Truthiness

"However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth."

On the potential status of illegal immigrants as covered under the Affordable Health Choices Act

‘‘(2) ELIGIBLE INDIVIDUAL.—The term ‘eligible
4 individual’ means an individual who is—
5 ‘‘(A) a citizen or national of the United
6 States or an alien lawfully admitted to the
7 United States for permanent residence or an
8 alien lawfully present in the United States;
9 ‘‘(B) a qualified individual;
10 ‘‘(C) enrolled in a qualified health plan;
11 and
12 ‘‘(D) not receiving full benefits coverage
13 under a State child health plan under title XXI
14 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1397aa et
15 seq.) (or a waiver of such plan).

My emphasis.

No word on the alleged coverage of illegal aliens... Yet. I am only on page 111!

On the unknowable

"It’s not that we believe anything and everything we hear; we aren’t gullible. There is a necessary distinction between what we do, and what others do. We believe what we want to for the sake of being in wonder, and letting ideas live. Life has become mundane in response to the technology that should make it enlightening. Nibiru doesn’t exist? Fine, I’ll take your word for it; but I still wonder. What would it be like if the night sky were filled with the specter of a dark orb, floating casually toward us? It would be wondrous, something no person on earth has ever laid eyes on. It would, most seriously, be an awakening moment.”

“So you’re saying that you believe a lot of things because… it would be entertaining if they were true?”

“In a few words, yes, but it is much more complicated than that. There is a part of experience that humans have stopped longing for: wonder. Fulfillment comes in the form of wealth in influence. We assume we know nearly all there is to know, but as history teaches us, that isn’t ever true. Knowing everything is impossible, as knowledge can never have a finite value, as far as we know. We choose to believe things that seem contrary to common belief because of history’s repeated lesson: paradigm shifts happen. The world was once flat, the sun revolved around the earth, etc. We simply invest our belief in to something, so that on the completely reasonable chance that it has some meaningful element to it, that element can be seized and turned in to useful knowledge, perhaps culminating in another paradigm shift. The furthering of knowledge cannot solely be left to those who know what they want to find and pay the right people to look for it.”

“I understand that point very well. Think tanks and universities get funding based on the type of research they do, so in some sense, their efforts are always pushed in a certain direction. But think about Albert Hoffman, he discovered LSD quite by accident. Can’t this happen to any researcher?”

“It can, but that doesn’t mean it always will. I do not claim that my method will always cause researchers to discover things in that way, but the rate might be a bit higher.”

“Indeed, it just might. But then, I have to ask, what is the use in believing things that are brazenly proven false by established entities?”

“Truth is never absolute, even if it comes from a Government, a scientist, a professor. You may say there is no use in it, but think about it this way… There is a story of an ancient civilization that had many fanciful gadgets that did all sorts of amazing things. There were no complex mechanics behind the machines, though. Each machine was created, independently, with its own purpose in mind by the creator. Upon its completion – say this machine was a telescope, but without lenses or a mount – the machine functioned properly and adequately depending on the creator’s intent for the machine, without any need for adherence to our basic physical principles and laws. We can say one of a few things about this society; one would be that they are complete nonsense and their actions are impossible, or two, we can say that maybe they had a different casual relationship with reality that we cannot comprehend: the same way a two-dimensional man cannot comprehend a three-dimensional man, and the three-dimensional man – us - a four-dimensional man. The difference does not necessarily have to be in dimensions though. It is a matter of cognitive interpretation.”

“That’s obviously a farfetched tale. I would say that they are an impossibility.”

“We would tend to say that, as we live in a society where trust is laid upon scientist and their methods, and that is not a bad thing – it is the essence of our relationship with reality. Scientists choose not to believe things that can’t be tested experimentally.”

“Many great minds have been wasted searching for answers that couldn’t be found. That cannot be denied.”

“Indeed it cannot. But that is not their fault alone. These men generally lead themselves into a trap. They see something, or notice some irregularity, that they know can be proven by some means, but they lack the language to express it. Usually these things – formulas, equations, etc. - are discovered by scientists in other fields, years later, and frequently the men who ‘lost their minds’ are given awards and praise many years after their deaths. The language though, you must understand, that the scientific community uses universally is mathematics. Nearly all physical phenomena and the properties of such things can be explained in relation to each other using descriptors – numbers and units – that we created ourselves. We keep describing things in the same terms, which suffices when we only experience and consciously recognize things that are already in these terms, but there could exist out there an entirely new language that we have yet to understand. In other words, the universe isn’t expressed, or controlled for that matter, simply in or by our mathematical terms explicitly – we simply might not use the same methods of measurement and manipulation as the ancient civilization used. Our view is that these principles are indeed inherent in the physical world, when that is not necessarily the case.”

“And you believe they are not inherent?”

“I never said that, although there is a kernel of truth in your assumption. The properties and laws of the physical world are dictated, in part, by what way we choose to organize, interpret, and interact with them. Imagine a spider in its web, waiting for a meal. Imagine that, all of a sudden, it is wrapping up prey that you never saw being caught in its web. What would you think?”

“I would think that perhaps, I was not seeing things clearly, or hallucinating even.”

“That could very well be true. The hallucinating part I mean. But, we are told by quantum mechanics that it is possible for things to disobey causality. The problem is only that our mind cannot make sense of this, and so we observe these events as happening casually, or not happening at all.”

“I assume you are talking about the possibility that entropy might not actually dictate the arrow of time? At least not in the way that we presume it does. I read that article recently, it was quite interesting. Though I asked myself: what kind of difference would that make?”

“Well, when you see that spider wrapping up prey that it never caught, you might find yourself in the midst of the next paradigm shift. The upheaval of causality and the emergence of immortality by means of consciously controlled travel in the fourth dimension… Time.”

“Do you believe that this is the next paradigm shift?”

“I entertain the idea, quite often. And it is quite entertaining, is it not?”

“Indeed sir, it is.”