OT: Crazy Programming

[Huaiyu Zhu]

On Sun, 19 May 2002 22:16:43 +1000, Patrick <postmisc at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>"Huaiyu Zhu" <hzhu at mars.localdomain> wrote in message
>news:slrnaeekef.3ck.hzhu at mars.localdomain...
>> Patrick <postmisc at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>> >
>> >To my mind, it is a perfectly logical conclusion that if the final
>recipient
>> >has some limitations (eg. the assumption that all things "REAL" must be
>> >entirely or partly perceptible), then the delivery systems indeed cannot
>> >help.
>>
>> Care to outline that logic?
>
>I'm relieved that you said "outline" instead of "defend" ;-)
>
>Philosophy is not my forte, so please forgive the naivete of these remarks.
>You are dealing with a novice here. (And to cap it off, it's Sunday night
>and I've been drinking all afternoon). So here goes ...

[snip]

Actually I do agree with the possibility that some limitations of recipient
cannot be helped by any delivery system.  For example, it is not possible to
push more information through the senses than their maximal capacity.
But there exist other limitations of the senses that can be overcome by
proper transformtion of the information. Therefore it is *logically
consistent* either way.  There is no logical conclusion either way. Each
particular instance of this question has to be answered based on its
particular characteristics.  

That's my objection to Christopher's line of thinking.  Just invoking a
limitation of senses to make conclusions about fundamental limitation of
knowledge does not make any sense.  Your additional arguments at least
constitute some additional analysis of the nature of some specific kinds of
knowledge. It is at least possible, but not likely at this stage, that this
might lead to some conclusion about fundamental limits of human knowledge.

You might have observed that I'm deliberately avoiding discussion of the
specific kind of limitations both of you are alluding to: namely systematic
bias in our sensory system.  That topic will inevitably veer into philosophy
that is hard to disentangle (and not suitable for this forum).  I would just
say that even a lab rat living in an entirely manipulated environment still
gains knowledge about its environment, even though the environment is an
artificial one.

As others have pointed out, this is already way too OT here.  So I'll just
stop, even though the discussion is very interesting.

Huaiyu