[video]

[maddest]

Belated well wishes to everyone for the various everythings-

Now that we're post explosions, shall we touch base with one another? I feel utterly out of touch. Like this year has started out of the gate like a horse with its tail on fire.

Perhaps it's all the new arrivals. Hello, little things! I hope all your questions have been answered. If they haven't perhaps I could give it a go, hm?

Comments

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

I choose my own 'values.'

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it, weighing it, with the tools socialization has given you. Using language to understand and describe it.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

... Yes, I suppose I'm part of my own culture, but what difference does that make to anything?

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

It means that you will never be able to escape seeing things through that lens.

Take the idea of opposites, for example.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of bias. It'd be careless to ignore it, but it doesn't mean I have to fall into other delusions-

What sort of opposites?

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about bias, I'm talking about basic tools of conceptualization.

We think of the world in terms of opposites. Man, woman. Day, night. Up, down. They're schemes by which we sort concepts, if you will. They're artificial- and ultimately quite restrictive, but they're a fundamental part of how people are taught to think.

The same could be true for time.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

Those aren't opposites. Points of direction have the closest possibility to be, but the others aren't even arguable.

You can have different ways of measuring time - and you'd need to, depending on the sort of planet you're on - but even if it's artificial, there's still a logical structure to it.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's true.

But it's still something superimposed. People exist in different ways at many different points, and we register time as being the transition between those points.

Before the universe was created, was there time? With nothing there to change.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

Everything around us exists at the same point we do. What we consider time passes on whether we're paying attention to it or not, whether it's marked or ignored.

A pointless question. Of course there was time.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's that simple.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

So what is it to you?

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Ultimately, I think everything we know exists as things our minds take in. Nothing comes to us unaltered by perception. Colour- red in one light is orange in another. The object itself is constant, the perception is not, the categorization of colours must be flexible.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

Which is why testing anything we perceive is important. A single observation is next to useless in any kind of real analysis.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Ah, I suppose so. Still, it can't erase the moment of orangeness.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

Misperceptions are unavoidable.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Neither are they necessarily wrong.

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

How is a misconception not wrong? And don't say it's just a matter of perspective.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

But it is. And a matter of light. Who is to say which light is the best?

[law-of-reason.livejournal.com]

That's nothing but pointless complication. There isn't a best, just different sorts of accuracy.