Posts by BenWilson
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Oh and one plus one means "how many things are in a set that has one thing AND one *other* thing in it"
and Aromatherapy is not delusional, it just smells that way.
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Lyndon, on your definition, you say the belief is false, therefore you can't believe you are delusional, if you are. It's pretty simple really, but easy to tie yourself in knots. You can't define a proposition as being both true and false. Any set of words which purportedly has this property is not a proposition. That is one of the simplest definitions of a proposition, in fact, it is a statement which is either true or false. And any assumption you make that leads to such a proposition is false. In this case you assume thus:
"What if you had an irrational belief that you were delusional?"
which on subsequent definitions comes to:
"Suppose you had an irrational belief that all your beliefs were irrational and false?"
If you were delusional, then this belief would also be irrational and false, which would mean that not all your beliefs were irrational and false, which is impossible so we abandon the assumption that you are delusional. If you are not delusional, then not all your beliefs are irrational and false. But some might be, and this one in particular. There is no contradiction there, and so that must be the case, you are not delusional in your definition.
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What if you had an irrational belief that you were delusional? Huh? Huh?
Then you are not delusional, just wrong.
Oops, I get your question now. You mean "what if you had a true belief that you are delusional, but no justification? Then you couldn't be said to 'know' it, even though you might 'think' it".
Again, it comes to what is meant by delusional. If it means 'always wrong', then you simply can't have a true belief that you are delusional. If delusional simply means 'believes without justification', then you can believe whatever, there are no bounds. You could well be delusional and believe it. But on your strict definition, you couldn't know it.
These quandaries always have really simple solutions.
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That kind of knowing is surely possible. I know that 1+1=2, and I know that I know that. I could even prove it, but I'm not going to! It's not that silly an afternoon just yet.
What if you had an irrational belief that you were delusional? Huh? Huh?
Then you are not delusional, just wrong.
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You are not deluded about that.
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While we're on the subject of Descartes, Windows stinks, therefore Linux is.
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Being wrong about everything would be an awesome superpower. It wouldn't help you, but it would help everyone else. You'd be an inverse oracle. I guess it's pretty obvious there are no delusional people in that sense. I guess true delusionality is thinking you know stuff with confidence that defies the evidence. And I guess most people are like that. But some are more like it than others, and in many cases are extremely successful and powerful people.
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Are you delusional if you think you know you're delusional?
I think the answer is no. If being delusional means being wrong about everything, then you can't be delusional and think you are delusional. But you could be not delusional, and think you are delusional, and just be wrong about it.
I often think I'm like that. I think I'm wrong about everything, but then find that's yet another thing I'm wrong about. Happens every silly afternoon.
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Craig,
Now, if you're a purist libertarian who thinks legislative gridlock is utopia there's no downside. The rest of us might have some doubts. Don't get me wrong, Ben, I applaud the breath-taking cynicism and contempt for the electorate you're proposing. I'd prefer to have a little more faith in the intelligence of the peasants.
I don't think anything about the situation is utopia. It's shithouse that we don't really know the position of the next likely government on most issues. It's not hard to confuse the 'peasants' as you call the electorate, you just withhold information and make ambiguous and/or contradictory statements. That doesn't make them stupid, just people who've got better things to do than follow the intricacies of the political soap opera you are watching.
I didn't say I think there's an agenda. I said we don't know what Key thinks. It could be nothing. It could be an agenda. I don't know because it's not articulated clearly and consistently or followed up with any documentation.
Which basically means that we either vote for a collection of personalities branded as National, and trust them to make all the decisions for us, or we stick to Labour as the devil we know. Both choices are shit, IMHO. So don't give me any of this "delightfully naive" bs, I'm clued up enough to know that I don't know, and why. It's not for lack of interest or trying to find out.
It's those who think they do know that are delusional.
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"You have to give John Key his credit: when he flip-flops, he generally contrives to do so in the right direction."
Would have been catchy. But needs the caveat "...at least whilst in Opposition". When he's PM?
To my mind this shitfight is the outcome of flipflopping. If National would simply make their position clear in policy documents then this argument about "what people meant when they said X" would just never happen.
But as I've said before, Key is not going to change his tune, which has put National miles in the lead in the polls. Being deliberately vague has served him well so far. I think the lesson he's learned is not to even have that kind of interview with the likes of Audrey Young in future.
And Labour's only hope is to try to draw Key into these kinds of confrontations repeatedly. If they can project an image of someone who hasn't got a clue what his party's position is on anything, or at least he isn't going to tell us in an unambiguous way, they might stand a chance. I'm doubting it though. Most people probably have even less of a clue than Key does about most issues (I would hope so, given that he's probably our next PM), and he trades on that. They simply won't remember from one flipflop to the next.
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