"Three Sisters" ~ /_\

Hindsight is 20/20

With bias it is 20/60. 20 experience, 20 government-media and 20 cultural. There is no escaping from the effects of biases when looking at the unnatural or historic events of our lives and those who came before us.

In all written science, philosophy and theology through the ages we are constantly aware of the these biases. They are cognitive, political and social in nature and artifact in their creation and identifying  these sources of bias that can spuriously affect an agreement, we should endeavor.

Foresight is 20/20

With bias it is 20/60. 20 hope, 20 government-media and 20 temporal myopia.

Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy

Perhaps to reduce the risk of public misunderstanding, Newton included at the beginning of Book 3 (in the second (1713) and third (1726) editions) a section entitled "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy". In the four rules, as they came finally to stand in the 1726 edition, Newton effectively offers a methodology for handling unknown phenomena in nature and reaching towards explanations for them. The four Rules of the 1726 edition run as follows (omitting some explanatory comments that follow each):

 

Rule 1: We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule 2: Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

Rule 3: The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

Rule 4: In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.

 

This section of Rules for philosophy is followed by a listing of 'Phenomena', in which are listed a number of mainly astronomical observations, that Newton used as the basis for inferences later on, as if adopting a consensus set of facts from the astronomers of his time.

 

When we look at civilization, cultures, religion, science and nations there are some things we can all agree. The world is coming to an end. Whether it comes at the hand of  a post apocalyptic biblical event or a cosmic catastrophe, whether by world war with WMD  of mutually assured destruction or the environmental tipping point, it will end. When and how aside we can look to we as humans and how each choose to discount the eventual end.  Thus we tell the very short story of the Three Sisters and the long story from the triad.

Olga [hope] assumes Armageddon and possible survival, she will plan for it. 

Maria [faith] being a theist decides to live each day to the fullest with no concern for tomorrow.

Irina [miracle]  decides the end can be changed or reversed if certain countermeasures are introduced and implemented without delay.

The sisters are widely popular and have followers each. Their charisma and charm make for sycophantic and staunch followers. Such becomes the Triad in this kingdom.

As the story goes, the soothsayers, midget jesters and church channellers with personal ambitions as well as bandwagon bootlickers minions behind them began to move quickly for a dominant position in the higher councils of the triad.

If hindsight and foresight was indeed 20/20 then all would have seen that the King loved all three daughters and voraciously catered to each of their philosophies as well as their modus operandi. Yet the sisters disliked each other vehemently. Well in fact they loved each other but allowed their ideologies and personal predilections to divide them. The triad was such as each of the sisters sect assumed their princess was favored by the King.

When the King was ready he sent the decree that all the Kingdoms people could not be saved and that there would be a [humanitarian lottery] or an interobserver agreement to determine who would be saved from the looming rapture. It would be artificial, biased and prejudiced claimed the King.

Well once the reality was explained to the Triad, the people were incensed, outraged and the carnage ensued. Rioting looting and mayhem soon turned into  murder and massacre as the decimation went through the night. The soothsayers, midget jesters and church channellers all ran for the cover of the castle and while the factions of sisters Maria and Irina faced off, the followers of Olga began to storm the castle. The King sent his army to meet them and they were quickly and mercilessly vanquished.

By dawns early light the  fighting had finished and the King sent his army out into the villages to insure that the threat and annihilation had come to an end.  The remaining people of the kingdom were those who had refrained from the lure of the Triad and had run from the kingdom during the outbreak of unrest.

The King and the three sisters met with the soothsayers, midget jesters and church channellers and they agreed on the tragedy that had befallen the Kingdom and agreed to write the historical events and the lessons learned from this terrible event.  The sisters reconciled their differences renounced their philosophies, destroyed their written doctrines and essays and moved to a new order of thought.

The remaining serfs were quickly summoned to collect the bodies, burn the evidence of the horrible carnage and rebuild their lives from the rubble and lived in servitude happily ever after. 

                                                ________________________

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, 1966 (original 1886).

[§6] Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.

 

 

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Mind/?view=usa&ci=9780199250998

http://davidhardisty.info/downloads/Hardisty-Weber-Enviro-Disco-July-28-2008.doc

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311161/pdf/jaba00112-0143.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/artifact/