WEBVTT NOTE How Do We Know When the State is Lying? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.120 When I gave the tentative title for my talk, it was on the question, how do we know what we know, 2 00:00:08.120 --> 00:00:16.640 which is a question that has kind of bugged me for at least 50 years. 3 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:19.560 I am older than that. 4 00:00:19.560 --> 00:00:26.120 And when it was suggested that, well, maybe I could relate this more to the theme of the conference 5 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:31.960 and deal with the question, how do we know when the state is lying? 6 00:00:31.960 --> 00:00:34.840 Well, I didn't know if this was perhaps an effort 7 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:37.000 to limit my presentation to 30 seconds. 8 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:44.600 Maybe we're going to get caught up on time constraints 9 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:46.360 and so forth, because I could summarize 10 00:00:46.360 --> 00:00:51.240 my answer in the words offered by my favorite standup 11 00:00:51.240 --> 00:00:55.080 philosopher, George Carlin. 12 00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:57.920 He says, my first rule, I don't believe anything 13 00:00:57.920 --> 00:00:59.520 the government tells me. 14 00:00:59.520 --> 00:01:05.200 And he met it, and his audiences really enjoyed that. 15 00:01:05.200 --> 00:01:08.280 Kurt Vonnegut made the same comment 16 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:11.400 upon his return from World War II and his experiences. 17 00:01:11.400 --> 00:01:14.100 Asked a friend of his, what did you really 18 00:01:14.100 --> 00:01:15.840 learn from all this experience? 19 00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:18.200 And the friend said, never to believe anything 20 00:01:18.200 --> 00:01:21.320 the government tells you. 21 00:01:21.320 --> 00:01:24.480 Because the states are grounded in such a network of lies 22 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:28.420 and contradictions, deceptions and conflicts, 23 00:01:28.420 --> 00:01:31.540 it's safe to say that political systems 24 00:01:31.540 --> 00:01:34.300 are inherently in conflict with reality 25 00:01:35.420 --> 00:01:38.260 and must resort to intentional distortions of truth 26 00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:41.780 as a way of trying to appear coherent, 27 00:01:41.780 --> 00:01:43.520 at least, to a gullible public. 28 00:01:44.600 --> 00:01:47.020 The big lie, as it was called, 29 00:01:47.020 --> 00:01:49.180 and as was defended by Adolf Hitler, 30 00:01:49.180 --> 00:01:50.960 has long been a tool of statism. 31 00:01:50.960 --> 00:02:01.960 The more colossal the lie, Hitler intoned, the greater the propensity for homo bubus, H.L. Mencken's term, not Hitler's, homo bubus to believe it. 32 00:02:01.960 --> 00:02:11.960 Because human beings are accustomed to telling small lies, but would be embarrassed to tell outlandish ones, the great lie acquires credibility, said Hitler. 33 00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:41.960 For this reason, the lies that have been inseparable from truth surrounding 9-11 continue to be accepted by vast numbers of Americans, just as the state-serving myth that global warming is the product of human activity continues to be recited by politicians and other government officials, academics and members of the media, despite the refutations offered by literally hundreds of highly respected scientists in the field who have refused being baptized into 34 00:02:41.960 --> 00:02:47.160 to the Secular Religion of Algorithm. 35 00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:54.000 With the surface temperatures of Mars increasing while its polar ice cap is melting, I've heard 36 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:58.560 none of the high church environmentalists respond to my claim that this proves the existence 37 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:04.480 of human-like beings with their SUVs and aerosol sprays on Mars. 38 00:03:04.480 --> 00:03:10.960 In so many ways, are intelligent people reminded to be skeptical of consensus-based definitions 39 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:18.240 of Reality. State action does to the harmonious nature of human society what the throwing 40 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:25.240 of a rock through the network of a spiderweb does. It disrupts and sometimes destroys existing 41 00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:33.200 patterns of interconnectedness. Nowhere is this more evident than in the political manipulation 42 00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:39.320 and interference with the informal order of the marketplace. With the help of mainstream 43 00:03:39.320 --> 00:03:45.120 Media and Academia, the state then resorts to all kinds of fabrications to convince us 44 00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:50.320 of the magnificence of the emperor's new clothing. 45 00:03:50.320 --> 00:03:54.800 Alternative technologies, particularly the internet, make it so much easier to uncover 46 00:03:54.800 --> 00:04:00.720 and reveal the systematic lying necessary to the success of political entities. 47 00:04:00.720 --> 00:04:04.820 A libertarian newscaster friend once told me, you know, I was always tempted to go on the 48 00:04:04.820 --> 00:04:08.720 air and say, good morning, and hear the lies your government would like to have you believe 49 00:04:08.720 --> 00:04:15.680 Today. When John Stewart's The Daily Show is a perennial award winner for television 50 00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:21.320 news reporting, the habitual lying engaged in by government officials will continue to 51 00:04:21.320 --> 00:04:29.120 erode the credibility of the state, the media, and its academic lackeys. The respect once 52 00:04:29.120 --> 00:04:35.540 enjoyed by these major sources of information in our world have been in sharp decline in 53 00:04:35.540 --> 00:04:41.680 The PI, what I call the post-internet years, the rapidly diminishing circulations of major 54 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:49.220 newspapers and viewers of television network news are due not only to the parallel competition 55 00:04:49.220 --> 00:04:55.540 provided by the internet but to a widespread awakening of the dishonest nature of what the 56 00:04:55.540 --> 00:04:58.980 established media report. 57 00:04:58.980 --> 00:05:06.140 Or can we forget the widespread challenge of two-statism reflected in Ron Paul's efforts 58 00:05:06.140 --> 00:05:10.340 and undertakings that political parties and the media try to deflect into the harmless 59 00:05:10.340 --> 00:05:13.380 babblings of Sarah Palin? 60 00:05:13.380 --> 00:05:18.700 I don't know what is the more fitting metaphor for our times, either A. the manner in which 61 00:05:18.700 --> 00:05:24.580 the Russian people regularly laughed at government newscasts, or B. that poignant scene at the 62 00:05:24.580 --> 00:05:29.540 and the end of Orwell's Animal Farm as the powerless farm animals looked in the window 63 00:05:29.540 --> 00:05:35.940 of the farmhouse to see the ruling pigs partying with the hated humans. 64 00:05:35.940 --> 00:05:40.860 In these early years of the fourth stage of the information revolution, we are once again 65 00:05:40.860 --> 00:05:50.660 encountering a truth made evident by Johann Gutenberg's invention, that information is 66 00:05:50.660 --> 00:06:20.660 is very liberating for the same reason the political establishment has long adhered to Mark Twain's advice quote truth is the most valuable thing we have let us economize it as it always has the state needs to protect itself from harsh realities of truth by warring against persons and systems that contradict the self-serving mindset it requires for an obedient and servile public 67 00:06:20.660 --> 00:06:28.660 Proposals have been made by those in power to give the President the power to shut down the Internet, in the name of national security, of course. 68 00:06:28.660 --> 00:06:36.660 One of the proponents of this measure, Senator Joe Lieberman, went so far as to make a favorable comparison to the Chinese government on this matter, 69 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:45.660 which, quote, can disconnect parts of the Internet in case of war, and we need to have that here, too. 70 00:06:45.660 --> 00:07:13.660 that little criticism of this plan, or of Lieberman's defense of it, have been offered within the mainstream media, for whom the demise of the intermittent would be competitively advantageous, provides insight into the confrontation between those whose desire is to inform others and those who want to be keepers of the thoughts of others. 71 00:07:13.660 --> 00:07:19.860 As there will always be practitioners of free expression and seekers of truth among us, 72 00:07:19.860 --> 00:07:28.760 and as I have much more trust and confidence in the nerds, geeks and hackers who are forever looking to expand the capacities of computer technologies, 73 00:07:28.760 --> 00:07:35.160 I suspect that the efforts of the established order to silence those who ask questions will fail. 74 00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:41.960 The state's war against truth-seeking is also seen in its reptilian reaction to the WikiLeaks phenomenon. 75 00:07:41.960 --> 00:07:45.840 its continuing efforts to classify its activities as secret, 76 00:07:45.840 --> 00:07:48.720 lest boobists discover the real nature of the state. 77 00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:53.040 And more recently, are the pedagons buying and destroying all of Anthony Schaeffer's 78 00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:59.440 – no relation, I'm going to add – Anthony Schaeffer's book, his revelatory book, 79 00:07:59.440 --> 00:08:04.840 about the underside of U.S. activities in Afghanistan, 80 00:08:04.840 --> 00:08:09.600 that members of the political establishment are so economically illiterate 81 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:15.040 has to fail to see how this book burning will only increase demand for the book. 82 00:08:15.040 --> 00:08:20.120 The demand, I suspect, the publishers will be eager to satisfy. 83 00:08:20.120 --> 00:08:24.920 This should encourage those of us who love the marketplace all the more. 84 00:08:24.920 --> 00:08:30.960 In this respect, the Pentagon has placed itself in the same position that Bill O'Reilly did when 85 00:08:30.960 --> 00:08:36.040 at the outset of the war against Iraq, he urged all good patriotic Americans 86 00:08:36.040 --> 00:08:40.840 to Buy French Wines and Pour Them Down the Sewer to Punish the French for Not Having 87 00:08:40.840 --> 00:08:42.840 Joined in the War Effort. 88 00:08:42.840 --> 00:08:48.520 Well, the laughter indicates I don't need to explain that one. 89 00:08:48.520 --> 00:08:53.320 I have three books that have been published, none of which have really received much attention. 90 00:08:53.320 --> 00:08:57.800 And perhaps I can persuade the Pentagon and Bill O'Reilly to undertake a campaign to 91 00:08:57.800 --> 00:09:05.480 have Americans buy copies of my books and conduct highly publicized book burnings thereof. 92 00:09:05.480 --> 00:09:11.160 All in all, I found Karen Kwiatkowski's recent LRC blog more to my liking. 93 00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:15.000 In explaining the efforts of those in power to suppress uncomfortable information, she 94 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:20.920 reminded us that, quote, boys and girls in D.C. are just like us. 95 00:09:20.920 --> 00:09:25.680 They just want to be left alone, to conduct their business and nurture their friendships, 96 00:09:25.680 --> 00:09:29.800 to make their way in the world without having someone always looking over their shoulder 97 00:09:29.800 --> 00:09:31.720 and judging them. 98 00:09:31.720 --> 00:09:34.040 It's actually kind of sweet, don't you think? 99 00:09:34.040 --> 00:09:47.040 For the aforesaid reasons, the systematic lying associated with political systems troubles me less than do the efforts of status to undertake their programs even with the very best of intentions. 100 00:09:47.040 --> 00:09:59.040 I'm willing, for the sake of argument, to grant the political classes the most honest and sincere motives, to presume that they really want to promote the best possible conditions in the world for all of mankind. 101 00:09:59.040 --> 00:10:28.040 The most damaging falsehood associated with governmental action is a belief, common to the entire institutional order, that social order is dependent upon pyramidal, vertical power structures. Contrary to its avowed purposes, this premise generates social disorder, brought on by two factors. 102 00:10:28.040 --> 00:10:38.040 One, the refusal of the system to respect the inviolability of property interests, which in turn is destructive of individual liberty, 103 00:10:38.040 --> 00:10:44.040 about which I've written extensively elsewhere, as Doug nicely pointed out. 104 00:10:44.040 --> 00:10:53.040 Also, the epistemological problems associated with presuming the capacity to predict the outcomes of complex relationships. 105 00:10:53.040 --> 00:11:07.040 If we understood the lesson from the study of chaos, namely that complex behavior always produces unpredictable consequences, we might be less arrogant in efforts to mandate the behavior of other people. 106 00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:20.040 More than that, if we understood just how inherently and unavoidably limited is our knowledge of the world, we might be less hubristic in our insistence upon managing the lives of others. 107 00:11:20.040 --> 00:11:31.040 As an example, the federal government was finalizing plans for the construction of a nuclear waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. 108 00:11:31.040 --> 00:11:47.040 When the federal court directed the Department of Energy to predict the consequences that would be generated by this facility for a period of time ranging from, ready for this, 300,000 to 1 million years. 109 00:11:47.040 --> 00:11:57.040 Now, to most of us who have a sense of responsibility for actions, I suspect the court's order satisfied the importance of considering long-term costs. 110 00:11:57.040 --> 00:12:08.040 The troublesome implications of this judicial response have to do with the court's sense that it is capable of accurately predicting the course of events for the next one million years. 111 00:12:08.040 --> 00:12:15.040 My study of geology, as well as human existence on this planet, convinces me otherwise. 112 00:12:15.040 --> 00:12:37.040 Bearing in mind that human beings have likely been on this planet for anywhere from 200,000 to at most 1 million years, depending upon our interpretation of various skeletal remains, the Court is directing the outcome of human action for a time period equal to our entire history. 113 00:12:37.040 --> 00:13:07.040 Furthermore, the Court is presuming the kind of geologic and climatological stability that would fail to consider such functions as plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, continental drift, magnetic reversals of the poles, periodic ice ages, massive flooding, solar flares, the comets and asteroids that have occasionally hit the earth, the cutting and filling functions of rivers which, along with continuing processes of wind and water erosion, 114 00:13:07.040 --> 00:13:23.040 To put such inconsistencies into the context of the court's order, you should know that during the last one million years, there have likely been ten major ice ages on this planet. 115 00:13:23.040 --> 00:13:31.040 The meteor that hit in Arizona and created the giant crater that many of us have seen probably did so about 200,000 years ago. 116 00:13:31.040 --> 00:13:46.040 The volcanic eruption that destroyed the island of Krakatoa and produced long-term worldwide climatological changes, including tsunamis as distant as South Africa, occurred but 127 years ago. 117 00:13:46.040 --> 00:13:51.040 Yucca Mountain itself was created by a number of volcanic eruptions. 118 00:13:51.040 --> 00:13:56.740 There are so many interconnected variables and unknown factors at work in nature, including 119 00:13:56.740 --> 00:14:02.560 the myriad consequences of human action, that it borders on magical thinking to believe 120 00:14:02.560 --> 00:14:07.960 that one can anticipate the playing out of this constantly changing interplay over such 121 00:14:07.960 --> 00:14:10.720 an extended period of time. 122 00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:15.440 We are fortunate to get accurate predictions of next week's weather. 123 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:20.440 Expecting government agencies to prognosticate over a one million year period becomes a test 124 00:14:20.440 --> 00:14:39.440 A belief in absolute truth coupled with a self-righteous resolve to enforce such views is a pathology that must be confronted head on if we are to preserve any semblance of our humanity. 125 00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:46.440 If we are to overcome our liming-like march into mutual self-destruction, we must begin at the source of the problem. 126 00:14:46.440 --> 00:15:02.440 The relevant question, in my view, is this. Is it possible for us to have an empirical understanding of the world, or to act upon the basis of philosophical principles and values, other than through our subjective undertaking? 127 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:11.440 Are there such qualities as objective truths, be they empirical or moral, that operate in the world outside of our own mind? 128 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:24.440 This is the question that troubled me for about 50 some years now. In the realm of economics, are there objective values to be ascribed to goods and services? 129 00:15:24.440 --> 00:15:36.440 Apart from the values given to them by freely contracting parties. Indeed though we can speak of the price arrived at in a transaction as an objective factor, an objective price. 130 00:15:36.440 --> 00:16:06.440 Price. It is also evident that the value given to that transaction, the value of the goods, is not only subjective, differing in the minds of each party in different ways, but furthermore, can never equal the objective price, otherwise the transaction wouldn't have taken place, and B, can never be known even to the parties themselves. The value of something in a transaction is inherently subjective. So is it possible for us to extend this awareness 131 00:16:06.440 --> 00:16:16.440 and the awareness of the subjective underpinnings of economic transactions into our efforts to understand and function in the world in all other areas. 132 00:16:16.440 --> 00:16:24.440 Using a dictionary definition, are there truths in the world that, quote, exist independently of mind? End of quote. 133 00:16:24.440 --> 00:16:30.440 If there are, we can know of such matters only through our individualized opinions. 134 00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:35.160 And I believe that everything you or I can know about the world, whether in the form 135 00:16:35.160 --> 00:16:41.200 of empirical information or philosophical principles, derive from our subjective experiences 136 00:16:41.200 --> 00:16:42.920 and nothing more. 137 00:16:42.920 --> 00:16:45.160 This does not mean they're wrong or anything like that. 138 00:16:45.160 --> 00:16:50.520 It just means that we are inherently limited in our understanding of the world by what 139 00:16:50.520 --> 00:16:52.480 we already know. 140 00:16:52.480 --> 00:16:58.640 To begin with, the very concept of knowledge necessarily implies a knower. 141 00:16:58.640 --> 00:17:03.760 For the reality that exists in the universe, there can be no knowledge of it without an 142 00:17:03.760 --> 00:17:05.200 observer. 143 00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:09.280 This is the meaning of Bishop Barclay's teaser about the sound of a falling tree in a forest 144 00:17:09.280 --> 00:17:16.760 where there's no one to hear it, because sound is something received by auditory senses. 145 00:17:16.760 --> 00:17:21.400 From the moment of our birth until death, we experience ourselves and our world, including 146 00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:27.200 others, not in the mechanistic fashion of a video camera recording sensory impressions. 147 00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:38.200 Rather, we interact with our world, organizing our experiences into categories and concepts by which we make comparisons and contrasts. 148 00:17:38.200 --> 00:17:46.200 It is the mind alone that creates these categories. They do not exist beyond the boundaries of our mind. 149 00:17:46.200 --> 00:17:54.200 And the boundaries that you have for your experiences and the boundaries that I have for my experiences will be fundamentally different. 150 00:17:54.200 --> 00:17:59.200 What we think of the world is simply that, thoughts about the world. 151 00:17:59.200 --> 00:18:04.200 Learning, as I tell my students, is really an art form. 152 00:18:04.200 --> 00:18:10.200 And like painters and sculptors, we outwardly manifest our inner visions of the world and ourselves. 153 00:18:10.200 --> 00:18:16.200 We learn only because our mind is dissatisfied with its existing patterns of understanding 154 00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:23.200 and wishes to create more sophisticated patterns with which to both inform and amuse itself. 155 00:18:23.200 --> 00:18:38.200 In accepting dogmas about the good, the true and the beautiful, residing outside ourselves, we have surrendered to institutions the perceptive, creative and spiritual essence of what it means to be human. 156 00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:50.200 We are seekers of information. The word inform means to give shape within. Within what? Other than the mind. 157 00:18:50.200 --> 00:18:56.120 Gregory Bateson defined information as differences that matter, matter to whom, 158 00:18:57.720 --> 00:19:02.440 who is it that notices the differences and by what criteria and who are located 159 00:19:03.240 --> 00:19:05.800 are distinctions and similarities to be evaluated. 160 00:19:08.200 --> 00:19:11.240 The current study of chaos or complexity is making us aware 161 00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:17.080 that conditions we have heretofore regarded as disordered turbulence have regularities to them 162 00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:33.080 We had not previously seen. But has nature suddenly become more orderly? Or has our subjective mind, with the help of computer technologies, only developed more sophisticated ways of organizing its experiences with nature? 163 00:19:33.080 --> 00:19:45.080 We are also not simply the seekers, but the creators of the moral and aesthetic measures by which we live what Socrates called the examined life. 164 00:19:45.080 --> 00:19:50.580 We are, as the poet Seamus Haney so well expressed it, I love this quote, 165 00:19:50.580 --> 00:19:53.580 You are the hunters and gatherers of values. 166 00:19:53.580 --> 00:20:06.580 But the quest takes place within the vast expanse of the subjective mind, wherein the hunter negotiates with the world as a means of measuring his or her own sense of being. 167 00:20:06.580 --> 00:20:15.580 We think dualistically and abstractly, dividing our experiences into mutually exclusive categories. 168 00:20:15.580 --> 00:20:18.580 We're probably unable to do anything other than that. 169 00:20:18.580 --> 00:20:24.580 The hard-wiring of our brains probably prevents us from dealing with reality in any other way. 170 00:20:24.580 --> 00:20:32.580 Our mind needs to become aware of this inherent limitation and its capacities for dealing with the world. 171 00:20:32.580 --> 00:20:40.580 But the conscious mind enjoys its monopolistic position in directing our lives. 172 00:20:40.580 --> 00:20:43.580 Perhaps the insights offered by Joseph Conrad may help. 173 00:20:43.580 --> 00:20:48.580 He said, I used to think the mind was the most important part of a person. 174 00:20:48.580 --> 00:20:57.580 Then I realized what part of me is telling me that. 175 00:20:57.580 --> 00:21:03.380 The dualistic categories we employ are determined not by the inherent nature of anything we 176 00:21:03.380 --> 00:21:08.180 are observing, but by systems of thought that others have taught us. 177 00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:11.140 Are avocados and tomatoes fruits or vegetables? 178 00:21:11.140 --> 00:21:16.820 A botanist will give you one answer, the produce manager of your local grocery store will give 179 00:21:16.820 --> 00:21:18.980 you another. 180 00:21:18.980 --> 00:21:26.820 We deal with the universe abstractly as images and concepts that our mind has created. 181 00:21:26.820 --> 00:21:32.300 When we are engaged in abstraction, our understanding becomes, in the words of one dictionary, considered 182 00:21:32.300 --> 00:21:40.260 apart from the matter or from specific examples, not concrete. 183 00:21:40.260 --> 00:21:44.620 Such a process is about the world, but not of it. 184 00:21:44.620 --> 00:21:50.140 I suspect that the main reason we do not have memories of our first days and weeks out of 185 00:21:50.140 --> 00:21:57.140 of the womb is that we've had numerous experiences, but no conceptual tools, no words that allowed 186 00:21:57.140 --> 00:22:00.780 us to define, categorize and organize those experiences. 187 00:22:00.780 --> 00:22:04.140 We did not have labels to attach to our world. 188 00:22:04.140 --> 00:22:07.940 Because of this interplay between our experiences and how those experiences have been recorded 189 00:22:07.940 --> 00:22:12.760 and organized, we have been trained as what we are capable of knowing about the world 190 00:22:12.760 --> 00:22:21.000 may rise no higher than how we have subjectively defined the world. 191 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:25.820 The words that we use to describe things are fundamentally different from what it is we 192 00:22:25.820 --> 00:22:26.820 are describing. 193 00:22:26.820 --> 00:22:32.440 Unless you have not learned this important lesson, let me remind you that the word water 194 00:22:32.440 --> 00:22:34.700 will not quench your thirst. 195 00:22:34.700 --> 00:22:38.320 If you think that it will, try drinking it. 196 00:22:38.320 --> 00:22:40.800 What about these plastic glasses? 197 00:22:44.800 --> 00:22:50.020 Are these the same as these glasses? 198 00:22:50.020 --> 00:22:51.600 These glasses the same as these glasses? 199 00:22:51.600 --> 00:22:52.720 No, they're not. 200 00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:55.600 What's more, even greater interest? 201 00:22:55.600 --> 00:22:59.640 Neither one of these are made of glass. 202 00:22:59.640 --> 00:23:00.640 They're made of plastic. 203 00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:06.880 We project onto the world the patterns 204 00:23:06.880 --> 00:23:13.520 We Find Meaningful, the ones we have put together that best explain our experiences in the world. 205 00:23:13.520 --> 00:23:22.120 The experiment that I have used with my students has been to ask them to draw a picture of a previously undiscovered life form, 206 00:23:22.120 --> 00:23:27.400 one that is not simply a composite of life forms already familiar to you. 207 00:23:27.400 --> 00:23:33.200 You will quickly discover the difficulty associated with seeing the universe other than in the 208 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:37.840 patterns that are already familiar to you. 209 00:23:37.840 --> 00:23:43.280 We've all seen small babies putting some item in their mouths, then hearing Aunt Edith 210 00:23:43.280 --> 00:23:50.360 shriek, oh, look out, she's going to eat that pen, then grabbing it from her. 211 00:23:50.360 --> 00:23:54.380 Babies are not trying to eat everything they encounter, but they are trying to discover 212 00:23:54.380 --> 00:23:58.880 for the nature of pens and other objects by testing them through the sensory tools 213 00:23:58.880 --> 00:24:04.880 in which many of their earliest experiments have been conducted, and that's their sense of taste. 214 00:24:04.880 --> 00:24:10.880 The baby, having found out that other things placed in her mouth produced a pleasurable effect, 215 00:24:10.880 --> 00:24:15.880 now discovers that the pen does not, and so puts it down. 216 00:24:15.880 --> 00:24:17.880 She's learned a lesson. 217 00:24:17.880 --> 00:24:20.880 She's also learned an important social lesson. 218 00:24:20.880 --> 00:24:30.880 The world is plagued with a variety of Aunt Ediths who insist upon interfering with and restraining their life experiences. 219 00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:38.880 I'm kind of running short on time here, so I'm going to have to rush through some of this, but I want to make it clear. 220 00:24:38.880 --> 00:24:49.880 I'm not taking a solopsistic approach, you know, that what exists in the world is simply a product of my mind, and when I die, the world goes away. 221 00:24:49.880 --> 00:25:00.880 I believe there's a real objective world out there, I really do, but I believe it only is a matter of opinion, there's no way I can move beyond my prior experiences in evaluating that. 222 00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:12.880 I'm also not taking the position that I'm dealing in some kind of moral relativism. I have no use for moral relativism. 223 00:25:12.880 --> 00:25:20.160 It's the idea that somehow or other, if your moral principles differ from mine, I'm not going to say, 224 00:25:20.160 --> 00:25:27.040 well, you know, your principles are as good as mine. The heck they are, you know, 225 00:25:27.040 --> 00:25:29.280 if your principles differ from mine, you're wrong. 226 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:40.640 But I will still accept that, I will still insist that whatever my principles are, are the product 227 00:25:40.640 --> 00:26:01.640 I once had a discussion on the topic of, do we live in a heliocentric or geocentric universe? 228 00:26:01.640 --> 00:26:07.640 A friend of mine who was a very good libertarian and also has a very good science background, 229 00:26:07.640 --> 00:26:13.400 was insisting that we live in a heliocentric rather than geocentric world and I said well 230 00:26:14.600 --> 00:26:19.240 I think you're probably right but how do you know that to be true? How do you know we do? 231 00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:23.880 Because when I look up at the sky you know in the early morning sun's over there, 232 00:26:23.880 --> 00:26:29.480 high noon it's over there and the evening it's over there, sure seems to suggest to me that maybe 233 00:26:30.840 --> 00:26:35.560 the sun does go around the earth. We still talk that way don't we? We still talk about sunrises 234 00:26:35.560 --> 00:26:45.560 So, how do you know? He said, well, the math justifies the conclusion that the earth goes around the sun. 235 00:26:45.560 --> 00:26:49.560 I said, well, okay, let's take two responses to that. 236 00:26:49.560 --> 00:26:54.560 Number one, how do you know that mathematics is a way of evaluating something like that, 237 00:26:54.560 --> 00:26:58.560 rather than just, you know, physical observation? 238 00:26:58.560 --> 00:27:02.560 And secondly, more importantly, have you done the math? 239 00:27:02.560 --> 00:27:12.800 Or are you just taking the word of other people who say they have done the math? 240 00:27:12.800 --> 00:27:15.200 How do you know what you know? 241 00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:19.600 How do you know that your understanding of the world is valid? 242 00:27:19.600 --> 00:27:25.960 Well, in the areas of religion, people who know me know I'm basically an agnostic about 243 00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:26.960 everything. 244 00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:31.840 Religion, politics, you name it, which simply means I want to be convinced. 245 00:27:31.840 --> 00:27:35.040 All for me evidence and so forth. 246 00:27:35.040 --> 00:27:41.680 And, but I find it interesting when I put the, say the book of Genesis alongside the 247 00:27:41.680 --> 00:27:49.160 explanations of Big Bang Theory, seems to be such a similarity that maybe the religionist 248 00:27:49.160 --> 00:27:54.520 and maybe the scientist are looking for the same thing, answer to the questions, where 249 00:27:54.520 --> 00:28:01.760 did it all come from, where is it all going, and what rules are in place while we're here. 250 00:28:01.760 --> 00:28:21.360 Part of the problem here is that we humans are destroying ourselves through a self-righteousness 251 00:28:21.360 --> 00:28:27.120 grounded in a belief in the objective truths that we like to imagine we are dealing with 252 00:28:27.120 --> 00:28:36.120 and some objective truth, whether it comes from, you know, the area of religion, politics, philosophy, science, whatever. 253 00:28:36.120 --> 00:28:51.120 And as I've said, I think that we are forever tied to the notion, tied to the reality, 254 00:28:51.120 --> 00:29:06.000 If truth and moral principles reside beyond the individual, why should we not want to 255 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:11.040 mandate uniform, standardized social systems and practices to forcibly direct people to 256 00:29:11.040 --> 00:29:15.040 comply with such eternal and transcendent principles? 257 00:29:15.040 --> 00:29:20.400 If this is really the nature of the world, then why wouldn't we expect to want to control 258 00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:31.400 Why would we be expected to show any tolerance for those whose ideas or conduct differ from these objective truths? 259 00:29:31.400 --> 00:29:44.400 We are unable to transcend the limited capacities of our mind, other than perhaps to become and remain constantly aware of such limitations. 260 00:29:44.400 --> 00:30:01.400 If we can do that, we may put an end to our horribly destructive habits, while in so doing transfuse those anti-life energies into the wonderfully creative pursuits that have generated a life-sustaining civilization. 261 00:30:02.400 --> 00:30:08.400 So with that, I think I've run over time enough. Thank you. 262 00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:16.400 Thank you very much.