Seemingly random thoughts. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. One thought upon another-but does one thought invariably lead specifically to the next one?
Does it appear to us that ad hoc propositions lead to post hoc fallacies? Like I just did in the previous sentence?
We like to take credit for things we enjoy and want for ourselves or our loved ones. Which brings to mind Thoreau--paraphrased: "If I knew there was a person coming to my house with the express purpose of doing me a good deed, I should run for my life!"
I think this is more of an issue for famous people who have second thoughts about their fan base. To me this was always amusing but mostly theoretical! Loneliness is really more the problem for most people, and the thing we flee the most, eh Eleanor Big Oil Rig Bee?
Thurber cartoon: irritated-looking woman ice skating, speaking to a man in a sled hitched to 6 basset hounds: "I said,'The hounds of spring are on winter's traces, but let it pass, let it pass!'" Needless to say, no matter how you try to "trace"--harness for those of you not used to archaic usages--even an infinite numbers of basset hounds (horrors!!!) you will find yourself sitting on the ice until it melts, and then what? That's what!!!
This would be typical committee work. Apolitical action committee--o don't we wish!--accomplishment.
When I think about it, this kind of thinking--ad hoc to post hoc dys-logic--is far more common than mere logic. For instance, did you know that ugly defendants are at least 22% more likely to be found guilty by the average jury, than the good-lookin' among us? Bless their hearts.
(Better get my teeth straightened--alls I wants for Christmess id I mean iz....)
Science is supposed to help us out here. But did you know that my old girlfriend was accepted by Chicago Medical School on the basis of her cute photo? So,like, I really, really trust science to be honest forthright and objective.
It turns out that Western science has become really creative and thus turned in on itself as well as going about upside down. Science has been hitched to so many absurd wagons, it has caught wagon disease! At this point in spite of many real accomplishments, science and health so called have been caught up in the entertainment industry. The cover of "Discover" magazine has the same come-on format as Glamor magazine, without the girlie picture, in its place being some galaxy or other. One reader did bring them to task about the hype/blurb far exceeding the content; but I find that many of the "science" numbers are this way. Especially via the Internet--and the next day, you can't even find the article; I think they broadcast it to Alpha Centauri immediately.
There is a lawsuit underway against Big Oil in Louisiana--about the Big Spill, right? No, about the oil companies causing Katrina to be more ferocious than usual! This is in legal limbo because all the judges are afraid to make a decision!!
(please see the article about the appalling appointment of Frances Collins, the Genome Project go-to guy, to head of the NIH, in the current TNY. Collins has expressed doubts about medicine being changed by knowing more about your risk factors. People pay little enough to the ones they already know about. And designer drugs? To fit your lil' ol' DNA? Who is gonna pay for that, in our wildest dreams?. If you think Viagra is expensive at ten dollars a pill; already I am being forced to read about relatively ineffective drugs for cancer that cost ten grand a pop! Goombye insurance!!)
These of course are Issues (about tissues and don' u cry, baby) whose causation is a matter of history; but dimly seen and interpreted through ad hoc glasses by post hoc reasoning at best. More later about them, and about the difference between disease and dysease. Hint:at least one of them is good fer ya! Stay cheerful, the best is yet to come (perhaps)!
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What an interesting stream of your inner thoughts. I must thank you for helping me stave off dementia since work has suggested that engaging in cognitively challenging activities may help ward off the appearance of dementia in older people.
ReplyDeleteYou make me run to google several times while reading your blogs. This time I couldn't decipher what you were trying to say by the use of an old Beatle's song. I did figure which one your meant as it eludes to loneliness. However your use of the phrase "Eleanor Big Oil Rig Bee" has me puzzled. Do you have an idea for a new song using the old Beatle's song to bring awareness to global warming or as Greenpeace's new theme song?
Inquiring minds want to know.
You make me think about a cartoon in Mad magazine captioned, "Youth Want to Know!" with a drawing of 3 or 4 gangly pimply yutes with duct tape over their mouths. Somewhat like those protesters at the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteActually the comment about "Big Oil" was set off by many t'ings. The first is a TNY cartoon of a lonely "executive" in coveralls in a dilapidated office whose desk is an old door set up on two oil barrels, the caption being, "Little Oil". HaHa.
But, as I do go back and revise my stream of consciousness, usually several times, the comment on Miz Eleanor--just slightly more well known than "Michelle" someone or other--was probably a little postmeditated foreshadowing in regards to my subsequent remarks about Katrina plus minus British Petrol.
By the bye, didja know that Eleanor Rigby was a real person,as recently found in an old church record, who lived an apparently totally undistinguished and extinguished-without heirs- life? Whether or not Sir John knew about this is an open question--we could only ask Sir Paul and Sir Ringo. (Doesn't the latter Ring a bit ridiculous?)(Cycle that, Mr Wagner!)
T'anks for taking the trouble to pursue the troublesome troublemaking awthor. I 'preciate it more'n ya know. (Who then is the real "troubler of Israel, then; Ahab or Elijah?)
Now that makes it perfectly clear....lol
ReplyDeletehttp://bible.org/seriespage/elijah-meets-and-rebukes-ahab-1-kings-1816-19
Perhaps the above link will answer your question about who the real troubler of Israel is.