important

What is important to you?

Reality, or life, or the world, that which you experience by whatever name you chose to give, reality is mostly uniform. But there are some spots where you can find leverage. Like a door: you can squish it at many places and nothing will happen, but if you squish at the door handle it opens.

the thinking machine

The (misguided) comparisons between brain and computer usually begin by stating that the brain is massively parallel, working into multiple threads of thought at the same time.

But it just isn’t.

The brain is not a massively parallel processor. It does not process more than one symbol-chain at the same time. The brain deals with only one thing at a time, and it can’t even vary this one thing: the brain is always dealing with the person’s immediate circumstance.

knowability of the world (externality and truth part 2)

A simpler (but misleading) version of yesterday’s argument says that realists assume (without supporting evidence) that the world is knowable.

In fact, the whole issue of knowability is only relevant while you stick to the idea of truth in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

Not only that, the very idea of truth is a negative reaction: it doesn’t come from finding something “truly true”, but from discovering mistakes in beliefs previously considered reliable (and afterwards trying to remedy the situation by arguing the mistake can’t be that important after all…).

the whole problem of knowledge

I am now going to nail the whole problem of knowledge.

The obvious unstated is just a fluctuation in the fabric of reality that you happen to observe. The obvious stated is knowledge.