You said that you "do not know how to encapsulate that 'middle of the road' except to use the word 'objective'".

Objectivity does not mean 'middle of the road' or 'moderate'.

Mathematics is often misused in rationalistic speculation, counting on the technical nature of the mathematics to appear 'scientific'. That does not mean that all mathematics is rationalizing.

Citing how the great scientists in history are known because they succeeded with proper methods. That is not a "slight" towards everyone else who made minor contributions.

There were many at the same time who used improper methods or a mixture and who either accomplished nothing or not much, and so they have not been heard of since or are little known for good reason. That includes rationalists claiming to anticipate Newton but whose speculations did not accomplish what Newton in fact did.

Your welcome. Put that together with the work of Jaynes and you'll begin to understand the many different levels at which people exist in...Ken was wrong about the value of the greenies though...they have to step down a few notches in order to ascend. To ascend, one must take the values of each meme with them into the next.

Ah, but the one's of the inner city are in defiance of the American culture but are the consequence of the culture defined by cities.
I forget who wrote about the fact that it is not the culture that defines the city, it is the concept of cities that defines the culture and it's usually a dependent one because your life and it's problems is dependent upon someone else most of the time...

AAAANNND...if you like that one, try this on for size..: The ether is that space between units of energy; When these units of energy are assembled form neutrons, protons,electrons, and atoms of a cell into what we experience as solidity; held together by the weakest force but most important force in nature...the only law the binds all...gravity.
Part of my response to a mentors musings that we really don't know what gravity and another force is...I suggested that these two forces are one in the same only manifested differently...care to guess what the other force is? and how it is manifest? (we have to be careful with this one) -the lefty loosies would be all agush!

What about the many times you were about to and the computer responded as if you did! Happens to me a lot...now you understand why quantum computers needed to be shielded from their operators...these computers, much like our minds Are...quantum energies? (caution: to anyone on the left (laughing)...that does not mean we are inextricably inter connected...that takes an enormous amounts of will and intent and still does not insure success...best to just let it be)
I wish I knew what they used or how they shielded?
That knowledge could be put to many other uses.

Thanks for the link to Ken Wilbur (and thence to Carol Graves). Interesting ideas.

I do not have that response - "What was I thinking?" But I know two other people, both bright. One was your "super normal" child, skipped grade in school; teaches science to gifteds in high school; but in she has used that phrase more than once. Another was a graduate student in a physics class I took. He said that he does not have a voice in his head.

I agree that separation from the herd can cause the construction of a new identity -- actually, I believe, it can be the true construction of identity. It separates city people from country people in many ways.

Here in the Gulch and on other Objectiv-ish discussion boards, some people extol the virtues of their small towns and close-knit communities where "everyone knows everyone." They tend to be political conservatives, traditionalists. But, even the very idea of a "Gulch." Is an expression of that. Some weeks back, khalling complained about the "loss" of the "sense of life" in the Gulch, how people here just are not the same ones anymore.

In the city, where everyone is a stranger, people do build new identities. In fact, that is also an aspect of America as a "large medieval town." Immigrants drop their Old World names and take new ones. In frontier days, as people moved West, they left problems behind by taking new names.

It is an interesting suggestion that I share with you. Long ago, sitting in the sun, writing on a clipboard, I saw "shimmers" on the paper. The sun was behind me. It was not the "heat" you see with a radiator under a window, but, actually, I believe, my own perspiration, my skin outgassing. It was obvious that my body extends beyond my skin. With these "touch" screen computers, you do to actually need to touch it. Sometimes just waving close will work - often to my annoyance.

The mind it would seem, is outside your head, as a electromagnetic consequence of the vibrational energies our brains transceive. Seeing that the vibrational energies travel through the ether it makes sense that the "Mind" not only is a direct connection but perhaps a part of the ether.

That back and forth comes from the observations and descriptions of levels or memes of awareness as outlined in "Spiral Dynamics" by Ken Wilbur, I believe. If you consider the first 2 of Ken's memes, it's obvious they are not of the conscious mind...they are brain only functions.

I dislike the term ego...it's always bugged me, however the concept has been around so long that it' difficult not to take a jab at Freud and his perversions. We do see however when one is separated from the herd, (ex.inner city folks that have been disenfranchised or otherwise inhibited from assimilation into society)...they must invent a new identity for survival. The same goes for one that has not gained access to a mind...and one can observe, laughing, that it is fragile...example D.Trump.
Gaining an identity, an "Iness" within the mind is actually quantum physical...the mind being part of the ether which pervades creation or the cosmos.
As for Otto W., I really don't get a sense of his hold on reality...it would seem that even for one fleeting moment, living in his head got him in trouble...how often do we question ourselves on a daily basis..."why did I do that?" "What was I thinking?"

Yes, we need to define terms. In these subjects it's difficult to remove ambiguities. It's the subtle difference between egoism and egotism.

See my reply here to PuzzleLady on Ego and Self-Esteem. (https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...)

I am not sure that you can go back and forth from the bicameral brain to the mind. I think that once you discover (or create) your mind, there is no going back. That is one reason that so many fail to understand others. We are using different brains. Ayn Rand in her journals but seldom in print touched on the distinctions between fully formed people and those who do not think. It is a slippery slope because once you define other people as "not human" morality ceases.

Thanks. You make a distinction between ego and self-esteem. OldUglyCarl separated brain, mind, and ego. We need to define our terms.

I once made a graphic for my office wall: Long ago, people believed that the mind resided in the heart. Then, they placed it in the liver. Today, we say that the mind is in the brain. Some people will believe anything.

Objectively, ego is identical with self-esteem. That contradicts the Freudian definition of ego. In mainstream psychology, can have a strong ego by knowing who you are, but not be happy with yourself or your station in life. That is not true for a self-actualizing psychology. By the standard of human potential if you are resigned to your fate, then you lack ego.

Here's an aphorism for you, Mike, from Lily Tomlin: "No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up."

Baumeister is so wedded to his original theory that he can't let go. It is more rewarding, however, to discover a mistake and rectify it than to falsely believe in one's own correctness. It's more satisfying to BE right than be thought to be right. That’s a good principle to keep in mind when confronted by loss of acceptance.

About the radishes vs. cookies theory: In a culture where sweets are rewards, those receiving cookies will have a higher level of self-esteem, albeit artificially induced. They will have a surplus stock of performance motivation. Those not so rewarded will have a diminished sense of self-worth (ego has nothing to do with it) and thus shrink from seeking to excel.

My personal preference would actually be to eat the radishes rather than the cookies; I love radishes and am not crazy about the effect all that sugar has on me.

Those with a lesser sense of self will tend to lack the confidence to succeed and prevail and will give up sooner. It may well have been that the early versions of these experiments brought correct results, within the context of the culture of that time. But little by little the infusion of knowledge about previous tests contaminated the new recruits. There is a great temptation to tailor results to the desired goals, and to rationalize outcomes.

The disparate results from differently treated or rewarded groups has its parallel also in kids not getting enough love and growing up maladjusted. A similar experiment decades ago with baby monkeys showed that babies left alone in a cold, empty cage with only a metal fixture from which to get their food fared much worse and did not thrive, compared to monkeys that had a fur covering over the fixture that gave them some small comfort and thus they fared better, versus babies with their live mothers who flourished the best. Being mistreated is demoralizing and ill prepares a creature, animal or human, to cope with confidence with the problems of life.

It’s not ego depletion; it’s self-confidence destruction. In extreme cases the intent is, in fact, to break a person’s spirit, as in prisons. Timid individuals don’t assert themselves and are drained of the energy to take initiative on their own behalf. It’s like their batteries are not fully charged.

Quite aside from that, each person has a motivation program running that can be triggered in ways unique to each individual. A timid boy may get courage to defend a friend, or a smart person may judge correctly when further effort is useless. Even a lion knows when to stop running after a gazelle she can’t catch. And any individual who volunteers for an experiment is already tainted by the sense of importance of his or her role. That’s more nearly an ego involvement and would tend to override the radish rebellion.

So I just had a conversation with my two employees who have BS degrees in computer science from Harvey Mudd college which prides itself on its emphasis on STEMS. The consensus was that it was more engineering. They suggested that there are some who focus on the theoretical aspects of computing but that they didn't personally know any.

Perhaps the distinction you see is one which is held in the research portion of "research and development" where you separate the scientists as those who perform the research end and the engineers as those doing the development end. In many other disciplines, there is a distinct separation of roles and responsibilities, where in computer science those roles are very blurred. I think there is also the tendency to think of science as answering the problems of the universe, where the questions usually being addressed by computer scientists are much more mini-verse oriented. It is a difference in scope.

Does science have to be useful? Science, or "pure science" as you would have it is the understanding of truths of reality and needs no application to be of interest. We can know things about the Andromeda galaxy that are true but have little application to our lives or things that people can use.

"Applied science" I would consider more of an engineering discipline. You don't necessarily find any new truths, but figure out how to use what is known to produce things.

I remember in the early 1970's when colleges were first introducing "computer science". I attended classes at Illinois Institute of Technology, one of the first schools to offer an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. At the time there was much debate as to whether there was an actual computer science and the study of things like turing machines and "proof of correctness" were pushed to make it more "sciency". They still remain a part of the curriculum but have little to do with what we actually do.

As to how we interact with information, that is an evolving art (see, not a science!). I remember when I first saw a presentation of the Xerox Star with the mouse and Graphical Interface. I was gobsmacked and was instantly convinced that it was how we would interact with computers in the future. Of course I don't think that it is the final solution. There will be other UI techniques that let us more directly interface and people will look back with scorn at having to move a mouse.

I guess to me the distinction between science and engineering is that science is like the X files where "the truth is out there" and in engineering we make it ourselves.

"Most "computer science" that I've encountered has been more the study of techniques rather than underlying truths. There have been a few forays into that realm, such as the study of Turing machines and computability but in general we are talking about algorithms and techniques."

"I guess to me the idea of science is that you are discovering a truth of nature..."

Okay. So your arguments are #1 that you feel computer science isn't as directed towards research and focuses more on real-world application when compared to other disciplines such as chemistry and #2 that in many cases there is no "one source of truth" regarding how to solve a particular problem.

I can see where you are coming from. Here's what I consider:

To me, any discipline to be useful must focus on application. Theory is a start, but it holds little value until it can be applied in the real world to a task at hand. The study of a lever or an inclined plane is of much greater value when being applied with a hammer or screw. We study the basics of chemistry so that we can understand and derive consistent processes of input leading to output whether it be the combination of vinegar and baking soda to create carbon dioxide bubbles or the breakdown of various -thane molecules when combined with oxygen and a catalyst to generate heat. But there again, how much of the study of chemistry is geared towards the examinations of the molecules themselves rather than their uses?

With regards to the "single source of truth" aspect, much of computer science is oriented about how people interact with information. With twenty years in the field, I can tell you that it is very rare indeed when two different people see and use the same bit of information exactly the same way. Your argument there is acknowledged, however it presupposes that there is a single use of information which is "proper" or "best". There is no question that most informational requests center on one aspect of interest, but it is the linking of that information to secondary and tertiary uses that is one of the reasons a field called business intelligence is such a hot place right now.

I think that one of the things you are attempting to differentiate is what some call pure science as compared to what others call applied science. I would argue that there are aspects of every field which are purely theoretical (dark matter, AI) and others which are applied (reduction of bauxite to aluminum, coding an operating system). That one determines a particular discipline to be more or less applied vs research oriented is more a matter of perception than anything.

As a philosophy, I do not know a lot about logical positivism, which seems fraught with splinter progeny of various philosophical schools. I certainly endorse the concept of their being an independent reality that is verifiable. However, something that is unproven/currently unprovable does not therefor 'not exist'...it is simply not proven (yet).

With respect to Plate Tectonics, pre-Clovis New World occupation, epigenetics: As with Global Warming, the important part is that all sides of the question be heard and that no side be vilified - though stern criticisms of scientific data are expected.

I do not care that the professor is Christian (or even Young Earth Xtian). The leap from "it has soft tissue" to "therefore it proves that dinosaurs are only a few thousand years old" is a huge and totally unsupported leap - this is a leap of Faith and not a scientific progression. There are many more (over a dozen) ways of testing the age of an object than just C-14; most recent paleological work uses C-14 dates that are calibrated to take the fluctuating amounts of C-14 into account.

Jan

In chemistry, there are scientific principles as to how molecules combine and types of reactions. There is also chemical engineering which uses these ideas to produce formulas and procedures for making products.

Most "computer science" that I've encountered has been more the study of techniques rather than underlying truths. There have been a few forays into that realm, such as the study of Turing machines and computability but in general we are talking about algorithms and techniques.

I guess to me the idea of science is that you are discovering a truth of nature, something about objective reality that you can understand. To my mind, engineering involves taking tools and components and building things.

When you are developing an algorithm to perform a task, there is no 'scientifically correct' way to do this, we have a bunch of tools that can be applied but you can always come up with some weird way of accomplishing it. You don't need 'rigorous application of studied principles'. Of course using things out of the standard tool set is easier.