infinite earth

Common sense has it that we are doomed for having used the earth as it was infinite. I guess the world is as good as infinite and that we should begin to use it as such rather sooner than later.

epistemology::aphorisms

§ Epistemology is a subtopic of language theory.

§ Methodological consideration: do not assert something if you’ll need 15 minutes to qualify what you meant.

§ There is no antonymy in the world.

§ All certainties are negative — just bits of invariation we extract from the world. They are never central to existence. They are the exception, not the rule.

§ The current idea of an alien — big head, big black eyes, skinny elongated features — all could be explained by a too literal reading of a drawing of a person.

reason VS emotion

In my unending quest to rid the world of those pesky dichotomies, here’s another one: REASON vs EMOTION. This one says, basically, that the mind (which is smart, intelligent, logical, without doubt) is opposed to the feeling (which is not open to {intellectual} discussion, sensible, and empathic). And this one is deeply, deeply ingrained in our culture. If there is anyone from outside European-centric cultures (say Chinese, of Vietnamese) reading this blog please comment how you see that in your perspective. Anyway, as i already said, i do not buy this one.

exercise: false dichotomies

Have you made your mind about whether false dichotomies are a pain or not? (Maybe this will make more sense after reading the referred post). The exercise consists in:

1. Find a reliable dichotomy, one that is not false, one in which you really believe. If this sounds confusing, check in a dictionary the definition of “dichotomy”.
2. Prepare a complete and exhaustive defence for this dichotomy. This defence should at least contain the following:
   1. an account of the inexistence of borderline cases;
   2. a plausible theory about why borderline cases are impossible, both in concrete existence and in conjectural terms;
   3. a clear and usable method by which we can safely split any case of one or the other poles of the dichotomy, so that we never incur the risk of having both mixed, either in time or in circumstance (that is, a guarantee that a positive case can’t turn negative neither with the passing of time nor with the change of context);
   4. an analysis of the reasons why aplying such dichotomy is relevant and important most of the time, or at least in a set of circumstances so rich and common that we can’t dismiss the dichotomy as a mere special case or as an exception;
   5. reasons to believe that this dichotomy was already effective in history, both short and long terms;
   6. reasons to believe that dichotomy will not lose validity even despite the vast changes the contemporary world is undergoing;
   7. concrete proof that the dichotomy could not be made less granular, that is to say, that the dichotomy is not a trichotomy or even a more (or much more) complex type-system which we take as a dichotomy for pure lack of deepness of analysis.