liveonearth | Entries tagged with knowledge

To learn which questions are unanswerable,
and not to answer them:
This skill is most needful in times of
stress and darkness.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”

Crossposts: https://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1441037.html

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
--H.L. Mencken

One fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
--Robert Kennedy

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant threat winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
--Isaac Asimov

Democracy if four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
--Ambrose Bierce

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
--Winston S. Churchill

The main problem in any democracy is that the crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whip their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy -- then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards than the tube for a nickel apiece.
--Hunter S. Thompson

Quotes from page 18 of the Funny Times, September 2017

Crossposts: https://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1430375.html

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
—Isaac Asimov

THE MISTRUST OF SCIENCE

By Atul Gawande , JUNE 10, 2016

The following was delivered as the commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, on Friday, June 10th.

from http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-mistrust-of-science accessed 6.21.16

( Text behind cut )

Atul Gawande, a surgeon and public-health researcher, became a New Yorker staff writer in 1998.

Foresight isn't
a mysterious gift bestowed at birth.
It is the product of particular ways of thinking,
of gathering information,
of updating beliefs.
These habits of thought can be learned and cultivated
by any intelligent, thoughtful,
determined person.
--Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner on page 18 in
Superforecasting; the Art and Science of Prediction

If you cannot

explain it

in simple terms,

you do not

understand it fully.

~Albert Einstein

Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it?... If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

--Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I am an agnotologist, no doubt. That is to say, I am fascinated with all that we do not know, with the gray areas and uncertainties of life, death, and everything. Agnostic = Doesn't Know. Agnotology = Study of Ignorance. Science depends on us being very clear about what we do not know yet, so that we can devise ways to try to find out.

( Great article here from the NY Times )

When Shiva the Great Yogin chooses
to become the Lord of the Dance, Nataraja,
the universe appears as Consciousness
in its most ecstatic forms:
as art and play, as knowledge and beauty,
as the very embodiment of awareness
in the form of the Self.

—From Clothed in Consciousness:
Nataraja in the Tantric Tradition
by Dr. Douglas Brooks

You can't talk about the ocean
with a frog who lives in a well;
he is bounded by the space he inhabits.

You can't talk about ice
with an insect who was born in June;
he is bounded by a single season.

You can't talk about Tao
with a person who thinks he knows something;
he is bounded by his own beliefs

The Tao is vast and fathomless.
You can understand only by stepping
beyond the limits of yourself.

From the Chaung Tzu. 17
via Stephen Mitchell, The Second Book of the Tao.

Originally posted by

bobby1933 at But I Don't Know The Frogs Language Or Mind, And Can't Know What The Frog Knows.

Suspecting
and knowing
are not
the same.

― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

The beginning
of knowledge
is the discovery
of something
we do not understand.
— Frank Herbert

Not everything
that can be counted
counts,
and not everything that counts
can be counted.

--usually attributed to Albert Einstein,
but possibly more accurately credited to
Professor of Sociology, William Bruce Cameron

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help.
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth.

--Responsive reading by Robert T. Weston in Singing the Living Tradition

The environment we're used to is designed to sustain us. We live like fish in an aquarium. Food comes mysteriously down, oxygen bubbles up. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo we call civilization. Then we go into nature, where we are least among equals with all other creatures. There we are put to the test. Most of us sleep through the test. We get in and out and never know what might have been demanded. Such an experience can make us even more vulnerable, for we come away with the illusion of growing hardy, salty, knowledgeable: Been there, done that.
--Laurence Gonzales in Deep Survival, page 133.

The
farther
one
goes
The
less
one
knows.

--Tao Te Ching

Whosoever undertakes
to set himself up
as a judge
of Truth and Knowledge
is shipwrecked by
the laughter of the gods.
--Albert Einstein

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge.
--Charles Darwin

Imagine being lost in the wilderness with a group of 10. Who is the most confident about which way you should go? Always an interesting test.)

(Didn't mean to but both knowledge and confidence tags just created. Not sure I will ever stop creating new tags, sorry. Follow a parallel tag to track the idea farther back. This journal is a form of mind map.)

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Page Summary

QotD: Don't Try to Answer Unanswerable Questions
QotD: Democracy
QotD: Isaac Asimov on One Unintended Consequence of Democracy
Atul Gawande on the Mistrust of Science
QotD: Foresight
QotD: Albert on Understanding It
QotD: NdGT on Ignorance
Word of the Day: AGNOTOLOGY
QotD: Nataraja
Perspective is Everything
QotD: Suspecting vs Knowing
QotD: Not Understanding
QotD: What Counts
QotD: Readings on Doubt
QotD: How tough we aren't
QotD: Certainty
QotD: Judge of Truth and Knowledge
QotD: Ignorance Begets Confidence

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INTERESTING TIMES

are better than no times at all.

Entries tagged with knowledge

QotD: Don't Try to Answer Unanswerable Questions

QotD: Democracy

QotD: Isaac Asimov on One Unintended Consequence of Democracy

Atul Gawande on the Mistrust of Science

QotD: Foresight

QotD: Albert on Understanding It

QotD: NdGT on Ignorance

Word of the Day: AGNOTOLOGY

QotD: Nataraja

Perspective is Everything

QotD: Suspecting vs Knowing

QotD: Not Understanding

QotD: What Counts

QotD: Readings on Doubt

QotD: How tough we aren't

QotD: Certainty

QotD: Judge of Truth and Knowledge

QotD: Ignorance Begets Confidence