I normally avoid addressing such things because I don't like to provide personal details for many many reasons.
I understand, but I was hoping that you would explain your reason for your repeated return to broad, unevidenced pronouncements after being informed that they are ineffective. Maybe you thought otherwise. Maybe you didn't care. Maybe you didn't understand what an evidence argument is. And maybe you would help me understand which so that we could address it at that level.
People used a dozen words when a few were enough.
I find the opposite to be the problem. There seem to be an optimal number of ideas that need to be expressed when making a comment, more words adding no additional clarity, and fewer introducing some ambiguity. My wife has a little trouble seeing the big picture when telling a story, and doesn't have a sense for others need to hear for her account to connect. Several times a week, I have to ask her why she made that particular comment in the context of the present discussion, and she provides the missing connection that she didn't realize she left out.
And I can't tell you how often I shake my head reading an email from a friend that requires me to go back and ask for disambiguation.
An anecdote on optimization. In medicine, sometimes people would come to me with the complaint that they were on too much medicine. I asked them what the right amount of medicine was, and of course, they had no answer. I explained that it's the combination of agents which, if one more were added would add nothing except maybe harm, and if one were deleted would leave the patient worse off. Then I would ask which of their meds they considered unnecessary or harmful. I would agree with them sometimes, and we would try discontinuing one that seemed to add nothing and see if there was a loss of benefit. Often, it's difficult to tell what another clinician was thinking when he added a beta blocker, for example. But often it was clear that discontinuing a medication would lead to net harm. So I'd ask, would you like me to discontinue the supplemental estrogen that's preventing those hot flashes, or maybe the atorvastatin keeping your LDL cholesterol normal?
This intentional habit of accepting only what fit my existing beliefs has led me in a different direction.
I hope you mean that you rejected that kind of thinking. You're describing the plight of the poor faith-based thinker cocooned in a faith-based confirmation bias, for whom seeing is believing (empiricism) no longer applies, but rather, believing is seeing.
The world might be much different than it appears to all of us.
I'm sure it is, but we can deal with that. We must.
We believe we experience consciousness yet don't even have a definition beyond the circular reasoning of "I think therefore I am"
I have a useful definition of consciousness. I don't have any trouble recognizing it in myself or inferring its presence in others. I don't know its composition or why it occurs, but once again, like all others, I soldier on, because I must. These are not vexing problems to me. I'd love answers, but don't expect to ever have them, and am OK with that, and find no need to change my way of navigating reality because of it, which is empirical.
"Thought" is the comparison of sensory input to existing beliefs.
That's some of it. It's the "evidence of" part experiencing evidence (sensory input) - what is it evidence of, what does it signify, and then, how we feel about it. I posted this recently in one of the threads. Apologies if it was this one:
The analytical faculty has one purpose - to tell us what is true about the world using information accumulated through the senses. How we feel about it varies from individual to individual. And it is that affective addition that determines the quality of our conscious experience. Does it make us feel frightened or secure? Do we experience beauty or repulsion. Are we enjoying the weather or scattering for shelter. Do we feel connected to our environment and neighbors or alienated. None of that is rational. None is solved or calculated. It is discovered.
This has been my approach to navigating life. What is true about the world, how does it work, and what circumstances are desirable so that the knowledge of how things work and what outcomes can be expected in various circumstances can be applied to curating and managing that conscious experience. The life we aim for is generally the one where we feel safe, secure, loved, have leisure and freedom from want, anxiety, fear, loneliness, regret, shame and the like. We don't come to that knowledge except through trial-and-error, which means making mistakes and learning from them (empiricism).
But there is much more to thought than that. We have intuitions, desires, and creative urges. We enjoy fiction and music.
We gotta get our minds right, our dirt out of boss Keane's ditch, and get over this failure to communicate BEFORE machine intelligence comes into existence.
Of course, I recognize the reference. I was born in 1954, and the images of women that were burned into my young peripubertal mind are from that era - the mid-sixties - including the car wash scene in Cool Hand Luke. Also, Barbarella floating head over heels while undressing was seared in. The bare breasts in a love scene in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet hypnotized me for months or years. And Ginger and Maryanne on Gilligan's Island, the wife in Mr. Ed (never understood why he spent so much time in the barn when she was in the house), and Billie Jo on Petticoat Junction were major influences as well. And don't get me started on Jeannie. LOL. How's that for a use for thought?
