How is knowledge acquired?

You ask “How do people acquire knowledge?”.  Ask rather “How does knowledge acquire people?”.

 

Anthropocentric bias

As scientists, we are trained to be wary of bias in our observations.

Given the recognition of the contingency of our being, we can’t but be human-biased in our observations.

…this, BTW, is Runeson’s argument.

 

A cry for attention?

The incessant cry for attention! [and recognition!!] Citation indices, exhibitionists, YouTube, all this screaming could be seen as an attempt to be part of the glue in emerging trans-P-world structures. The subjective POV is being heaved up a level. ????

 

The apocalypse again

 

More on farming

Farming humans.  You can. We are a natural process, like a bean plant. You can count on us developing the best possible causal account of the R-world. The internet is a human farm. The infrastructure is ‘for free’. People do what they do best: they try to make sense of things. Are the ideas our farmers?

 

Pleasure and Pain

Theologians have spent so long wondering why there is pain in the world. Would that they had spent as much time wondering why there is pleasure in the world.

… for desire is what makes it all happen. Nietzche’s “will”. Something has to be the prime mover. And desire is what it looks like from here.  But the Islamic “surrender” is not alien, nor the Bhuddist “Om”.

 

Scared of death?

Of course I’m not frightened of death. I see through time. I realize that I, or my P-world, is/am necessarily finite. My job, always, is to try and make this finite grape thing the best thing it can be. My only point of reference therein is right here. Where I am. My coordinates. From there, you have to figure out what is human and what not.  I’m scared. Its dangerous at the margins.

 

Defining self, seeing self

I am getting better at seeing things. But all I see better is myself. (self: definition: The extended R-world region that corresponds to one P-world. We [seem to ] insist it have a definition!) That’s all one can do.

 

Visibility within a P-world

Here’s a question we might ask about P-worlds: which bits are ‘visible’ from where? (In the current sorry jargon, we call that ‘memory’ sometimes).  But it also captures ruptures (multiple personalities). ‘Visible’ plays off a spatial metaphor.  That will, as it has before, prove to be a suitably pliant metaphor.

 

Goals, and a scientific/humanist agenda

As macroscopic structure matches, mostly, between brains, so we really ought to find the common structure of the P-world, so that we can understand the residual variation.