, the mechanics of thinking that I want to explore, not semantic philosophical nitpicking, which is what i think separates it from deconstructionism.

lol, reminds me of a joke.

Seem that there was a family legal dispute that made it necessary to exhume Mozart.
They dug him up, opened the casket, and there he was, erasing sheet music furiously.
Amazed, they asked 'what are you doing?






decomposing...

Dare I equate this all to semantics, i.e. just a difference of words rather than underlying opinion?

You are saying a scientist doesn't believe in quantum mechanics even though he "accepts" it as being "true."

What do you call belief then but the acceptance of certain things being true?

You say in your OP that beliefs are fixed while models and ideas are flexible.

However, I would say that even though a belief might have a short shelf life, it doesn't negate the fact that it is still a belief. A scientist in my mind is someone who uses a certain methodological process for determining what is true. This methodology often proves previous truths false and the scientist naturally tends to develop a heavy cynicism in his language.

(My favorite book on cynical language btw is called Quantum Psychology.)

Anyway, for example the scientist will say something like "based on the best available data right now, this appears to be true." By phrasing his belief in this way he exposes his assumptions allowing the truth to be flexible should the assumptions prove faulty at some future point, however, in the mean time these assumptions are still operating in the belief. He still believes quantum physics is true until his assumptions are proven false.

Then you'll have the alternative. "The Bible is absolutely true."
This is a belief as well, however, the assumptions are hidden from language and therefore awareness. There is no tying of the statement to some scientifically derived formula though, so the assumptions will likely go unchallenged, and therefore there's no real need to explicitly state the conditions upon which the belief rests.

I think this is really an issue of language and the process of truth finding. Scientists and skeptics use some sort of underlying empirical process for their beliefs, and therefore those beliefs are always subject to change when new data arises. So called dogmatists have beliefs that aren't subjected to an empirical process and therefore don't need to change.

However, the same belief structure hard coded into the human's mind is being used. Think of it like the CPU and computer software. If you were to replace an old program with a new program every single day, it wouldn't mean the computer isn't still using underlying machine code. The CPU is just looking for some code and it will execute it. Likewise your mind will execute your programming the same whether it's modern science or writings from the cults of ancient egypt.

7 is a conservative count.

Well you better get over your issue with beliefs. It’s not possible to live life on Earth without beliefs. They are everywhere. You believe your front door will lead outside. You believe that colored thing is a car. You believe the road continues. You believe you wrote a post in English.

Bodi, Please reconsider and rephrase what your issue with beliefs is.

No. I know the front door will lead outside.

No. I know that colored thing is a car.

etc.

Knowledge consists of verifiable fact. Beliefs and knowledge are not the same thing.

That's true. So i guess you still use windows 3.5 because it uses the same underlying machine code as 7?

and I still love you...

You actually don't know any of that, for certain. What you have are beliefs based on the presumption that past experience will remain true in the future. But that isn't an absolute fact, it's an educated guess. For example someone could have bricked up your door or you could be having the hallucinations of cars or be dreaming, any of which would make what you think you know, false. Therefore, they are beliefs, not facts.

Then you have the whole realization that the things you see are in fact only mental images or representations of sensory data and don't have to relate in any absolute way to an external world. So in a very real and honest scientific sense, cars don't even exist as such. It's only a mental picture in the human mind.

There's a whole field of psychology dealing with perception and the main conclusion is that people are just really dumb. Not some of us, but all of us by the nature of our mind. There are just stacks upon stacks of biases of perception we engage in constantly. Conscious beliefs are only one aspect of that.

Haha, and I you. :d

The content of the code is irrelevant. The point is the CPU just executes code, whatever it is.

Likewise your beliefs just execute as a perceptual filter regardless of what they are, even if they are in a very complex scientific or tolerant style.

Just as a so-called dogmatic Christian won't be able to process without distortion that "The Bible might not be true," a so-called tolerant agnostic won't be able to process without distortion that "The Bible is definitely infallible."

Beliefs will filter perception regardless of what those beliefs are.

Bodi, check your mailbox for a great quote regarding your insights:)

Don't do it!



It's a trick!

The whole dealy is constantly flexing and changing and that includes beliefs as well. Identification with any of these is merely serving to keep distraction in place. Unless you are trying to count how many ideas and models you can create. In that case, you may have a long way to go.

"Those philosophers who have denied the existence of Matter have not wished to deny that under my trousers I wear pants." - Wittgenstein on Moore (Quoted in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis 1957).

So you ARE saying Windows 3.5 is just as good as Windows 7.

:confused: Those kind of "arguments" if you can call them that aren't exactly convincing to myself who takes the problem seriously. I think the evidence now adays is so incredibly on the side of skepticism I can only assume people who subscribe to Naïve realism just haven't really spent any time considering the alternative.

Of course not. Upgrading your belief system is a good thing to do. I'm just saying don't pretend a belief system isn't still a belief system. You're going to be biased. Rather than denying this, know where it is so you can account for it. Knowing your limitations is a strength, not a weakness.

There two sides to "believing". One is where you mind captures a logical thought (which is a belief) and tries to mold life according to that thought. Traditional religions are constructed this way and don't know that.

The other side of believing is part of a quest to figure out life, as in "who am I?" or "What is life for?", etc... There is stuff in life we see and the rest we logically guess about and that becomes our beliefs. Life is driving this belief system, not the belief system trying to drive life.

Life is driving this because innate to our being is curiousity, wonder, and creativity. We naturally seek to learn and grow. So life is driving this process of trying to understand life. That's really healthy and keeps like fresh, not dull and repetitive as it is when we "practice our beliefs" in an attempt to mold life to some belief.

That's the nuance in this discussion. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the belief or real life? But that answer we know...life came first and beliefs must follow life and that keeps the mind as a servant to help us instead of a master, controlling us against our true nature.

Logic is a tool, not a life. :d

In fact ideas, beliefs, models all string together though on the surface they are different. Of course you can classify or relate and find so many striking difference but at bottom they are not different and your beliefs become your ideas and your ideas are likely to be your faiths and a particular faith holder is likely to be your role model. If you for instance study Marxism and this ideal becomes your idea and thought and later on you try to stick to this ideal and you will have a great faith in Marxism thought that was an idea.

There is no clear demarcations to segregate one from the other. They are interwoven though externally they run in different directions and at some point they may meet.

What do I think?

I think I am sure glad :d my Beliefs, Ideas & Model of the world,
aren't anything like yours as those statements are easily proven wrong.

Beliefs are easy to CHANGE, if you know how... ;)

bodi,

I have recently learned that beliefs and ideas are the exact same thing and that it is the way we choose to use them that differentiates them.

A belief/idea will be fixed or flexible depending on what we choose it to be.

Once we have a belief/idea, its very difficult to change or get rid of... only if we choose to hold on to it so tightly.

I do actually agree with you and i understand what you mean though. i choose to let my beliefs/ideas evolve and to be forever changing, always flexible, never fixed, i am always ready to let them go if they are proved wrong.

So I've been mulling this all over. I think a good analogy here is rectangles and squares.

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. All beliefs are ideas, but of course not all ideas are beliefs.

A belief is an idea that has been accepted as True. It's an idea that's believed. Therefore it becomes a special and distict category of idea, one that deserves it own label - belief.

An idea that is not yet a belief (because it's not believed, not accepted as 'true' or 'real', just possible or interesting or useful) is therefore, by definition, NOT a belief, just an idea, and it is misleading to say it is the same as belief. Sloppy thinking.

It is of enormous practical value to examine the difference between ideas and beliefs and to formulate methods to understand our own.

Good point bodi.

:):)

And then go out and test the beliefs vs. trying to convert the world to hold them, too. With intelligence we have to see our beliefs as hypothesises and not fixed declarations. That innately keeps us open and humble vs. closed and controlling.

That's a great point.

The brain works in a certain way, whether you like it or not. You can change your beliefs, but you cannot change the way your brain works.

Beliefs are formed, whether you like them or not. Once you have certain ideas, it is not up to you not to turn the ideas into beliefs, as that is how the brain works.

So I think it makes no point to theorise "beliefs, ideas and models". Our brains tend to make things far more complicated than they really are. Different people response to those words differently, and it will take very considerable efforts just to define what "belief", "idea" and "model" are in the first place. Einstein said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler".

But I guess I can understand where you come from. A lot of our beliefs are simply illusions (false beliefs), and you have realised that, hence you made your post. In the end, it is about how being mindfull of our thoughts, having an open mind, "watch" and "reflect" instead of "judge" and "conclude", and not to accept anything without evidence (like most if not all religions are beliefs without evidence).

yep.