Science and Rationality are not the end all be all

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Also winnings are immaterial, it is the ratio of wins, losses and number of bets which is.important. you could call correctly on ten coin tosses and get them all right. This would not be particularly remarkable, the same feat over 100 tosses would be something to discuss but again not too improbable. Do this over several thousand tosses and then the skeptical minds would sit up and take notice, but even then they would start looking for a naturalistic explanation, if one could not be found and the feat remained unexplained that is where it would remain, an extraordinary feat of unknown cause.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 28 Jul 2014, 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It has dozens of authors with completely different views who were then compiled and edited by other men. It's like reading a science fiction short story anthology and expecting a common vision of the future. It's not there.

Yep, I am eagerly awaiting AngelRho's explanation on how Relativity removes the apparent contradictions in the Bible. Should be interesting!

I'm not sure why you've put ethics in opposition to rationality here. Ethics should be based solely on rationality, not emotion. Although I know that is quite hard for people to do. But when dealing with ethical questions I totally put aside my own feelings and work with my rational moral code (Christianity/Buddhism) to determine my actions. (I have to, I can't trust my emotions.)

I feel good when I'm ethical. Feeling good is an emotion--whether based on rationality or not.

Once you have a moral code, you can draw conclusions from it rationally, but the code itself is, just like religion, unprovable.

When the market changes direction from growing to falling, randomly selected trades often fare better than stocks picked by experts over a short term ( hours, days, a week or two maybe ).
The reasaon has more to do with market corrections taking more money of the hot stocks, the high growth stocks than off the rest.
Over a medium term random picks wont make you money unless you buy so many of them that you have basically bought the index.
If cats picked top stocks they'd have them on the trading floor wouldn't they?

It depends on the goal. If the goal is to find the "truth" of a single race, then success on multiple races is not necessary. Irrational thinking may lead to finding the truth of a particular event.

Are you suggesting that a single event, one random pick, one correct name based entirely on a "feeling" is all the evidence needed to demonstrate the ability to accurately predict the future?

No.

I merely cited an example of irrational thinking leading to finding the truth of an event.

Irrational thinking led to finding the truth of an event (i.e. accurately predicted the winner of the race) but thinking is not needed for that type of prediction. Any random number generator (such as throwing dice) will work with the same level of accuracy.

Whenever there is a race with a winner, somebody will win. When the race depends on physical things that can be measured (i.e. not random like a lottery) it is possible to make algorithms that predict the odds of a particular winner based on data about the contestants. But since there will be a winner, it is inevitable that if enough people are trying to predict the winner, one or more of those people will be right by sheer chance alone, rather than data analysis. The more people there are guessing, the higher the odds that one of those people will pick the winner by random choice ("irrational thinking"). It isn't that irrational thinking led them to the truth. It's just that if enough people make a random choice, one of them is bound to be right by chance. The one who was right by chance gets held up as an exemplar of luck/irrational thinking that works better than algorithms. But they aren't really. They are no more able to predict than a coin toss or a dice roll. The ones who picked at random/irrationally but picked wrong get ignored.

When there are two teams playing in the Superbowl and I pick the winner by choosing the one with the team logo I like best rather than by analyzing the previous games, the players and the coaches, I haven't done anything special or done better than analysis by my irrational thinking. But with only two teams, I have a 50/50 chance of picking the right one. Coin tosses have equal predictive value.

What counts is not being right. Somebody will always be right if there is a winner. What counts is being right more frequently than chance. Ripped made a good post about that in reference to stock picks.

Indeed.

I do think random chance is useful in problem-solving, though. If something doesn't fit a standard model and nothing seems to work, a randomized solution might by chance suggest a direction that one wouldn't ordinarily have considered before.

Don't forget the value of randomization in quantization error correction.

Your random direction of inquiry would still need to be investigated by a rational process.

http://partners4prosperity.com/three-mo ... ing-stocks

And now for the supporting argument:

The poll at the bottom of the page asks readers who they trust most with their investment portfolio.
The choices include a fund manager, ten million monkeys, and Orlando the Cat.
Currently, the monkeys lead the fund manager at a ratio of eight to one,
but Orlando the Cat leads the race.

Society has been able to agree on certain things to form the legal system. Although that's about provable guilt/evidence rather than ethics. I suppose it might depend on what the burden of proof is. There's different possibilities: rights and their violation, the greatest good/least suffering, karma.
But it is like figuring costs . . . if I went with my emotions I would be angry and behave in a hostile manner towards others because that is my instinct - I feel threatened. I have to trust my rational judgement of the situation. That is, truth isn't found in feeling, but rather in rational thought. So I guess I don't agree that ethics aren't rational.

It is still unprovable that you have an obligation to take others' suffering or rights into account, even if I feel so too.