"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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In philosophy there are two schools of thought - broadly - realism and idealism.
Realism says the world is real and it doesn't matter what you think it is, it doesn't
change it. idealism says the world is all in your mind and reality is whatever you
believe it to be. The first is how we do physics,

Given that physics is based on calculations the first obvious question that claim
poses is " do numbers and mathematics" actually exist in the real world or are they
the products of human minds ? . Has for instance the fact that pi R squared is equal
to the area of a circle always existed since the dawn of time ? Or have circles
always existed for that matter ?

Or take science itself. Science progresses by disproving existing theories.
So that basically once they've been discarded and superceeded it must follow
that they described phenomena or relationships which never really existed in
the real world in the first place. So where did they exist ? Only in the mind
of the person formulating the theory/

And how do we know when a theory is superceeded ? When its prediction are
disproven by experiment. That's what makes science science the ability to
generate testable predictions whatever their source

the second is how we do politics and marketing.

To some extent at least all successful political and marketing campaigns
address peoples' deep seated psychological needs and emotions
as formulated in various theories which by their very nature are less
capable of generating rigorous predictions than are the hard sciences.

Such campaigns are then tested by trying them out on members
of the public.

Take on obvious example - the cynical claim that "most people are only
ever really moved to act as a result of one of two emotions' fear or greed.

"Fear" can be exploited in a number of ways - fear of foreigners - Muslims,
Mexican, and the Chnese in the case of Donald Trump, or the fear of being
left behind and ridiculed by your peers. by not owning the latest Apple iPhone
or Nike trainers,


Post Marx and the soviet union the idea that you can control a population by
manipulation of their beliefs took hold and its now the de facto way it's done.

Such thinking is hardly "post Marx". It was Marx himself who insisted that
the prevailing ideology - what the ordinary person in the street was most
concerned about was determined by the dominant class - the owners
of the means of production - capitalists.

This idea was further elaborated and brought up to date by the marxist Herbert
Marcuse in his 1964 book "One Dimensional Man" a critique of modern
materialist consumer culture based on the idea of "false needs".

Both of which unless you're seriously suggesting people really "need" the latest
iphone or trainers, or facebook or twiitter* seem to have been proved correct.

*Both of which cynically exploit the deep seated need of some people for approval
by their peers; by way of the provision of "likes" and "friends".

All it takes is money and willing participants.
In this branch of philosophy it doesn't *matter* whether e.g. ClimateChangeT is real
or not. What matters is to *convince* people that it *is*, and thereby make them accept
that world government is the only answer.

"World Government ". Only a crackpot would ever want to govern the world.

As it is, only geriatrics nowadays want to be President of the United States.

And who would ever want to try and govern billions of Chinese ?

snip conspiracy material

If you really want to understand my philosophical position its more true to say that I
regard knowledge - *all* knowledge - as having in-decidable truth content,

Renee Descartes supposedly made a big breakthrough with his famous
dictum "Cogito Ergo Sum". "I think therefore I am." Which according to
you remains indecidable

So that far as you're concerned, you can't even be sure that you exist
in the first place.

So why worry about all the other stuff at all ?


and that Kantian transcendental idealism - which broadly says that it *makes sense* to
*believe* there is an objective world out there, yes, but we are forever only able to
approach it through mental constructs, and the softer the science the more mental are
the constructs,

Softer ? So are you claiming sub-atomic physics is concerned with real
world objects which people encounter every day of their lives? Leptons,
quarks, etc. ~ How about the Higgs Boson ? It has yet to be proved that it
actually exists although they're spending billions looking for it, at the
taxpayers expense I might add.

If that isn't a "mental construct" perhaps you'd care to explain what it is/



until you get to the absurd position of e.g. 'subconscious racism' which is deemed to
exist, in the same way a stone exists, but you can't ever see it, because its
subconscious! What a great Zen style mind **** that one is!

Subconscious attitudes can be easily measured by unconscious overt behaviour.
Peoples pupils enlarge when they see things they like. You just show subjects
pictures of people of different races and measure any changes in their pupil
size.

This is a lot easier to measure than are subatomic particles - either their speed
or velocity.



So my interest and perspective is less about what I think is true, because it's _all_
lies, really, just some work better than others - and more about what belief structures
are being pushed, by whom and for what purpose, for you seem to have missed the
fundamental truth about the media, its all paid for by *someone*, and he who pays the
piper...

..and furthermore, there is a far deeper and more subtle game being played here, as a
sort of psychological misdirection. What counts is not which side of an argument is
correct, but why is the argument happening in the first place? Why must we for example,
interpret human history solely in terms of class conflict *alone* thereby condemning us
to be either a victim or an oppressor? Who *told* you it was all about class, or race,
or gender, and why did they want to move public debate on to that issue? And don't
believe they ever felt a deep moral compunction. Purlease!

That human affairs news and the media is orchestrated and controlled is obvious to
everyone post Brexit, when in a panic they lost subtlety and revealed a little of how
the game was played. Who is organising it and controlling it is of course another
matter. How do politicians like Blair, Major, Cameron end up very well off indeed when
MPs salaries are not that great?

Blair at least bought houses on mortgages, created a housing boom, and flipped them.
Insider trading par excellence, BUT what happened to him after that?

"Cui Bono"? asks Cicero.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"? asks Juvenal.

It's a pity we don't do the classics anymore.


Indeed otherwise you wouldn't be quoting Senenca, a noted Stoic as making
a statement about religion, no true Stoic* would ever make.

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the
rulers as useful"

The fact that yourself and your fellow numpites don't recognise your mistake -
but instead pursue vain searches for an "authentic" source for the quotation
speaks volumes.

* Stoics believe that because there are so many aspects of life over which we
have no control - even if we try and fool ourselves into thinking we do (although
we should still make the effort) - the key to happiness lies within ourselves and
how we choose to view the world, not in the world itself.

So that basically what other people choose to do is of no real concern to us
or our happiness at all. The world may be full of idiots. So what ?

If only I'd followed Seneca's advice.


michael adams

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