Bottom up

Bottom

Up

DrB-19 09/12/2009

top down, bottom up, psyche, logos, mythos, einstein, yin, yang, cosmos, ether, aether

You had asked why I wasn’t content to let people think in whatever way they were comfortable with. I have no problem with reductionist thinking, I have a problem with using reductionist thinking EXCLUSIVELY for scientific inquiry. It doesn’t discover new concepts. Bottom up thinking is dismissed as hunches or guesses, not as the intuition it is. It leads to absurdities like psychology, for instance or voodoo. Top Down is a shortcut method of thinking. It precludes NEW concepts. This is the way an animal thinks. It can only rearrange and categorize existing known concepts. It is what makes people dumb. There is more, but that’s enough.
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Consider: Scientific method: A process that is the basis for scientific inquiry. The scientific method follows a series of steps: (1) identify a problem you would like to solve, (2) formulate a hypothesis, (3) test the hypothesis, (4) collect and analyze the data, (5) make conclusions.
Hypothesis:1. a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena.
An hypothesis is nothing more than a proposed conclusion, a pre-supposition.. (a guess) So essentially you start with a conclusion, then try to prove it false or true and declare it true based on the results. Thus it is circular in nature. Perfectly suitable for making decisions based on “knowns”. Consider the nature of knowledge. One perspective is there are things you know, things you don’t know, things you know you don’t know, AND THINGS YOU KNOW THAT AIN’T SO. IE part of this logic tree depends on belief and not fact.
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Consider: DNA. For years geneticists had been studying the genetic structure as if DNA were total and complete fact. Then, here come epigenitics. Oops! The concept of DNA was WRONG. IE they knew something that “wasn’t so”. DNA was never “tested” for validity. (and it CAN’T be tested using the scientific method) It was only true AS FAR AS IT WENT. It was incomplete. It was a n-truth and not a p-truth. The scientific method could never have caught this (and didn’t, the discovery was serendipitous). Now if I’m a plumber, and don’t care, accepting DNA as a p-truth is fine. BUT if I’m a geneticist doing research, using the scientific method is absurd.
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Consider: Ardi, the newly discovered hominid fossil. For years anthropologists had been working under the assumption than man evolved from chimps. Seems right. WRONG!!! Chimps evolved from hominids. It was an n-truth, not a p-truth. (This is awkward, I’m going to have to change all my Charlie Chimp references to Ardi Australopithecus Africanus, doesn’t really roll of the tongue does it?)
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Consider: relativity, for years physicists have been doing math on the assumption that time was real, and not a mental construct. And they still are. The are making another false assumption that math dictates physics. It does not. The math is not the physics. It only describes it. If reality and math disagree, the math is wrong, not reality.

In short, when using the scientific method the question “what if they’re all full of shit” is never asked.
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Consider: Heylighen, he is using bottom thinking to look at the problems of “gifted people” IE he is gathering (and verifying) the data THEN will see where it leads. He doesn’t start with the conclusion. (gifted people are bi-polar manic depressive) He will come up with a conclusion which is “less wrong” than psychology’s.
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How did this happen? Why have scientists forgotten how to ask why? Let’s look at the educational system. What is it’s purpose? To educate? WRONG. The purpose of the educational system to get the students to perform well on tests (to get increased funding, prestige, gravitas) in a limited time frame. Thus beliefs (n-truths) are presented as (and accepted as) facts. This is what I call the lattice, a block on challenging dogma. Thus the concept of reductionist thinking as being the only valid method of inquiry is carried by the students into life. (This is what I call dumb). If the issue is important, dogma must be challenged. It’s as if you cut out the right hemisphere. My education was somewhat unique, most easily summed up by quoting Bro. Max “We can’t teach you, we can only show you how to learn”. This goes to purpose. The purpose of the Benedictine order is to enlighten students, not to get them to pass tests. Big difference. This is only one of the impediments to understanding.
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When listening to someone, an alarm bell frequently goes off (alarmingly frequently) “this guy is full of shit”. (he’s an idiot) I interpret this as the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere being in disagreement. The wire to this alarm bell has been cut in most people and the input is dismissed. In a sense you could view the right hemisphere as a bullshit detector. It flags discrepancies in the logic of top-down and bottom up thinking.

This goes to the heart of my problem, people assume that if they don’t understand me it is because I’m crazy, when the truth is they don’t understand me because they’re dumb.
Read the attached file by Paul Grobstein. (Getting it less wrong, the brains way) He’s right. (he’s not an idiot) non-idiots are depressingly few in this society. Paul Grobstein