More philosophical nonsense from Adams

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As I keep repeating, I've learned a lot from Scott Adams on persuasion. But every time he tries philosophy, he babbles nonsense. Consider:

"As a hypnotist, I doubt any of us can see reality for what it is. My worldview is that we were in one kind of illusion before and some of us moved to another. When it comes to understanding reality, the best we can do is pick a version that does a good job predicting."

This makes no sense whatsoever: if we are always living in an illusion, than we have no possibility whatsoever of determining what "version" does "a good job predicting"!

Because whatever we perceive as having happened according to our illusions' predictions is also, itself, an illusion!

So Adams is suggesting we can test an illusion against another illusion and by doing so, refine our understanding of reality!

Comments

  1. Sandymount4:36 AM

    I am reminded of this recent talk where the speaker cherry picks what we can rely on as representing reality (maths and evolution) to prove we cant see reality as it is. Except, if he is right, how can we rely on those as representing reality either and more to the point, he is trying to use reason to make his point. He does to be fair mention this but simply asserts we can rely on maths/evolution (themselves constructs of our minds which dont represent reality)...seems like undergrad error undermines all these attempts to refute our ability to see reality or reason.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E-MwJgy2lI

    ReplyDelete

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