Defending Reason

... yes, politics are usually vague, but it doesn't have to be so, it is not inherently vague, it's just that we've built these extensive belief networks in our minds and we won't easily let them be opened up for scrutiny, to be re-examined, because this might force us to reconsider the beliefs we hold dear, and that is usually a painful affair.

So we might opt to continue the intellectually vague life, or we may choose to be AWARE of our beliefs, to try to reexamine them constantly in light of the facts old and new, that become available to us, to question them constantly as any man of Reason ought to.

Nothing precludes any political statements to be statements of fact and not some shamanic ritual of vague incantations of popular and accepted beliefs widely held by the general public, like in Old Europe that Israelis are ruthless occupiers who bomb UN schools at will. But to question that accepted dogma we ought to have a bit of intellectual bravery in our pursuit of the factual truths - and yes THERE ARE factual truths, they might not have nice and short formulations, they might involve doing a substantial factual research, going into various diverse statistical details of the situation on the ground AS IT IS, and not as it "ought to be" to fit nicely to the preconceived notions we have so laboriously built in our minds - which in reality we usually just do to fit in with the groups we care to fit in with, anyway. We are the group animal, after all, we thrive in groups and whither in isolation.

But facts are facts, and it is usually our faults at having failed to pose a proper question that make us incapable of discovering them. It's like in Prolog to formulate a problem correctly is to have a solution for it.

IOW, when we don't know what we're talking about, it's hard to ask the right question, and even harder to understand an answer, even when you hear it. :-)

So we ought to work hard at formulating our beliefs rigorously, tracking "support structure" of evidence for each, ready to re-evaluate whether we were giving too much trust to unreliable sources, and whether we have ignored truth just out of inconvenience. And we must do it all the time. It's like an automatic theorem prover in uncertain environment. Or we can choose to be cats. Totally immersed in their immediate surroundings, acting on a whim, totally unaware of themselves, having a life of it.

Being "natural". I.e. savages.

But it looks to me more and more that people don't like to think for themselves. We like to understand, yes, but we'll do anything to avoid actual hard factual thinking.

That is because "human intelligence" is little more then pattern recognition, simplistic views of simplified Reality. To "recognize" old known patterns, to force the situation to fit the vaguely familiar images it revokes in us, even when poorly fitting, is easy, but to learn new ones is hard. Each of us have already assembled our respective compiled recognizers, and to install new ones into the system is costly if at all possible.

That's just the way we turned out to be at the end of 100,000 years of evolution.


---
learning new patterns trough Reason - deducing the hidden realities - backward chaining - the Unnatural way - using cortex -

human creativity - the Natural way - using deeper, older brain structures - creating patterns in advance - forward chaining of sorts - building up models TOWARDS possible realities - in massively uncertain situations of massive factual deficiency - imagination a crutch until we've got facts and statistical analysis and full scientific comprehension - selecting and thus learning few new patterns out of the generated (imagined) lot - when the fit is discovered and utility is clear.

thus the great responsibility and danger that comes with unrestrained imagination and creativity when it refuses to put a check on itself of correspondence with Reality, when it runs amok, runs free from Reality - away from Reality.

To put it simply, beware the Artists who've turned to politics. Prefer Logicians instead.