Certainty Has an Intellectual Appeal, but It’s Really Unnecessary
About 45 years ago, I wrote a philosophy paper in which I disputed the importance of Descartes’ famous “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am). This may be the only real certainty with which we live; I think that I’m at my desk writing this post right now, but it’s possible that I’m actually asleep and dreaming, or in a laboratory, my brain hooked up to some computer that is deceiving me.
But certainty means almost nothing in the practicalities of our everyday lives. We live in what I described in the paper as a “network of probabilities.” Certainty has a distinct academic appeal, but I don’t need to be absolutely certain that my food hasn’t been poisoned, that brushing my teeth prevents decay, or that drinking and driving is a bad idea; I’m as certain as I need to be of all these things. Equally, I’m not sure that the Earth won’t be hit by an asteroid in the foreseeable future, but I don’t worry about it. Events vary from, say, 99.999% to 0.001% certain, and that’s absolutely fine with me.
Scottish empiricist David Hume said it best, IMO: “We always disbelieve the greater miracle,” meaning that if two ideas are hard to believe, we accept the one that’s less improbable than the other; this is the principle illustrated in the meme above. Most people don’t, but you are at liberty to believe that Donald Trump is telling the truth, and that every single one of the others is lying. If that seems like a good idea to you, I don’t know what to tell you–though I do have a bridge for sale that I’d like you to take a peek at.
(For the record, Trump believes Kim Jong Un too.)
Craig,
You know what’s really sad ? In your obsession with ranting about the supposed iniquities of the President, you seem to have completely lost interest in all the new clean environmental products now reaching commercialization.
Forget endlessly repeating the depressing ” Never Trump Mantra”, and dreaming of a socialist nirvana that will never happen (it always ends up like Venezuela after Hugo Chavez) and help celebrate the real and positive achievements occurring in the world of clean technology.
So Trump isn’t the ideal President, but neither are his detractors. Publishing fakes stock footage from 2014, purporting to be of event occurring today, is typical of the shoddy morass the mainstream media indulges in to fight partisan battles.
Bullying government officials, violet abusive public behaviour and incitement to violence, can’t be justifiable when used by one side but condemned in another.
Anywho, what’s that got to do with improving the environment ? Was it always just about imposing a political/ideological social agenda, or did you once believe in the importance of developing and promoting Clean(er) technology ?
Every day new products and technologies are appearing, yet it’s been a long time since you presented a positive article about a new product.
High compression LPG fuel tanks combined with new metallurgy and superior engineering are proving more economically viable for large marine engines, with the promise to reduce one of the larges sources of man made emissions.
Clean Coal technology, and more importantly, retro fitting to older power plants globally is becoming a reality.
The construction industry is rapidly solving many emission problems, while better agricultural practices are starting to gather pace.
There are a lot of new, positive technologies beginning to flower in a garden which less than a decade ago looked so bleak.
It’s sad to see you become so mired in a bitter political quagmire, you have forgotten your original objectives.