I am very much against any kind of rational thinking, it gets through my posts and I need to clarify things (this is from a person which does computer programming all his life – how reasonable!). Most people think that the brain is a rational or logical instrument and that the way they think is because that is how it works and that is the proper way of thinking. So they live with the belief that the world can be understood by using ratios and by using logic. Unfortunately this is a destructive way of thinking and unfortunately probably 99,9% of people in the world operate like this. It is a primitive mammalian brain tool. This is ONLY a way of thinking, one of many tools inside your brain.
It takes one single moment of clarity to destroy rational thinking once and for all. The tower of logic, reasons, beliefs and understandings of the world and yourself, that you have carefully constructed all your life, can be taken down in one moment. This happens instantly, once you understand it, it starts a chain reaction inside of your brain. It is a brain-change. Because the brain is opposed to any kind of radical change there is no easy way to do it. You have to want it to happen. Why would you want it, I leave that for you to think about…
All beliefs created out of reason do not really serve you. They are created by education, media, books, culture, history, your relatives, society – in two words by other people. It doesn’t take much time to realize that if something is created by other people and you carry that around with you, it does NOT serve YOU. This means any kind of understanding you carry around with you like: religion, morality, ideas about bad/good, knowledge of who you are, who are others, your relations to other people.
Have you ever pondered why in the world would you feel less than someone else? Like for example you meet a higher status person (like a celebrity, or authority like a policeman).
Why does he have higher status?
Because you gave it to him.
Why did you give it to him?
Because you BELIEVE he has higher status.
And you probably have a perfect reason to believe why that person is higher in hierarchy than you.
Detrimental beliefs, the ones that do not serve you are created in the mind, by rational thinking. The BIG problem with rational thinking is that whenever you are thinking about a subject or question you want to answer, that subject/question imposes its reality on you. You can see how evil this is when you watch politicians debating. The one that knows this will ALWAYS win. This is why smart politicians never answer a question straightforwardly and rationally.
To see how this works look at this perfect example. I ask you the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?”. Try answering this question directly, yes or no, in front of the court without going to jail for the answer you provide!
This question presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question answers for you in a way which you wouldn’t like. Since this example is a yes/no question, there are only the following two direct answers:
“Yes, I have stopped beating my wife”, which entails “I was beating my wife.”
“No, I haven’t stopped beating my wife”, which entails “I am still beating my wife.”
So how do you get out of this situation without getting your ass busted?
The problem is the more you think about it the worse it gets. There is no way to answer this question correctly if you have imposed the reality of this question and you are trying to give a reasonable answer. So what do you do?
You simply stop thinking and say whatever you feel like.
That’s all there is to it, that’s probably the whole point of this post haha! But this is not really funny because the reality is you get into these kinds of questions on a daily basis and they literally fuck up your life. In programming terms when you get into rational thinking what you’re doing is constructing an infinite while loop without an exit condition inside your own mind. There are no answers to be given this way, all you can do is make a system restart.
Zen Buddhists have a whole section of techniques which are only questions and riddles called koans. They are carefully constructed questions that get you thinking and if you ponder on one of them for a long enough time, you will finally catch yourself on the absurdity of what you’re doing. One of the best koans is in this little story about a monk.
A monk who, having failed to achieve “enlightenment”
through the normal Zen methods, was told by his teacher
to think of nothing but an ox. Day after day after day,
the monk thought of the ox, visualized the ox, meditated on the ox.
Finally, one day, the teacher came to the monk’s cell and said
“Come out here – I want to talk to you”.
“I can’t get out” the monk said. “My horns won’t fit through the door”.
I can’t get out…
At these word, the monk was “enlightened”.
This is why I say rational thinking will fuck up your life.
thats why thinking = bad
First comment ftw
Why you write this ? I understand, this is blog but what you want ?
Sorry, I am 14 and I speak english very bad
good luck…
So true.
One thing is for certain, don’t think in rules. Life is too short to waste it serving logic. Your mind is a vast and unlimited superhighway of information. One must always be on his feet, thinking, tinkering, questioning and creating.
Haha, very true MM. I had thought of this not that long ago while reading text on spiritual enlightenment through dmt.
Interesting stuff
Althogh i only read half of the blog i agree. And a policeman is not of a higher status than me, i think that they are one of the lowest people apart from homeless people and emos. And i’m only 13 years old
In your posts about Zarathustra and in this one you imply that you are only yourself by yourself and all interactions with other humans prevent you from being yourself. The truth is that we need other humans to be ourselves, because we are nothing but monkeys who copy each other’s behavior. If a homo sapiens baby is to become a human it needs to be raised in a society of humans. Imagine if you would put a new born baby in the middle of a deserted island with large enough supplies of baby food for it to survive its first years… who do you think this baby would grow up to be.. would it be a spiritually enlightened Zarathustra… or maybe more like a retarded totally f..ked up peanut brain monkey…
In your posts about Zarathustra and in this one you imply that you are only yourself by yourself and all interactions with other humans prevent you from being yourself. The truth is that we need other humans to be ourselves, because we are nothing but monkeys who copy each other’s behavior
I don’t know if I wrote that, but what I meant is that when you are alone – there is no self! You lose your self concept because there is no need for it. You don’t need a personality if you don’t interact with anyone. So I agree with you, we are just monkeys copying ourselves.
Why you write this ? I understand, this is blog but what you want ?
I have many reasons to write this, but why do you read it?
I’m a bit confused with this post. It seems you are against rational thinking and logic, yet you are programmer (whom solely relies on logic and rational thinking) Although i will agree it involves creativity which has no logic, the majority is programming.
//I have many reasons to write this, but why do you read it?
It’s not directed at me, i know. But i read your blog because I love your games.
Learning from someone else is a very effective way to get information. We are a prisoner of the physical structure of our brain so in conclusion we never can prove that some logic is “correct” at the end. But what do you want to do? Let your hormones or a cube let make the decision? I am happy that there is something like logic that lets me describe and sort the information i’ve get from other people or my own senses. Its clear for me like 1 and 0. The important thing is not to BELIEVE in something you hear. You have to agree with the fact that everything could be wrong what youre thinking. But you have to decide to which rules you want to agree with in your life to make the most decisions. My standard rule is logic. I also try to describe moral rules with logic and i think i can describe the most for me and tell you why i do something or not. Maybe thats not the right way. But im afraid of making the wrong choice if i cant describe it. It make me feel safe in a specific way. When i was young i disagreed with everything that other people told me in the first moment. I noticed that there are many things in the world are done because of the “monkey”-problem…
BTW: Sometimes i thought all others are like bots that someone had created, but i am the chosen one with a consciousness. Do you know that feeling? Its not a thought, its a strange feeling, can’t desribe it.
teh_ham Says:
I’m a bit confused with this post. It seems you are against rational thinking and logic, yet you are programmer (whom solely relies on logic and rational thinking)
I’m not throwing the whole idea into garbage but I’m in pain when I have to use it. I intend to write a post about how logic can screw up your programming, it should become more clear then.
yv3 Says:
But what do you want to do? Let your hormones or a cube let make the decision?
There are different tools, like using your intuition or emotions. It’s sort of a fuzzy logic if you know what I mean. Also it operates on an infinitely larger dataset, that you have no idea even exists. How you use one of those tools I described in my post “Living by your heart”.
Logic in itself is very limiting because as you said we are trapped in the physicality of our brain structure. Fortunatelly you’re one step ahead of the rest because you realize this fault, so you can always keep in mind that although it seems right it might not really be after all. This is much more effective thinking.
//I’m not throwing the whole idea into garbage but I’m in pain when I have to use it. I intend to write a post about how logic can screw up your programming, it should become more clear then.
Programming relies on logic! there is nothing else to it… unless you are talking about actually CREATING the game from scratch (in which case i entirely agree with you) then i can’t see a point in this post.
Logic is useful only in that it serves life, but life is not logic.
without emotions we wouldn’t make any decisions, as a truly logical, reasonable mind will fall into indecision… we depend on our emotions and take them for granted.
“In programming terms when you get into rational thinking what you’re doing is constructing an infinite while loop without an exit condition inside your own mind.”
i’ve had to ctrl-C my mental processes many times -_-
(forgive the double post; this article reeks with truth.)
@Sigvatr: why life is not logic? Can you prove that?
@namuol: emotions could be theorethically simulated by a logical machine. I
OK, ill shut up
Have you ever noticed that sometimes you do something better when you don’t think about instead of working it out? You see the brain is split into circuits like MM said and this rational circuit is actually like a ‘Virtual PC’ emulated in your brain. It is very accurate and everything is perfect because like a emulated PC it was design to be perfect. You brain is a neural network and (like in computer programming) it can adapt to any information you throw at it and it will learn the best and most efficient way. A PC has to be programmed, debugged and won’t be as efficient as a neural network. Read up more on them if you want to understand more.
What I am getting to is that when you not thinking of something your normal brain is controlling your actions. It may not be as accurate but it has more information to draw on, can learn faster and because it is not emulated everything takes the same time to calculate.
For example, when I first thought about left and right I had to think about which is which but now it is automatic. This is your normal brain working it out. When anything comes natural to you it is your normal brain not your rational brain that is doing the thinking. You know they always say go with you gut feeling. That gut feeling is your normal brain working.
You don’t know how your normal brain is working it out but it just does it. Humans can think about themselves because they can see how their rational brain works because it is not the brain itself. All they really see is the rational part. Machines and animals don’t think about themselves because they don’t have this rational part in their brain. People have always tried to make a human like machine but they will never succeed because all they really see is the rational brain, not the rest. That is why robots we make are so logically orientated. They lack the normal brain that we can’t ‘see’ mentally and therefore can’t explain how it works to implement it.
Oh you’re so on to it Divan! It is exactly as an emulated PC, it’s just slower and trapped inside a far greater operating system. And I agree with the robots, that’s why robots still act so stupid. They get stuck in their logical decisions and they usually fail if you present them with a new task or environment. If logic would be so useful nature would take that route instead of the emotional route from beginning.
yv3 Says:
BTW: Sometimes i thought all others are like bots that someone had created, but i am the chosen one with a consciousness. Do you know that feeling? Its not a thought, its a strange feeling, can’t desribe it.
I think everyone has that feeling, it has been there since the day you were born. Some people choose to pursue it and make that a life goal. Me included. I even made a game about it :).
yes youre right of many kinds. But i can hardly believe that humans can’t describe the functionality of the “normal” brain in future. I think the biggest problem is the “size” of the brain, not the complexity. I visualize the “normal brain” to me as a set of matrixes with many variables. The resulting action is like a product of them that is generated in realtime. These variables must have been set in a longe range of time like in rational thinking to take effect. When you think rational you compare only some variables to get an result. Thats why it is sometimes better not to think and let the other part make the work for you. It is more effective and logical.
BTW: Since i read “Listen to your heart” my stats with knife getting better!;)
Yours truly
Yasan v3
oh MM posted, my last message was dedicated to Divan
@MM: Since i got older, that feeling has gone away. Maybe because the “normal” brain had taken more control of my behavior. In a certain manner im afraid of getting too much controlled of the “normal brain”. I dont want to be a result of an mathematical equation (see above). That gave me the motivation to be more rational than emo. My wife seems to be the opposite to me – I can feel her “heartbeat” all the time. Thats why i love her 😉 Im too tired today to stay on one point of discussion, sry
Generally women are not on the rational side, they use some other system :). The trick is to fight the fear you get from letting go of logic and trusting your intuition, I’m not giving specifics on how to do that cause I’m learning that myself.
// I’m not giving specifics on how to do that cause I’m learning that myself.
When you figure it out, share what you think it is. As much as I can see truth in your posts, I still can’t comprehend what I’m actually supposed to think :S.
You know scientist that invent something awsome and new they don’t only use logic but funky idea in general and the brain is like a blender all the experience in your life go in it and mixes up to give you some idea that have parts of all what you memorize that’s THE SOLUTION let your brain mix
// I’m not giving specifics on how to do that cause I’m learning that myself.
When you figure it out, share what you think it is. As much as I can see truth in your posts, I still can’t comprehend what I’m actually supposed to think :S.
Well how do you trust anything in general? I’m not selling anything here so I might tell you. Trust is just a prediction of what you’d like things to be. To have better predictions you must gain knowledge (like from reading my posts) and doing small steps to see that it actually works. I just notice that whenever I make a decision from the heart it always works out and whenever I make a rational decision like based on what someone says I should do I fail miserably. It’s that simple. So I figured why not share this with you, because this is powerful stuff.
rfreak: yeah it’s a blender:)
Kinda oversimplifying there. Assuming your logical processes will always fail you is wrong as it may help out in other ways. Assuming ur heart will always work is because its a human trait of “how can this benefit ME” so u may not like any other result you don’t really want.
What is the greater truth? Neither because it is a grain of sand in a desert in a time line created and maintained by humans.
The reasoni bother posting is a mystery . I barely know anyone here or anywhere and you don’t know a thing about me besides me liking soldat and ranting about my existence. Show me that i exist and ill show you my hand.
Why couldn’t Adam Sander press the pause button instead of the fast forward button. Didnt matter, it was all a dream. We’re all a dream. Just try switching on a light or reading small text. You can’t becuase it doesnt exist.
The matrix is a metaphor equal to God. You are all stuck until you die.
I find it easier posting this if as a stranger. Bless the internet. and dont take me seriously, i dont want to take anything seriously. Its a waste of brainpower because in the end it doesnt matter. OMG im stuck on a Loop, where is the exit condition to this thing called thinking. Id go on but i dont want to break anyrules if i do. lol rules. like it matters.
All equal in death no?
Most of our reason is based on emotion which isn’t reason at all. You should attempt to read some Buddhist literature. It’s not a religion like everyone thinks. The last atheist movement out there. Good thing about it is that you can think for yourself rather than read a bible filled with lies.
As for the last post, the Buddhists consider life as dream-like considering it’s all temporary. We could seriously just wake up in another life before we are aware of it.
Try this autonomous.
ctrl + alt + break
@yv3: Nothing we ever say about existence is in any way a fact.
yv3: I think humans may one day be able to create a robot that can think like us but I think it will be by chance or brute force and not by designing it. Humans won’t be able to even imagine how the brain works or even a very small part of it. It is too big and complex. I say complex because you can not only take a small part and make it because it is so intertwined with the rest of the brain.
Neural networks are the beginning of the brute force way to create a brain. They are trying to emulate the brain to the finest detail and hope someday a computer may land with a configuration and size that will be able to replicate the brain. That is why humans will not directly create this brain, if it ever happens, but computers will by chance.
The reason I think some/all (depending on your viewpoint) women are different is that their rational brain is smaller or less prominent than males. This resulted in males being more dominant because of their stronger advantage in certain fields. Women have changed over the centuries and their rational part may have grown. That is why women are doing more of the same things as men. Long ago they didn’t have a large enough rational part in their brain to be able to compete in this survival/economic struggle.
I am not saying that women were more stupid. That normal brain is very important and we have let it become less used. It may have brought us innovation but it has pulled us further apart because we thinking about ourselves and not other people. The rational part is still important but don’t let it take over your whole being. That is maybe why women are more social because they can ‘see’ in the long run (with their normal brain) that having connections with people and sticking together can help them.
Teenagers and women are usually very emotional. Some times if you ask a teenager or women why they did something they can’t explain it. Emotions are there to express your feelings and aren’t just random. You think they random because you don’t know where they come from. People usually say they come from the heart but this ‘heart’ is your normal brain and that something you did but don’t know why is because your normal brain told you to do it.
I am a religious person but just maybe this voice inside you or even God could be just this normal brain telling you something and I think this is where Buddhism is trying to go.
I agree about the brute force method. Another method would be to build a parallel computer network that could invent a human brain.
There’s a million explanations on what these feelings, voices are. A gnostic will say it is the holy spirit that is guiding him, a Buddhist will say it is the Tao or nature that is guiding him, an esoteric person will say he is guided by spiritual guides, a Christian will say it is Jesus talking to him, a psychologist will say it is the subconscious mind, a neurologist will say these are certain brain circuits communicating, a biologist will say it is the reptilian and mammalian brain in functioning, a new age person will say we can feel energy vortexes in our body called chakras, a person with high emotional intelligence will have many different names for his emotions, a person that doesn’t really think about this stuff will only say it is just the heart, love, gut feeling etc. etc.
I don’t know if you see this pattern. So many sciences and movements point to the same thing. I am no longer concerned about how to word this force, or what it really is (so I’m using the simplest form eg. heart). I guess we will never know what this is. I am only concerned about how to use it. And I’ve learnt not to rationalize it to use it effectively.
Logic is a tool, you can use it for many different tasks, however when you use it in real life you have to make sure that your model is close (the more important problem to solve, the closer it should be) to reality and consistent. Thats the problem, not the logic itself.
You can’t expect that logic will help you when:
– You make false / not proven assumptions. For example:
“No, I haven’t turned the light off” -> “The light is on.”
You’ve made unproven assumption about the state of light. You can say “The light is on” only when you are sure that someone had turned it on earlier (In your example: you have to start beating before you can stop beating).
– You make errors in the process of deduction.
– You make unclear statements (thats really easy when you make your statements in human language which is (at least all that i know of) context-sensitive).
@yv3, the point i was trying to make wasn’t that logic can’t be applied everywhere, but rather that the most crucial driving forces in our decision making processes are out of our control; that is, being rational is exactly that: rationalization.
The human brain works to keep us alive. Each decision it makes is made to ultimately benefit the brains owner, as that is how evolution works. As our brains are essentially an incredibly complicated biomachine (as in it does not just create from nothing, it merely reacts on information it recieves, hunger, desire for reproduction, danger, etc) it can only act on the information it recieves. It uses logic to make a decision, albiet a kind of ‘fuzzy logic’ in an incredibly effecient manner as, even though logic is perfect by definition, it requires perfect information to reach a perfect decision. When you decide to do something, your brain has already gone through all the information it has and come up with the most appropriate decision already, using this subconcious ‘fuzzy logic’. This is what the brain was made to do, and is what it does best. When you start to think over something, run through it ‘manually’ so to speak, you are much more likely to not include important bits of information while thinking about it as you are not using the bit of your brain best suited to the task. You will therfore make a worse decision. Because of this, the first decision we make, that gut instinct, is a lot more likely to lead to a better decision than thinking over something, unless while thinking over something you find some more information that relates to your decision. A recent issue of New Scientist showed some research that proved your point exactly MM, decisions made on the spot lead to a lot better results than when they are thought over. If i haven’t gotten my idea across, basicly i’m agreeing with MM.
ManFace: Exactly. Rationalization is something artificial, it does not directly benefit the survival of the organism, whereas the subconscious fuzzy logic is interested only in that and does it best. Basically you can find logical reasons why life sucks and has no meaning, so it obviously does not help your life.
shine on, you crazy diamond
There is no guidance when random rules.
A bad workman always blames his tools.
Which means that you blame rational thinking just because you don’t know how to use it for your benefit.
I don’t get why rationalization should be something artificial. Do you think your construct of “rational thinking does not benefit the survival of the organism” and “fuzzy logic loves me” is not something you made up artificially? Or is it that you are enlightened and I am not?
Something that I can’t get the point of is also, that you try to find _reasons_ why logic is bad, so others can understand your point. But isn’t logic necessary for this? You say “Basically you can find logical reasons why life sucks and has no meaning, so it obviously does not help your life.” Isn’t this a logical construct? You try using logic to discard logic.
Also just because you can find “reasons” why life sucks doesn’t mean that logic doesn’t help your life. What you do here is mix up emotions with logic. You can’t find reasons for life sucking with just utilizing your logic, because determining whether something sucks or not is subjective, whereas logic is best applied to more objective problems. If you think that live sucks, thats because you FEEL so, not because you have proper reasons derived from logic that makes you feel that way. Sorry but I really disagree with Michal on this matter.
And please stop making statements like “The human brain works to keep us alive” or “Rationalization is something artificial” “Because the brain is opposed to any kind of radical change there is no easy way to do it. ”
And just for clarification:
“Yes, I have stopped beating my wife”, which entails “I was beating my wife.”
“No, I haven’t stopped beating my wife”, which entails “I am still beating my wife.”
This is not true, if you say no, it doesn’t mean you are beating yor wife. Because logically you are asking whether someone has stopped doing something. So there are two cases you can’t distinguish: First case, he did not start beating, second he started beating and did not stop beating.
Also thinking that just because you say no, that that means that you are still beating you wife doesn’t have anything to do with rational thinking but rather with your fuzzy logic! Because you don’t do a check (a rational check) on your fuzzy conclusions you get into trouble.
I agree with Cranky.
MM you say that you will benefit most from decision made from the heart, by trusting your intuition? Have you heard about hypothermia? When a person starts suffering from hypothermia his intuition should say him “i have to keep warmth”, and so would rational thinking. However this all-praised intuition makes you do something completely opposite and leads to so-called “paradoxical undressing”. The outcome is obvious.
Animals don’t think rationaly, they don’t follow the rules of logical thinking. Humans however, have evolved and become smarter then animals. Not because they had better intuition, but because they droppped it in favor of rational thinking. Do you try to say that we should go back in evolution to animals state? I say – no thank you.
Decisions from the heart must be verified by rational thinking. Otherwise it’s not a decision but merely body reaction. Say MM isn’t it easier not to think rationaly? You just take answer from the heart and bah! – done, no worries; oh what a comfortable feeling isn’t it? The question is: can you really call it a DECISION?
The question is: is a rational decision really a decision?
This is a question of free will. If you make a decision based on a reason, is that really YOUR decision or is that a decision made by the REASON? Are you a slave to your reasons?
Have you heard about hypothermia?
Sleepiness is not an emotion. From what I know people get a very comfortable feeling when in this state. That does not come from the heart or from any intuition center that serves you.
Animals don’t think rationaly
My dogs make logical statements such as: if human opens fridge -> possibly something to eat. That is logic. Just don’t confuse language statements with logical thinking.
Cranky:
How would I communicate with you if I didn’t find reasons for why logic sucks? If you are operating on a rational level I can only speak to you in this context. If I say to you “follow your heart and go kick ass” it won’t mean nothing to you. First you must find a fault in the system. The trick is to find a hole in the logic that you created, just like the monk caught himself on what he was doing in his cell.
was that masturbating?
I agree with most of what you say MM. Especially the part about not elevating celebrities to a higher status, simply because they are richer etc. However, I do think one need to show a certain respect for authority (ie the Police), simply because they are exactly that, the authority (ie they have the guns, and the right to use them).
@Makron666
What are you trying to indicate by stating that your only 13? Are you trying, by any chance, to show off. Are you saying, “Look how cool I am, so young and already against the Po-lice.”?
Shut the f*ck up you stupid sh*t.
Sorry, I realize my post is extremely shallow compared to what others have been writing, but guys like Makron really piss me off.
Michal: I am not defending logic here, nor am I saying that rational thinking solves everything. What I try to say is, that “follow your heart” isn’t the answer to everything. Nothing is perfect, not even rational thinking, because it depends on really tight rules and gets overdoing it can lead to indecisiveness. On the other side “following the heart” isn’t the answer either. Or should I go ahead and kick everybody in the face that annoys me, just because I feel like it?
Sometimes you got to be “reasonable” (well I won’t try to define what it means to be reasonable here, it would take too long), and sometimes not being reasonable but following your “heart” might be required for one to be happy. Finding the balance is quite difficult though, cause reason tends to lead away from the “heart”, while your definition of heart tells you that you should trust your reason. But that is what your intelect is for…
But just following the heart and dismissing everything else is just utter bullshit, sorry to say that.
>>The question is: is a rational decision really a decision?
This is a question of free will. If you make a decision based on a reason, is that really YOUR decision or is that a decision made by the REASON? Are you a slave to your reasons?
I choose the reasons i follow myself. Decisions based on them are a reflection of my current priorites/believes.
>>My dogs make logical statements such as: if human opens fridge -> possibly something to eat. That is logic. Just don’t confuse language statements with logical thinking.
Athought it is logical behaviour it is not caused by logical thinking. Dog knows that opening a frigde might mean food. The dog knows it because it experienced it before, not becaouse it came to such conclusion. This was IMHO not very good example, but indeed animals can make some simple logical statements. It is heavy dependant on the species thought.
What kind of Dogs do you have? I love my 2 Beagles =D
Cranky:
Of course we need to find a balance because you might get yourself hurt if you do what you want, you will have enemies if you do it. But I wouldn’t be afraid of losing rationality completely, it’s too much stuck in our heads.
But just following the heart and dismissing everything else is just utter bullshit, sorry to say that.
Look, we can discuss this all day, but why do you claim this. Have you ever done something from your heart and failed? Like you really regret it now? From my experience even if I get hurt at the beginning in the long run I see that it was a perfect way to do things. I’m not claiming that you won’t ever fail if you follow your heart, but I do claim that in the bigger perspective it will be good even if you have no idea why.
Shuger Says:
I choose the reasons i follow myself. Decisions based on them are a reflection of my current priorites/believes.
Yes, but where do those priorities and beliefs come from?
All of them were transfered to you by other people, because of raising and education. As I said, if they were invented by other people they probably do not serve YOU.
The dog knows it because it experienced it before, not becaouse it came to such conclusion.
What is the difference? The difference between experience and thought… heh don’t answer that, it’s a topic for 2 books at least :).
autonomous:
What kind of Dogs do you have? I love my 2 Beagles =D
They are dogs of no kind :). They are called Muppet and Ira.
//Shuger Says:
//I choose the reasons i follow myself. Decisions based on them are a reflection of my current priorites/believes.
//Yes, but where do those priorities and beliefs come from?
//All of them were transfered to you by other people, because of raising and education. As I said, if they were //invented by other people they probably do not serve YOU.
Life’s too short to make all the mistakes necessary to learn how to live, so we need to be taught them all instead.
Michal you misunderstood me. I wasn’t speaking of being hurt, but about that following the heart isn’t following a bigger “good” as opposed to rationality.
It wasn’t just a claim, there were arguments that underlined that statement, but somehow I get the feeling that you won’t get to them.
I won’t post on this matter anymore as it seems it doesn’t take us anywhere. I am not defending rationality here, I am against rationality myself but because of other reasons and don’t propagade following the heart as it just isn’t THE answer to everything. I hope you will see this someday too. Following the heart will put you in a situation where you will be regarded as being selfish as well as overly possesive in the long run. There is nothing “good” about the heart, so there is no point in these “rationality vs heart” posts, as this is a utilitaristic way of trying to persuade people.
Just as I said: A bad workman blames his tools.
There is nothing wrong with rationality per se, but with the way one might use it.
semka
wbupe
This is absurd.
You can never get rid of logical thinking. One who is devoid of logical thinking is driven solely by instinct, impulse, thought and need of the moment. Such a person has no long-term plans, goals and can not endure minor pain today in order to be able to affrod luxury tomorrow. A person devoid of logic is a shallow, pointless and animalistic existence with no purpose than to eat, shit and fuck.
On the other hand, you’re not really taling about logic here. You’re talking about rules. Again, disobey the rules, kill people, rape ladies and mug businessmen on the streets according to whatever whim you may have at the moment and you won’t have a very happy life. You can’t avoid rules.
You can choose something else however. You ave a choice of whether you use the rules or the rules use you. You can be their creator, their slave or their friend who cleverly spints across moral, ethical, regulatory laws and arrives at success.
You can see how evil this is when you watch politicians debating
Careful, most politicians debate using rhetoric and emotional appeal, not rational thought. Aristotle exposed this hundreds of years ago.
“To see how this works look at this perfect example. I ask you the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?”. Try answering this question directly, yes or no, in front of the court without going to jail for the answer you provide!”
You contradict yourself, thats not a perfect example. Your using a logical fallacy to demonstrate that rational thought is erroneous. Thats actually a very good example of bad reasoning, or fallacious logic, and how you subsequently take it apart is an example of good reasoning, or rational thought.
Have you stopped beating your wife? is an example of a petitio principii argument, or “begging the question” fallacy, since the conclusion is asserted in the premise. It could also be considered a “False Dilemma” fallacy, as it is offering the two negative solutions as the only solutions possible.
So how do you get out of this situation without getting your ass busted?
You do exactly what you just did above, and use *rational thought* to expose the errors in the argument.
You simply stop thinking and say whatever you feel like.
I hope you do not. You seem to be a great rational thinker, and the erosion of rational thought and critical thinking in society really enables people who make use of rhetoric, propaganda and emotional appeal.
Consider rational thought and argumentative logic as “intellectual self-defense”. Its the basis of a healthy society. Unfortunately critical thought is not very popular among the masses, and society is rampant with propaganda, poor logic and disinformation. Network news headlines are taken at face value.
Consider GW Bush when he says “your either with us, or against us”. A classic example of a false dilemma, just horrible fallacious logic. Its also loaded with emotional appeal, implying it would be unpatriotic for an American to prefer a more moderate stance.
But its not just in politics. You can find many examples of bad logic by just watching a couple commercials on tv.
Critical thought needs to be encouraged if anything. A lot. Not discouraged.
And if rational thought is discouraging you, its most likely only because you are discouraged by the tremendous amount of bad logic flying around our society, as you have written above.
Nic: yes ” horrible fallacious logic” is the problem not logic by itself. The problem is, we’re not logical beings to begin with and we’re not really designed to make good use of it. You can spend your whole day thinking about a problem logically and you might get good results, but you can’t do that with EVERY single thing in your life. If you must make a quick decision, you cannot use logic, because there is no time NOT to fall into the trap of using horrible logic. This is also true for long-term goals, you can’t think about them rationally, because the future is unknown. What you are basing your reasons is predictions and statistics. Wrong. Logic is good if we have known data like 2+2=4.
geez, I’m a programmer myself and I have to admit I like Sodat very much and I’m surprized about your gloomy/dreamy/random way of looking at the world. You are a model for me as a programmer/dev (I’m working on games too) and your ideas inspire me.
Concerning preprogrammed ideas like religion/morality I recommend reading Nietzsche and for creative/random/lateral thinking try Edward De Bono, I think you’ll enjoy them
Cheers
Quoted: “Most people think that the brain is a rational or logical instrument and that the way they think is because that is how it works and that is the proper way of thinking. So they live with the belief that the world can be understood by using ratios and by using logic. Unfortunately this is a destructive way of thinking and unfortunately probably 99,9% of people in the world operate like this. It is a primitive mammalian brain tool. This is ONLY a way of thinking, one of many tools inside your brain.”
I don’t think you can really bypass that function though. When it comes to reason, logic is the main weapon of choice. Getting all emotional won’t solve an issue or make you come to an understanding. You can’t randomly assume something is correct either, that would be stupid.
In the end it all has to ‘make sense’ on some level or another. The brain is very much a tool when it comes to processing information. The actual process of ‘thinking’ really isn’t all that logical, nor absolute in thinking correctly, but trust me when I say the brain rather likes to think something makes sense than getting stuck before reaching or getting near that conclusion.
In worst case scenarios, the brain will just pretend to be right / correct. I agree THAT doesn’t necessarily makes sense, but when it comes to rules, laws, equations and problems, the very first thing the brain will try, is deal with it with logic.
Whether a person succeeds coming to an understanding depends on a lot of things, not the least his or her intelligence or experience with reasoning. I very much doubt the brain is able to come up with anything useful without depending on some form of logic… of which there are many.
Quoted:”This is also true for long-term goals, you can’t think about them rationally, because the future is unknown. What you are basing your reasons is predictions and statistics. Wrong. Logic is good if we have known data like 2+2=4.”
The brain is very fond of estimating probabilities when it comes to understanding the future though. It is in no sense a potential roadblock, after all we react to the present a lot more anyways, meaning thinking too much about the future doesn’t make much sense.
It does not mean we can’t deal with those unknowns at all though and we definitely can think rationally about the probabilities and opportunities involved. Even if probably only marginally useful, it doesn’t change the way we process the information or knowledge. It’s like predicting the weather, I am sure you can see the sense in that and the rationality involved, even though it’s not necessarily right.
Also, even though a whole different discussion, 2+2=4 isn’t really “known” data. If you dig deep enough into the core of math, you’ll see it’s nothing more but a simple choice. It actually doesn’t really make that much sense when you think about it, only because we decided to make it a rule it make sense, only because of it’s practical implication and use it makes sense. I’m sure you’re aware of this though.