DATA AND DESIRE
A cold Saturday morning, I'm feeling lazy and not really sure of
what I want to do with myself. The week turned out very windy but
there wasn't actually much rain, and today is the coldest it's been
for a little while. There was a thunder storm very late at night a
few nights ago, which I've been waiting for to try out my cloud
charge monitor, but I was in bed half-asleep and my enthusiasm for
electrostatic investigations wasn't quite enough to overcome the
attractiveness of remaining so.
I've discovered some philosophical musings that I jotted down one
night on a piece of scrap paper and left here as the foundations
for a future phlog post. Before bed I often sit on the couch just
thinking to myself for half an hour or so, getting progressively
colder this time of year because I turn off the heating early in
order to save power. This time my thoughts apparantly wandered into
analysing why there are "things that we believe without knowing,
and that we believe we don't want to know".
I've written a bunch of isolated statements which I intended to
thread together seamlessly, but I'm not sure that I can, or that I
can be bothered to at least, so I'll just dump them.
The greatest meaning arises from the greatest want. Meaning is
born of desire.
Truth is the balance of desire and observed data.
Rationality is our illusion to save us from disillusionment.
The balance of knowledge and belief that we seek is a social
construct.
The last statement folows a theme that I expanded on in a personal
sense with my earlier post here:
gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2020-10-05Running_from_the_Hurd.txt
The first two are pretty much just variations on "we see what we
want to see", but trying to invoke the image of physically
measuring data compared with the desire for a particular conclusion
from it.
The remaining point on rationality is a bit more striking for me.
In many ways I'm devoted to the concept of rationality - coldly
analysing data and rejecting emotional and impulsive
decision-making. However through pursuing rationality it's often
proven to be nothing but an illusion, because the truths on which
it is founded are themselves directed by one's own emotional
desires. It exists at some levels only as a concept to grasp
alternatively to how someone religious may instead choose faith,
saving one's self from facing the uncertainties of an individual
reality.
- The Free Thinker
