Good Uses of Logical reasoning in the real world

I want to make amends for a couple of reasons. One is personal, the other is intellectual.

I've tended to think of complicated logical reasoning as a sort of useless exercise, which has discovered very little about the world. (Yes, already, these are two different things.)

I myself have only average logical ability as measured by standardized tests, and it's not my style to think in long chains. I immerse myself in something in many ways for a long time, then, if anything's going on at all upstairs, I make mental connections pretty instantly without necessarily knowing why. I hop quickly from one thing to another.

The philosopher I like best -- patron saint of musicians and sad loners, Fred Nietzsche -- does the same thing. He never met an oracular, peremptory aphorism he didn't like. In fact, he probably wanted to be La Rochefoucauld or Voltaire. (good stuff, that, by the way.)

One experience here has changed my mind a little, and I want to continue that.

A long time ago, I posted the logic puzzles of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson, really) one at a time.

A few posters astounded me by being able to answer all of them nearly instantly. My son did that with the last one, too, but he just got lucky. Like me, his mind works quickly, or it doesn't work at all. He sees the picture, or he doesn't.

Dr. Kitten (who I miss) aced it. Really fast. There was someone else, too, who no longer posts, I think.

Logical training of various kinds is good for untangling logic puzzles.

Study of informal logic must help in cutting through misleading rhetoric -- and misleading rhetoric is most of politics.

What are some discoveries, or cases of logical reasoning that have led to scientific progress or other progress?

What are the benefits -- for the young, not a toothless old cur like me -- of studying formal logic?

Does studying formal logic help you with things like Bayesian statistical reasoning? Everone's talking about this Bayesian this, Bayesian that -- you probably can't even get laid in Boston without understanding Bayesian reasoning.

Was Mendel's work, for example, more about logic or about getting his hands dirty?

Is learning logic helpful, or is it only helpful if you're already good at it?

Those are some of the things we might, in this thread, discuss.

The Brain Interprets what the Ears Hear

Per the Didcot Powerstation Collapse:

Quote:

Furlong dismissed accounts by witnesses who described hearing an explosion at the site. “There was not an explosion, we have had that confirmed. The noises that were heard were just the collapse,” he said. “The building was being prepared for demolition. The police are leading now with an investigation with the support of the HSE.”

http://ift.tt/24ph3fY

Or maybe . . .

Don't trust politicized science

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=nwVxej4uH3Y
Feels like one of those, whah the science doesn't agree with me, ****.

Who deserves jobs?

Would someone please explain to me why jobs are only for Americans and why I should be angry that people in other nations have them too?


Thank you.

New AE911Truth Video - Free Fallin'

I will just leave this here. This should make a few skeptics' heads explode. This really isn't a big deal, because the splatter of brain matter will be minimal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-27FGbpBk4

An Eye on Israel

I thought it might be prudent to create a thread focusing on current events as they unfold in relation to The State of Israel.

Ron Dermer - Israel's Ambassador to the United States and his stirring address of hope for the future! Despite all the terror and destruction engulfing the Middle East, history is on the side of Israel.

Video [3:46]

Quote:

An eloquent writer and speaker, Ron Dermer, a religious Jew, originally from Miami Beach, Florida, became Israel’s ambassador to the United States in 2013. In his speech to the Christians United for Israel organization, he explains that as in most middle east countries the Christian population is drastically shrinking, in Israel it is growing and thriving. In an eloquent affirmation of good will and cooperation between Israel and the United States, he appeals to the organization to continue their staunch support of Israel and the Jewish People.

Many believe that biblical prophesies are coming into their time of fulfillment - and while this subject could be considered a religious one which belongs in the Religion and Philosophy forum, this is a subject which is very much both a social issue as well as a current and ongoing event and The State of Israel is not ashamed to call itself a G-d believing G-d motivated state which sees itself the in the role of the best example as to how a country should conduct itself and how other nations would be wise to follow Her example and support Her against the tyranny of hatred and terror.

Perhaps they have a point...?

Survivalist literature: what to make of it?

Recently I was writing about the book written by Lavoy Finicum. The guy that decided not to go quietly into the night up in that Oregon standoff. I thought his book Only By Blood And Suffering: Regaining Lost Freedom touched on a number of things that seem to crop up in survivalist literature again and again.

I wrote in the other thread the following:

At the heart of Lavoy's writing seems to the be the concept that the interdependent relationships of society—with people relying on the collaboration of many people with specialized skills—not as a strength but as a weakness. He seems to think society itself is doomed because people are no longer jack-of-all-trade rugged individualists.

This is driven home by how his heroes, during their journey, come across helpless people time and time again. A single EMP attack seems to have turned everyone into clueless hordes. No one is organizing or forming plans. They are all just gathering in groups to whine and beg.

As such anyone that didn't have ready access or means to immediately grow or hunt all their own food become "takers" in his tale. Dependency on others made you weak. And dependency on relationships seems to be what he hated. If you were reliant on buying your food from a grocer they you were dependent on that grocer getting the products from a supplier. A supplier that was dependent on getting it from a manufacturer. A manufacturer dependent on getting it from a farmer or rancher.

All those layers of dependency seemed to have frightened Lavoy who saw no way that the interconnected nature of it all made it strong but instead made it all weak. Society itself, as such, is weak.

And he saw the liberal ideals as making things weaker by creating yet more layers of dependency. This is driven home when Jake's son is traversing the Grand Canyon and finds a horde of out of shape park rangers who are wandering about with no plans or ideas on what to do next seemingly with no real knowledge of the park they were rangers in just days before. Despite being people tasked with knowing everything about the park, despite being tasked with managing it they were still "takers". In Lavoy's mind they were just latte sipping liberals who knew nothing about the land outside of it being pretty.

So the whole thing seems to just be tiresome dreck that drives home the point, over and over again, that relationships and relying on others to do their part is bad. And society, as he saw it, was the ultimate interdependent relationship and thus would be doomed to utterly fail as soon as it hit any bump in the road. Which...of course ignores all of history where society powers through huge catastrophes again and again precisely because the organizing powers of society can harness the diverse distributed skills of numerous people.

What do you see at the heart of such written works? Is The Turner Diaries part of it? Or is it just a racist screed masquerading as survivalist literature?