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posted by janrinok on Friday June 08 2018, @10:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the smeared-electrons-and-live/dead-cats dept.

Review of a couple of recent publications, in The Boston Review

People are gullible. Humans can be duped by liars and conned by frauds; manipulated by rhetoric and beguiled by self-regard; browbeaten, cajoled, seduced, intimidated, flattered, wheedled, inveigled, and ensnared. In this respect, humans are unique in the animal kingdom.

Aristotle emphasizes another characteristic. Humans alone, he tells us, have logos: reason. Man, according to the Stoics, is zoön logikon, the reasoning animal. But on reflection, the first set of characteristics arises from the second. It is only because we reason and think and use language that we can be hoodwinked.

We'll get to the quantum mechanics in a bit.

The two books under consideration here bring the paradox home, each in its own way. Adam Becker's What Is Real? chronicles the tragic side of a crowning achievement of reason, quantum physics. The documentarian Errol Morris gives us The Ashtray, a semi-autobiographical tale of the supremely influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas S. Kuhn. Both are spellbinding intellectual adventures into the limits, fragility, and infirmity of human reason. Becker covers the sweep of history, from the 1925 birth of the "new" quantum physics up through the present day.

So, verifiable, experimental, experienced proof?

Not only can people be led astray, most people are. If the devout Christian is right, then committed Hindus and Jews and Buddhists and atheists are wrong. When so many groups disagree, the majority must be mistaken. And if the majority is misguided on just this one topic, then almost everyone must be mistaken on some issues of great importance. This is a hard lesson to learn, because it is paradoxical to accept one's own folly. You cannot at the same time believe something and recognize that you are a mug to believe it. If you sincerely judge that it is raining outside, you cannot at the same time be convinced that you are mistaken in your belief. A sucker may be born every minute, but somehow that sucker is never oneself.


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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @10:53PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @10:53PM (#690568)

    A sucker may be born every minute, but somehow that sucker is never oneself.

    Vote Democrat? [investors.com]

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  • (Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Friday June 08 2018, @11:28PM (3 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Friday June 08 2018, @11:28PM (#690579) Homepage Journal

    Look what they just did in High Tax, High Crime California. If you read Breitbart, if you read @FoxNews [twitter.com] you know what I'm going to say. They rigged the election by taking almost 120,000 voters off the list. Off the voter roles. Folks signed up to vote, they got the mail saying "you can vote, absolutely you're good to vote." They went to the polling place, they're not on the list. Like they don't exist, like they never existed. And if they were lucky, maybe the guy at the polling place says, "oh, but you can do the provisional." Trust me, they're not so lucky. Because, very hard for your vote to be counted when you do the provisional. And so many times they just throw those away. DISGRACEFUL! But Republican John Cox and Rep. Kevin McCarthy -- my House Majority Leader -- did amazingly. Because of me, because of my tweets. So did Devin Nunes, a true American Patriot the likes of which we rarely see in our modern day world. I put out a tweet for him too. And Dana Rohrabacher did beautifully. Let me tell you, he's stood by Russia through thick & thin. Great and true friend to Russia. Kevin McCarthy says Putin pays him, so funny! He made a very funny joke about that one. Obviously he's joking. They tried to steal the election. it didn't work, folks!! foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/05/nearly-120000-voters-reportedly-left-off-los-angeles-voter-rolls-on-crucial-primary-day.html [foxnews.com]