Reply to: What are you 100% Positive you know?

[NickFitz]

It would be nice to force all aspiring politicians through this exercise.

aspiring - and, indeed, existing - CUK posters

[RichardCranium]

The Open University did a fascinating module many years back entitled "In my professional judgement".

It was all about determining an individual's under or over confidence in the quality of their answers. Jolly interesting stuff.

A simple experiment is to answer 100 general knowledge questions and for each one also give your %age confidence whether you are right. Then plot for each level of confidence just how often you were right.

The point is not whether you got many questions right, it was whether your degree of confidence in your own judgement was valid.

It would be nice to force all aspiring politicians through this exercise.

[sasguru]

We are all Spartacus. I'm 100% sure I am.

[NickFitz]

One can only really know 100% that one exists, no?
Cogito, ergo sum old boy.

Actually, if you read Descartes and examine the process of systematic doubt that led him to declare that cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is the fundamental certainty on which one can build, it rapidly becomes clear that he fails to apply his own method at this crucial stage, and also fails to apply Occam's Razor.

If he had proceeded correctly, he would have applied the process of doubt to the assumption that the presence of a thought implies the existence of a thinker - this is wholly consistent with every argument based on doubt he has made up to this stage of his argument.

So the correct final conclusion of the application of his method, and only certainty, is that "There exists a thought."

HTH

[oracleslave]

Are pod people

As in users of eye-pods?

[sasguru]

Well, you only really know that you think you know that you exist.

For all any of us know we are just unknown constructs in a wider scheme which somebody else may or may not know about.

Clear enough?

Indeed.
What your perceptions tell you you are experiencing may not necessarily be true. You could be part of a giant simulation.

Mwah ha ha ha!

SG in <<stroking white cat>> mode.

[Diver]

There are no prizes. You will not be judged. Just do the best you can.

Are pod people classed as Legumes?

[oracleslave]

Er! How many Sea's in the world is a trick question, as it depends on which organisation or country doing the defining.

There are no prizes. You will not be judged. Just do the best you can.

[sasguru]

Er! How many Sea's in the world is a trick question, as it depends on which organisation or country doing the defining.

seas.
No tulip, Sherlock.

[Diver]

Can we ask Beaker?

[Diver]

There are no trick questions. Got emailed it and at first glance thought it would be a piece of cake. Was suprised at how little I could say I knew 100% as well.

Er! How many Sea's in the world is a trick question, as it depends on which organisation or country doing the defining.

[Moscow Mule]

Enlighten us, oh wise grasshopper

Well, you only really know that you think you know that you exist.

For all any of us know we are just unknown constructs in a wider scheme which somebody else may or may not know about.

Clear enough?

[ace00]

Not at all, actually.

Enlighten us, oh wise grasshopper

[sasguru]

One can only really know 100% that one exists, no?

Not at all, actually.

[ace00]

One can only really know 100% that one exists, no?
Cogito, ergo sum old boy.