Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 03:54:20 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: ANOTHER SERMON (gag)


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Dear Jud,

 

THIRD INSTALLMENT

Saturday morning sermon (sing Psalm 112)


X:
As the tobacco industry repeatedly says, science has not PROVEN that tobacco causes lung cancer. Statistics and correlation seem MOST OF THE TIME to point in that direction, but there have also been a number of exceptions to the rule.

Jud:
I personally know an old guy of 102 who has smoked like a trooper all his life and apart from having a facial skin like a smoked herring, he still wheezes a "Good Morning" to me as I cycle past his house. , but I can recall at least ten people [as I look at the screen trying to imagine their faces once more] I knew who have died in agony [suffocated to death] from lung cancer who were heavy smokers.

X:
The same with tremendous alcohol intake and liver disease and varicosities in veins in the esophagus. MOST OF THE TIME, yes. SOME OF THE TIME! , no. That is not real science. 

Jud:
I have lost three very good friends from alcoholism who I still grieve for.  There are always exceptions to the rules, unless the full background of victims/survivors of alcohol abuse are known in minute detail, certain dietary habits, lifestyle, exercise, general physical condition etc., it is difficult to explain the exceptions.  For me like most people, the stats are good enough to alert me to control my drinking habits and run a mile at the sight of a cigarette. 

 

GARY C MOORE:

And that is quite right. But that is practical thinking, i.e., “I have seen this happen with that so many times there must be some connection.” One literally could not survive without it. But its only proper place is in making choices and committing oneself to action solely. It is when ‘people’ start treating “stats” as knowledge, a whole different ball game, that science becomes open to wholesale corruption. Statistics is the joining together of individuals sharing one common predicate. This is generalization that joins together as one whole individuals that got to that common denominator by wholly individual and separate paths so that the history, present meaning, and future action based on that ‘common denominator’ is still fundamentally different from individual to individual so that, as certainty, that ‘common denominator’ really has only a trivial value as ‘certain’ knowledge at best. An intelligent person understanding both that it is a generalization that is valid insofar as it is based on the real experience of individual in completely different contexts (contexts that still remain fundamentally different even if you narrow down strictly the definition of that general definition and what it includes. Though that does present a more plausible standpoint, however much you narrow down a generalization, you still do not get to the individual in the process of living with a past, present, and future which totally distorts even a strict and scientific generalization) and that that generalization must constantly take into account the changing nature of those individuals, then one can operate effectively with a great number of correct guesses based on an intelligent keeping open of that generalization, its only legitimate validation being in individuals as primary whereas the generalization always remains secondary, and then one can act effectively just as Hubert L. Dreyfus described it in his discussion of Aristotle’s wise man and Heidegger’s discussion of Aristotle’s phronesis in PLATO’S SOPHIST (available at one of Dreyfus’ web sites). But all of this, in an honest and intelligent person is just a plan of action according to rational expectation that might well turn out otherwise than one expected and one should be prepared for. It is not absolute knowledge which is either one’s personal experience that one may or may not be able to put into generalizing words adequately or it is the absolute knowledge of consistently holding for a chosen definition as the sum of degrees of a triangle is always 180°. A non-Euclidean could change the circumstances so that it no longer correct, but one can still maintain the former as absolute knowledge by merely adding on circumstantial criteria. And even so, both kinds of such propositions only make ‘sense’ if they can be applied to and validated by experience. None of this does statistics have anything to do with. It is very rarely set up within its legitimate parameters of something has happened more times than something else and therefore gives the house edge in your gambling endeavor. People who smoke or drink too much IF THEY WANT TO LIVE ALONG LIFE IN PLEASANT CIRCUMSTANCES certainly have thrown away any “house edge” or “advantage” they may have had available before they acquired irrevocable conditions. This strangely applies equally well if you deliberately want to drink yourself to death. You may well have a long life of misery and meanness. 

 

But in no way is statistics knowledge. All statistics does is state a certain number of this had x and a certain number of that had y. A common denominator may at first seem obvious, but, if the investigation was done well and as many different factors as possible that could REASONABLY be handled (which would mean automatically something has NOT been accounted for), other common denominators may come to the fore that a hasty, stupid, or illegitimately motivated scientist may not see, wish to see, deliberately ignore, set up the parameters of the experiment to deliberately exclude. Usually, as in the “cold fusion” debacle, others trying to repeat the experiment MAY demonstrate the concept was not valid. Or may the original scientists were simply sloppy in recording their experiment, did not take everything they did and otherwise accidentally happened into their account, really did achieve “cold fusion,” there therefore everyone in the world has lost what truly seems a wonderful idea. And then again maybe the validity of their experiment was deliberately sabotaged. This has happened a number of times also. Setting up a statistical procedure legitimately is costly, complex, and time consuming. The vast majority of such endeavors are NEVER fully repeated. If it SEEMS to fit, that nothing obvious falls apart, that satisfies most people. But the people manipulating statistics know this. There have been numerous scientific ‘discoveries’ based on imaginary statistics. If they cause no one serious problems, they are NEVER found out. If people WANT it to be true, any discordances will be taken as invalid exceptions. This is exactly what happened with a famous psychologist’s statistical experiment on the likenesses of identical twins in the 1950’s. It was found to be totally bogus only about ten years ago. The man was dead then and got all he could possibly have wanted from his theory’s success. It was something psychologists wanted to believe because it validated a mechanical view of human nature and took away a great deal of the actual ambiguity of having to deal with actual, at-hand, experienced individual human beings which, again, is very costly, time consuming, frustrating, and usually failing to have any ‘useful’ results. 

 

The end result? Practical people have an absolute and desperate need for a truly philosophical point of view which completely detaches them from the objects of their concern. Quite literally, they must put their “concern” during working hours in a little box and put the box in a closet until it is time to go home and relax. They do not understand in the slightest when they commit act A why result B does not correctly and fully follow. I mean, they did everything they were suppose to, right? So that leaves the answer that someone is conspiring against them. Maybe because I live in an especially overly paranoid society my own paranoia is coming out. But at least I know to look for it. Detachment is actually suppose to be a basic part of scientific procedure, but I think it has been dropped out of the picture now for a long while and we are all up shit creek.

 

‘Sincerely’

Gary C. Moore



 



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Dear Jud,

THIRD INSTALLMENT

Saturday morning sermon (sing Psalm 112)

X:
As the tobacco industry repeatedly says, science has not PROVEN that tobacco causes lung cancer. Statistics and correlation seem MOST OF THE TIME to point in that direction, but there have also been a number of exceptions to the rule.

Jud:
I personally know an old guy of 102 who has smoked like a trooper all his life and apart from having a facial skin like a smoked herring, he still wheezes a "Good Morning" to me as I cycle past his house. , but I can recall at least ten people [as I look at the screen trying to imagine their faces once more] I knew who have died in agony [suffocated to death] from lung cancer who were heavy smokers.

X:
The same with tremendous alcohol intake and liver disease and varicosities in veins in the esophagus. MOST OF THE TIME, yes. SOME OF THE TIME! , no. That is not real science.

Jud:
I have lost three very good friends from alcoholism who I still grieve for.  There are always exceptions to the rules, unless the full background of victims/survivors of alcohol abuse are known in minute detail, certain dietary habits, lifestyle, exercise, general physical condition etc., it is difficult to explain the exceptions.  For me like most people, the stats are good enough to alert me to control my drinking habits and run a mile at the sight of a cigarette.

GARY C MOORE:

And that is quite right. But that is practical thinking, i.e., “I have seen this happen with that so many times there must be some connection.” One literally could not survive without it. But its only proper place is in making choices and committing oneself to action solely. It is when ‘people’ start treating “stats” as knowledge, a whole different ball game, that science becomes open to wholesale corruption. Statistics is the joining together of individuals sharing one common predicate. This is generalization that joins together as one whole individuals that got to that common denominator by wholly individual and separate paths so that the history, present meaning, and future action based on that ‘common denominator’ is still fundamentally different from individual to individual so that, as certainty, that ‘common denominator’ really has only a trivial value as ‘certain’ knowledge at best. An intelligent person understanding both that it is a generalization that is valid insofar as it is based on the real experience of individual in completely different contexts (contexts that still remain fundamentally different even if you narrow down strictly the definition of that general definition and what it includes. Though that does present a more plausible standpoint, however much you narrow down a generalization, you still do not get to the individual in the process of living with a past, present, and future which totally distorts even a strict and scientific generalization) and that that generalization must constantly take into account the changing nature of those individuals, then one can operate effectively with a great number of correct guesses based on an intelligent keeping open of that generalization, its only legitimate validation being in individuals as primary whereas the generalization always remains secondary, and then one can act effectively just as Hubert L. Dreyfus described it in his discussion of Aristotle’s wise man and Heidegger’s discussion of Aristotle’s phronesis in PLATO’S SOPHIST (available at one of Dreyfus’ web sites). But all of this, in an honest and intelligent person is just a plan of action according to rational expectation that might well turn out otherwise than one expected and one should be prepared for. It is not absolute knowledge which is either one’s personal experience that one may or may not be able to put into generalizing words adequately or it is the absolute knowledge of consistently holding for a chosen definition as the sum of degrees of a triangle is always 180°. A non-Euclidean could change the circumstances so that it no longer correct, but one can still maintain the former as absolute knowledge by merely adding on circumstantial criteria. And even so, both kinds of such propositions only make ‘sense’ if they can be applied to and validated by experience. None of this does statistics have anything to do with. It is very rarely set up within its legitimate parameters of something has happened more times than something else and therefore gives the house edge in your gambling endeavor. People who smoke or drink too much IF THEY WANT TO LIVE ALONG LIFE IN PLEASANT CIRCUMSTANCES certainly have thrown away any “house edge” or “advantage” they may have had available before they acquired irrevocable conditions. This strangely applies equally well if you deliberately want to drink yourself to death. You may well have a long life of misery and meanness.

But in no way is statistics knowledge. All statistics does is state a certain number of this had x and a certain number of that had y. A common denominator may at first seem obvious, but, if the investigation was done well and as many different factors as possible that could REASONABLY be handled (which would mean automatically something has NOT been accounted for), other common denominators may come to the fore that a hasty, stupid, or illegitimately motivated scientist may not see, wish to see, deliberately ignore, set up the parameters of the experiment to deliberately exclude. Usually, as in the “cold fusion” debacle, others trying to repeat the experiment MAY demonstrate the concept was not valid. Or may the original scientists were simply sloppy in recording their experiment, did not take everything they did and otherwise accidentally happened into their account, really did achieve “cold fusion,” there therefore everyone in the world has lost what truly seems a wonderful idea. And then again maybe the validity of their experiment was deliberately sabotaged. This has happened a number of times also. Setting up a statistical procedure legitimately is costly, complex, and time consuming. The vast majority of such endeavors are NEVER fully repeated. If it SEEMS to fit, that nothing obvious falls apart, that satisfies most people. But the people manipulating statistics know this. There have been numerous scientific ‘discoveries’ based on imaginary statistics. If they cause no one serious problems, they are NEVER found out. If people WANT it to be true, any discordances will be taken as invalid exceptions. This is exactly what happened with a famous psychologist’s statistical experiment on the likenesses of identical twins in the 1950’s. It was found to be totally bogus only about ten years ago. The man was dead then and got all he could possibly have wanted from his theory’s success. It was something psychologists wanted to believe because it validated a mechanical view of human nature and took away a great deal of the actual ambiguity of having to deal with actual, at-hand, experienced individual human beings which, again, is very costly, time consuming, frustrating, and usually failing to have any ‘useful’ results.

The end result? Practical people have an absolute and desperate need for a truly philosophical point of view which completely detaches them from the objects of their concern. Quite literally, they must put their “concern” during working hours in a little box and put the box in a closet until it is time to go home and relax. They do not understand in the slightest when they commit act A why result B does not correctly and fully follow. I mean, they did everything they were suppose to, right? So that leaves the answer that someone is conspiring against them. Maybe because I live in an especially overly paranoid society my own paranoia is coming out. But at least I know to look for it. Detachment is actually suppose to be a basic part of scientific procedure, but I think it has been dropped out of the picture now for a long while and we are all up shit creek.

‘Sincerely’

Gary C. Moore