Debate on how the human perceives complexity

1. Reduce the complexity to something less complex (i.e. simplify) while understanding, hopefully, that the resulting simplification is only a crude representation of the original.

2. File, so to speak, said complexity into a folder with all other things 'beyond comprehension' and be done with it.

3. Attempt to resolve the issue by way of study, meditation and the like in an effort to manipulate the complexity into something that is understandable to the best of one's ability.

My text is in green.


I am in agreement with this last reason. I do not think there are any realities we need to deny or misrepresent.

I believe the only way to begin to understand complexity is with superstition.

I am not sure what you mean by that, RexRed. Complexities about nature and the universe were often explained with superstition. Planetary movement was one such complexity until a natural explanation was provided through the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.

It is only by seeing the error of well placed superstition that science of the natural realm can be perceived and contrasted.

Like the stock market... bulls on Mondays, bears of Fridays, superstition.

When complexity arises, superstition is the first step to unraveling it's secrets.

Superstition is contrasted with ideas until one is provable.

What is the nature and purpose of superstition?

The process of superstition becoming natural fact requires what criterion? Superstition can be natural fact and yet be unproven.

My point is is that superstition is a part of any scientific discovery process.

Equal variables require superstition to become distinguished.

Equal variables are distinguished by superstition long before they are distinguished by science.

Thus science is just superstition coupled with precise observation.

i'm sure that's how you want to see it

in my view superstition is the predecessor of knowledge, scientific observation and process moves us from the dark into the light

so knowledge (not science) could be said to be superstition put right with percise observation

Superstition is knowledge too but it is relatively unvalidated knowledge. Not all knowledge is true. Superstition can be true and is only proven false with counter intelligence. Knowledge would never evolve to the point of being trusted if it weren't first for faith and superstition.

Rats can be provoked to behave in a superstitious manner. If you drop food pellets at intermittent times laboratory rats will perform antics to see it they can provoke the pellets to fall on or at their own command.

This behavior ultimately does not affect the completely random times that the pellets actually drop. Thus the rats are a system that cannot affect the mechanical system that feeds it if the system is not living and observing with a built in reward system.

The rats develop their own system of rewards.

So is the superstition wasted on fantasy?

Could science be like these rats that have confined God to the mechanical thus they have developed their own reward system for superstitious behaviors?

Study Shows Professors More Religious Than Public Assumes
October 23, 2006

By David Driver

A professor from George Mason and one from Harvard teamed up to conduct a study that is attracting national attention because its results contradict popular views about the religiousness of university professors.

Solon Simmons of Mason's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and Neil Gross, assistant professor of sociology at Harvard, surveyed 1,471 college educators from across the country, from community colleges to elite universities, to find out how often they attend religious services. All types of schools were represented, and professors from 1,060 schools were involved.

Simmons says about 51 percent of professors responded to their study, which he calls a good success rate. Simmons says they also went back and contacted 100 professors who did not respond to the survey and found their religious beliefs and attendance were similar to those who did respond.

Simmons says professors, all of whom teach undergraduates, were surveyed from four types of schools: elite, top-50 schools; other top schools that award doctoral degrees; intermediate tier colleges; and community colleges. Simmons notes that community college professors are rarely surveyed in similar studies.

One conclusion from the study, says Simmons, is that the academy "is not so Godless after all." Simmons says that since the university is seen by many outside the academy as a battleground "for hearts and minds," those who are not employed by the academy still have a personal interest in what takes place in the university classroom.

While the study showed professors are less religious than the general public, Simmons says college educators are more religious than many people may have assumed. Professors are almost as likely to attend religious services as are members of the general population. While 48.6 percent of the people reported attending religious services at least once a week in a respected national survey, the proportion was 39.9 percent for professors on an identically worded question.

Of those professors who did attend religious services, most by far went to Christian churches of one kind or another. For example, the single largest group of attendees were Roman Catholic, representing just under 24 percent of all those who did attend services regularly.

One of the findings was that 36.6 percent of professors at "elite institutions" consider themselves atheists or agnostics, compared to 23.4 percent of professors across the country.

"A lot of Christian groups have latched onto this study," says Simmons, who joined the Mason faculty this year. "This project was not necessarily a study of religion and professors, but instead a study of ideological diversity in the academy.

"The original purpose for this was to be the basis of a symposium to be held at Harvard to discuss political and ideological diversity in the academy. That is still coming. We have not set a date yet."

Meanwhile, the results of the project were published in articles in Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Associated Press reported on the study, and that led to stories being published in newspapers from Kentucky to Oregon to Utah. "The AP seems to be the big break. When it broke there, it was all over the place," says Simmons.

Gross was interviewed by a newspaper in Texas. And both of them were interviewed last Friday by a Christian radio ministry that has about 400 to 600 affiliated stations, says Simmons.

As for his personal views, Simmons says, "I don't have a stake in this study. We really don't have an ax to grind." Simmons and Gross attended graduate school together at the University of Wisconsin, where Simmons earned his PhD before joining Mason.

"Conservative critics of higher education paint the academy as a bastion of atheism," Gross wrote in an e-mail to The Harvard Crimson. "There are indeed more atheists in the professorate than in the general population, but many professors are people of faith."

This proves you to be an idiot.

Just because you say so doesn't make it so... how about some talking points?

Superstition is the foundation of understanding random order.

Out of superstition appears the matrix where complexity can be reasoned.

rexred

You say you believe something that is clearly wrong.

In fact, it's my instant reaction to dismiss any statement that begins with "The only way to..."

In this case, the obvious fact that one can "begin to understand complexity" in a number of different ways just makes you instantly wrong.

If you said "the best way to begin" you'd still be wrong, but at least worth the effort of an argument.

What could work any better than a "guess"? Scientists don't guess, do they?

Which variable do you test first if they all appear to be identical? Do scientists not have feelings? Do they not have premonitions, superstitions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer

So now you've squirmed out of "superstition is the only way to begin to understand" and retreated to "a guess is the best way to begin to understand"

Massive difference.

Dude, no offense, but I think you're f'n crazy.

Maybe not in a clinical sense, but this is some off-the-wall way of putting things: the 'foundation' of understading 'random order' is superstition?