Re: Words and memes: criteria for acceptance of new belief or meme

From: Philip Jonkers (philipjonkers@prodigy.net)
Date: Mon Feb 18 2002 - 20:07:25 GMT

  • Next message: Richard Brodie: "RE: Words and memes: criteria for acceptance of new belief or meme"

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    From: "Philip Jonkers" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net>
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    Subject: Re: Words and memes: criteria for acceptance of new belief or   meme
    Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 11:07:25 -0900
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    Richard:
    > > Wade, for instance,
    > > has supreme faith in empiricism and is unwilling to consider models that
    > > lack empirical testability. I would guess he is happy with his faith
    > > and the
    > > results it produces in his life.

    Wade:
    > Indeed....
    >
    > Nice to know.
    >
    > However, I'm more than willing to consider all sorts of things. As a
    > result, I haven't settled upon any faith that produces results in my
    > life. Then again, I really don't think there are any models (qua models)
    > that can't be tested empirically. Supernatural things don't model.

    Oh yes there are, string theorists do it all the time!

    In general you can model (a theoretical process)
    some phenonemon, be it natural or unnatural, supernatural, until you drop.
    One has all the liberty one
    has to use their fantasy in any which way to create and formulate their
    model. Religion, cults
    and other pathological idealogies are founded on
    fantasy. But it's ultimately experiment that decides whether or not a model
    is plausible or tenable.

    Philip.

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