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sara
Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 1253 |
     
 Posted Friday, June 30, 2006 @ 12:21 PM
“Hot Springs in the Himalayas” was fascinating to me. I am looking forward to reading that interview with Anthony Flew. Years ago, I read about a study that somehow demonstrated the tendency of human beings to create meaning out of randomness. I wish I could remember it more clearly, but it involved having people interact with a computer that was programmed to randomly respond to their input. I think it was a game of some sort. Anyway, all of the people, not surprisingly, discovered patterns in events that were actually random and projected a human personality onto their “adversary”. I also read about how unknowingly biased most people tend to be. We accept evidence which is consistent with our belief but subject contradictory evidence to more careful scrutiny. I am told that that chronic gamblers tend to relive their wins and block out their losses. If they do think about their gambling history, their wins are almost always viewed as due to talent and the losses are usually re-categorized as “near wins.” I remember being depressed by this kind of research. For obvious reasons, it seemed to undermine my faith. Then, I read or re-read William James’ essay, The Will to Believe, where he asks “How is it that one can rightly have religious faith?” His answer is intriguing. I excerpted this summary from a review that I found on the Internet…. “First he puts forward a certain category of truth which can only be acknowledged if it is first believed provisionally in faith. For example, personal friendships cannot be established without first trusting a potential friend, a trust that as yet has no basis in absolute proof. If one trusts, proof can come and a friendship can be established. If one refuses to trust, no friendship is possible. James then suggests that religious affirmations are exactly of this sort. They cannot be decided beforehand, they can only be believed and then subsequently verified. Of course, an individual is free to not believe, but this is just as self-ratifying as believing and thus no more objective. As he says, “Skepticism, then, is no avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error ” This solution to a seminal religious question is eminently individualistic, pluralistic, pragmatic, and optimistic; in a word, American. It is individualistic and therefore pluralistic in that each person must make the decision for him/herself based on one’s own internal emotions and world-view: “Do I go with my fear of being wrong or my hope of being right?” It is pragmatic because one chooses the path to follow based on the potential outcomes of the two different paths: “What would I gain if I trusted and loose if I did not? Which choice, then, seems more personally beneficial?” It is optimistic because James believes that through faith one can establish a personal relationship with the “eternal aspect of the universe” It’s now a hundred years later, and I still think The Will to Believe is logical, relevant, and useful. If anyone hasn’t read it, I recommend it highly. |
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GreatGrandpaDog
Private
Gender: Male
Location: Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 2 |
Posted Saturday, July 1, 2006 @ 07:09 PM
Sara, Suddenly so much of my past seems bright and cheery, being awash with “near wins”. Eric, thank you for you most recent newsletter. I think arguments against Christianity that sweep all of faith under the rug of subjective perception seem to miss something important, and I think you have done very well in exploring some of this. Also, in your newsletter you mention the problem of finding a string of three consecutive sevens in the digits of pi. This made me curious, so I fired up Mathematica and found that in fact digits 1589–1592 (to the right of the decimal point) in the decimal expansion of pi are all sevens (see below). That’s not just three but four consecutive sevens. I believe it is mathematically reasonable to expect any number of consecutive sevens (or any other digit) if you look long enough. In[20]:= N[Pi, 1592 + 2] Out[20]= 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862\ 089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811\ 174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337\ 867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066\ 063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469\ 519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495\ 673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907\ 021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277\ 857713427577896091736371787214684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235\ 420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099605187072113499999983729780499\ 510597317328160963185950244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881710100\ 031378387528865875332083814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823\ 537875937519577818577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989380952572010\ 654858632788659361533818279682303019520353018529689957736225994138912497217752\ 834791315155748572424541506959508295331168617278558890750983817546374649393192\ 550604009277016711390098488240128583616035637076601047101819429555961989467678\ 374494482553797747268471040475346462080466842590694912933136770289891521047521\ 620569660240580381501935112533824300355876402474964732639141992726042699227967\ 823547816360093417216412199245863150302861829745557067498385054945885869269956\ 909272107975093029553211653449872027559602364806654991198818347977535663698074\ 26542527862551818417574672890977773 However, the falsifiability of unprovable mathematical statements is at the heart of one of the most important mathematical proofs of the 20th century. Essentially, Kurt Godel (one of Einstein’s best friends at Princeton by the way) showed that any mathematical system that is at least rich enough to describe the integers (i.e. 0, 1, 2, 3, …) has statements (or assertions) about it that are true but cannot be proven. |
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Admin
General
Gender: Male
Location: USA Registered: Jan 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 810 |
Posted Tuesday, July 4, 2006 @ 00:03 AM
Certainly thank you both for your contributions. I wish that I had something deep and probing to offer by way of answer, but suffice it to say that I am pleased: it’s not everyday I get such a refreshing slice of Jamesian pi.  (I know, I know: my humor is lame but so is my brain and it is late, late at night. I mainly just wanted to say, “Thanks” before my week got insanely busy and the chance passed me by. Forgive me for my lack of extended reply: I am a mixture of tired and contented at the moment, neither of which are lending themselves particularly well to my usual verbosity.)
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