Interesting reading list! (Have you read them all?)
There is so much knowledge out there that covers so much stuff that we rarely hear about.
Our brains are so maleable that we do create our own reality depending on what we read, watch and take on board.
No one is really right and no one is really wrong. (Although some folks ego's tell them differently)!

 

All of these are just beliefs like known religions. They enlighten us but just as to the authors' minds not the real facts.

This is my belief:
No one knows what the real fact or facts are and never will no matter how he/she does or what way he/she chooses.

 

It's common for people who wish to boast of being a prolific reader to embellish the truth, but I can honestly say, I have read every one of these books, some more than once. It was a necessary antidote to the kind of "charismatic" reading that alternative science offers. We all long for hidden mysteries, secrets that once uncovered will remove the veil of reality and grant us access to unimaginable powers. To have power over gravity, to travel in time, to access new dimensions. How enticing! But it's a fools errand and the books I read having been that fool for ten years brought me clarity. The world as it really is, is a remarkable place. From the sub atomic level to the wonders of a supernova that we can observe despite its occurrence dating back 13 billion years. I choose this world. The one we have. Not a fanciful one that requires belief to exist.

 

You are missing the point. You can choose to believe The Book Of Mormon and have faith that it is truth or you can read a book that simply guides you through a process of asking questions in a manner that grants you insights into whether an hypothesis is likely or unlikely. Such a book does not ask you to believe anything.

 

Please help me to not misunderstand you. Next time you use the word 'belief' please tell us which bit of this diagram you are talking about. It might help remove some of the ambiguity.

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Edit: had to re-host picture after tinypic host disappeared.

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2019

These books do offer an alternative reality and possibly a reality closer to the one that most people have grown up to believe!
I personally don't read books so much as research alternative narratives online. I totally swerve MSM as I have learned that it is all propaganda and social engineering!
I believe that we are so much more than we are told and like yourself, research in my own way to find answers that shape the kind of world that I want to be a part of!

 

Can you please cease obsessing over the meaning of this one single word? If an astronomer held a press conference announcing the possibility of an as yet unknown moon causing anomalies in the rotation of other moons and when asked "are you proposing that there may be an undiscovered moon orbiting Saturn?" and he responded "yes, I believe it is possible" would you pounce on him demanding he elaborate on the word believe? It's not an uncommon way of expressing yourself and your constant interruptions every time somebody utters the word "belief" are frankly simply interrupting the flow of ideas. If you wish to open a discussion relating to etymology, lexicology and semantics, then by all means I will be only too happy to participate.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 14, 2019

>.."would you pounce on him demanding he elaborate on the word believe?"
Of course I would not. But I would ask him to elaborate upon what evidence he has to support his belief. I would want to know whether his belief was rationally sustainable, and I would expect him to automatically know that these were good concerns.
If he demonstrated that he did not know the difference between rational belief, irrational belief, rational disbelief and irrational disbelief then I would probably stop listening to him, because he has no way of validating his beliefs and apparently no concern to do so.
If you can't take these distinctions seriously and be clearer about when you are accidentally misusing them then you have a serious blind spot, which is a shame because the stuff I've seen you writing is usually pointing in a good direction, and you don't need that blind spot.
Please don't get frustrated or indignant about a suggestion that I sincerely believe would help you express things less ambiguously. Don't be the good scientist that's held back by not understanding his own philosophy.

 

People can follow their own paths in life and hold the beliefs that matter to them!
What gives you the right to rubbish that and hold it up for ridicule?
You hold your own beliefs I Imagine?
Would you like them rubbished?

 

Or, you can be a scientist and not believe anything at all. Science doesn't require belief and functions in the absence of it - you can't prove or disprove the existence of anything. That is why there can be Christian scientists, or you can be an atheist. That being said, society has only been starting down a scientific trend 200 years ago. There's a lot we still don't know or understand.

 

Science is based on theory and is always being corrected accordingly.
I sometimes think that science is actually a buffer between reality and fiction!

 

You said..> People can follow their own paths in life and hold the beliefs that matter to them!
Is that advice universal? I seriously doubt it. Of course, believe what you like, but the idea that all beliefs are equally valuable is nonsense. Some beliefs are just 'bad news' and 'dangerous', especially some irrational beliefs. For example... I believe that depriving kids of education just because they're female is an abomination. And yet some woolly minded intellectual will no doubt reprimand me for daring to judge."Who am I to judge a culture that prefers to deprive girls of going to school?" I'll be told to "mind my own business" even if that means I have to be as morally bankrupt as the liberal intellectual neglecting the child abuse.

You said..> What gives you the right to rubbish that and hold it up for ridicule?
There is not one drop of ridicule in my comments. They are all constructive comments.

You said..> You hold your own beliefs I Imagine?
Of course, and they're always being modified and upgraded to the best of my ability, and I actually practically work on preventing too many cognitive biases from getting in the way of that.

You said..> Would you like them rubbished?
Yes please! Please do improve my errors, my faults, my mistakes, just be coherent while doing it. If I have a bad idea, and it deserves to be dismantled, and you dismantle it, I will say 'thank you'. I won't allow my irrelevant personal indignation to get in the way of me learning something.

and previously you said...> "No one is really right and no one is really wrong."
Now that is..
- factually correct with regard to 'social reality';
- borderline delusional with regard to 'brute-fact reality'
Do you know the difference?

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2019

May I ask the following question? What are we talking about at this point and is it still relevant to the various diatribes forwarded by our colleague Zealious? I fear we have strayed into a generalised debate on what constitutes the various linear descriptors from the utterly nonsensical to that which encompasses absolute fact, which then embraces fields of study that cover philosophy and science and everything in between, I which case we will never arrive at a point of total agreement, thus rendering all discussion ultimately a mere exercise in mental table tennis. Your serve.

 

Good summary, and good question, and one that I assume might generate many varied answers.
My answer (my personal bias) does refer to the diagram I previously posted.

- I think all of us are permanently (day to day, minute to minute) navigating around that diagram, whether we are aware of it or not.
- I think the original poster started out clearly in the upper left quadrant (i.e., a big pile of irrational beliefs).
- I think many responders (including me) instinctively dislike that upper left quadrant (irrational beliefs) and want to contest them wherever they arise (simply because irrational beliefs are so detrimental to everyone's well being)

Then two subconscious strategies emerge...
1) Some people argue rationally against 'the contents' of the expressed irrational beliefs.
I usually regard that as a valiant but doomed strategy. Subscribers to irrational thinking are just playing a different game.
2) Some people prefer to argue about the more general issues instead of the specific contents, e.g., to draw attention to the fact that we all have belief systems, that there really are 'better beliefs' and 'worse beliefs', that we are all trying to improve our beliefs, that science is one of our best collective belief systems, etc. It's usually implicit that we're condemning irrational beliefs.

It's hazardous to present any of that as philosophy because 'for no good reason' people think philosophy is pretentious (and some of it really is!), but whether by accident or otherwise, a lot of people have been ''doing philosophy' here, they've been expressing interesting philosophical thoughts as a result of being provoked by the original OP presenting a barrage of irrational beliefs.

En route, lot's of genuinely nice curiosities got tossed in, e.g., G String - list of carbon dating techniques, notsoloud - the booklist, and a whole bunch of interesting opinions.

I'd be the first to admit that the entire thread, on the face of it, has got bugger all to do with making music or enjoying music tech, but a thread like this can still be relevant to everyone, given that we all live minute-by-minute with figuring out what our beliefs mean, and we should all be paying more attention to where they come from, whether they are rational or not, and whether we should revise them.

Stuff like this might even help us all be clearer about 'when opinions are the most relevant' versus 'when facts are the most relevant' (that's neglected philosophy) e.g., If we want to argue about "this DAW is better than that DAW", are we always clear about the difference between expressing our preferred workflows (where opinions do matter and we should express them) or describing factual stuff like "you can't run Logic X on Windows 10 unless you use a virtual machine" (brute facts, correct vs incorrect, where opinions are irrelevant).

P.S. Nothing wrong with the tennis analogy. In tennis each player is trying demolish the opponent's serves - can be a lot of fun but it is a zero sum game. Now imagine a different analogy, you're rock climbing and you are tied to the other person. The next move that either of you makes might be life or death. In that situation you want really good ideas, from you or your partner, you really don't care who comes up with those good ideas. Conversely, you definitely don't hold back from shredding a bad idea irrespective of whether it's your idea or your partners, and you don't care who shreds that bad idea, you just really want the best idea, and some ideas really are better than others.

notsoloud.. you said..> "which then embraces fields of study that cover philosophy and science and everything in between, I which case we will never arrive at a point of total agreement, thus rendering all discussion ultimately a mere exercise in mental table tennis"
Yes - but that's really OK! so the only word I disagree with is 'mere'
If I ask myself a question, I don't always immediately try to answer it, I prefer to dismantle the question first. Sometimes I end up realising that I was just asking the wrong question, and I'll never get an answer, but what I've now got instead is three much better questions. That's OK, the world doesn't owe me any answers.
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Edit: had to re-host picture after tinypic host disappeared.

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2019

A thoroughly enjoyable read. How I wish you lived within walking distance of the nearest pub, where joined by Smoove Grooves, we could begin a mind bending and boggling exchange of subjects ranging from the minutiae of being a living conscious being to topics encompassing the possible nature of our universe, string theory, m theory, eleven dimensional multiverses and our ultimate fate in what may or may not be clumsily called a hereafter. Oh, and a pint or two.

 

I would drink to that.

 

Well we all say stuff and we are all trying to find answers to this crazy thing called life. We agree and disagree about stuff and that's okay! As long as we keep on moving forward despite our differences! Peace!

 

Rationality is for getting to great confidences and acting confidently and expecting that everything happens as the rational mind thinks.

Confidence:
The belief that you are able to do things well or that someone or something is good and that you can trust them.

Expectation:
A feeling or belief about the way something should be or how someone should behave.

Belief:
The feeling that something is definitely true or definitely exists.

Definite:
Having no doubts that something is true.

Doubt:
A feeling of being not sure whether something is true or right.

Rational:
Based on sensible practical reasons rather than feelings.

................

Everything reaches the feelings and I don't know whether the rational mind can stand it or not.

 

I like where this is pointing (or where I think it's pointing) I'm not sure how I should interpret your last sentence but if it's a way of highlighting conflict between rationality and feelings then I like it a lot.
What it reminded me of is this...
What is a cognitive bias
Wikipedia List_of_cognitive_biases
I think it's an incredibly humbling experience (or should be) for any of us to read about 'cognitive biases'; highly recommended for everyone. It's so tempting for each of us to think that we are rational.
Even weirder, we all think we have 'just the right amount' of rationality. Bizarre, that none of us ever feel like we need more of it. Where does that misplaced confidence come from?
And then we read about cognitive biases and we still manage to think "Well ok, now I understand the idea of a cognitive bias but I'm still a rational person and I just suffer from a few cognitive biases now and then". That misplaced confidence is just another cognitive bias.

So, "I think I'm rational with a few cognitive biases". Well no, that's my hard-wired delusion; the reality is way different. It's more like my mind is 'constructed from' (rather than 'infected with') cognitive biases, and it's a miracle that rationality ever emerges at all. Even when we are being rational, that rationality is totally eclipsed by our cognitive biases, and it's almost impossible to see them happening.
In so far as cognitive biases can be labelled as 'feelings' then I'm agreeing with what I think @Radioactive Fallout might be saying.
Our feelings drive us vastly more than our little glimpses of rationality do, and we're almost blind to it.

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2019

Just gonna leave this here for inspirational thoughts to occure

Man is just a memory. You understand things around you by the help of the knowledge that was put in you. You perhaps need the artist to explain his modern art, but you don't need anybody's help to understand a flower. You can deal with anything, you can do anything if you do not waste your energy trying to achieve imaginary goals.

“Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” R. D. Laing

“We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world -- mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.” R. D. Laing

“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.” Jean Dubuffet

“Reality is the #1 cause of insanity among those who are in contact with it”
“Sanity in a world of insanity is insane”
"A Perfect rational mind is a insane mind"

“Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.”
― Terence McKenna