the outcome of the election

[JustAGuy]

OK, work with me on this one.
I don't need to understand the concept of "x" to know what the reprecussions of doing "x" will be?

Sorry, my experiences as a flight instructor tell me that pilots who do not understand lift and stalls frequently hit the ground unintentionally, or damn near do before an instructor grabs the controls and saves two lives.  Pilots who do not understand the spiral, and how it is different from the spin, have died as recently as a few years ago, reprecussion death in this case, an irreversible event as of this writing, when the phenomenon was well understood by a whole bunch of other pilots whose ability to avoid the reprecussions keeps them among the quick.  RIP, Fitz.  Someone has to get the reprecussions, to understand them, before any of the rest of us can do so.

It's not a good thing to have no understanding of concepts relating to what you're doing, but isn't it at least possible to have a notion of what will happen upon making a mistake (which would be highly likely, since so little is known about the subject)? In the flight example; the pilot doesn't understand that lifting too quickly causes turbulent air flow and a drop in pressure around the wing (if I recall correctly). What he does know, is that lifting quickly makes him dead. I'm in no way saying it's good for him to not understand the mechanics of flight. It's kind of like, "fire bad"; don't get too close, or you get burned (kind of like replying to this topic at all!).

With one anecdote and another, I am able to cast a doubt on the validity of your assertion.  Are you sure you don't want to re think what you were trying to say there?  It does not make much intuitive sense to me, and upon further examination, falls into little bits and pieces.

What were you really trying to say?

I was grasping at straws to begin with. In order to make a clear point, I'd have to have hit the nail on the head, and clearly I have not. So you're right, I didn't say exactly what I meant. If one believes that man makes an assumption about the universe, that there even is a universe to make an assumption about, then that in itself is a leap of faith. That disproves my own contention that creating a value set has nothing to do with a type of faith. Creating a value set is something done in the universe, which is something everyone has made an assumption about, therefore having faith in. I can't make clear any corollory between my logical thought process deriving a value set and said process not having been derived at, at some level, without some sort of faith. While there is no direct connection between what faith/assumption I've had to make in order to have a value set and the value set itself, there is a leap of faith present, as there is in all things, if one believes the inital assumption (the assumption regarding the universe). That is, only if you believe the initial assumption. If one was to ignore that, and look only at x and y, life would be a lot simpler. Ah, but life ain't simple.

It's just a matter of scope, really. Oh well, at least I tried.

On a related note, it's all well and good to put your faith into science, reason, and logic, they are excellent tools for solving problems.  Science, not faith, is what has enabled man to fly all manner of contraptions . . . but what leap of faith did Orville and Wilbur, Otto Lilienthal, or even Da Vinci make to believe that they could pull it off?  What leap of faith did they make to trust that an unknown variable like turbulence or wind shear, might kill them or cause their craft to become the agents of their death?

Consider what inspires folks to try something new.  Cold Reason?  Not in my experience, though your mileage may vary.    :)

Occhi

Hey, I like science. Science is fun. Or at least, that's what they tell the kids at the Science Centre.