Citizen Zero

when you put a child to sleep you are often also putting them in a dark place with little sensory input or at the very least less sensory input of emotional signifigance. Just something to consider.

No you do not understand. The case of the bag of balls is not the general case, unless you allow that the contents of the bag can change during the course of the experiment. And of course they can, you just haven't seen it happen or have seen anything that would indicate that it might happen. Maybe a bug in the bag will get squished and get blue stuff on one of the balls... etc The purpose of skepticism isn't to eliminate all knowledge, it is to tell you how to achieve knowledge. Only by investigating anything which might contradict what you believe can you have knowledge. If you constantly go around making declarations by fiat against opposing beliefs and become red with anger every time someone disagrees with you then you have no knowledge of anything. If you walk around with cottonballs in your ears to block out what others have to say calling it "cerebral hygene" you are equally ignorant. It tells me that if I'm watching tv and a commercial says x drug fixes x problem and only has these side effects, I look at the fact that the people paying for the commercial want to sell the drug to make money as reason for their claims. Science does not do anything that would make me think otherwise. If X company uses Y experimental results to learn how to build Z product, and I can easily see that Z product is useful, then I have no reason to question Y. However, what can easily be seen is that any time science tries to convince me, a non scientist, of something skepticism is quite justified. The only peer review that can ease this concern is review by someone I know shares the same biases as I. And yes the response to the well tested white raven is that you could be asleep or a brain in a vat, or that your tests could have been innaccurate or designed to decieve you etc. Say I plug a feather into a machine which determines if it was painted or real. One day someone sneaks in and alters the insides of the machine such that it gives the opposite results from what it should when dealing with painted raven feathers. Now I don't know that it is giving wrong answers. You could always be wrong about anything you think - but it doesn't matter until something you think is contradicted. Science can not be used to convince an uninvolved third party of something either.

No way am I responding to all those pages of straw men and unfounded arguments but I will do just this one. First of all many many observations do not come close to disproving... this demonstrates a lack of understanding of the generality problem of induction. The idea is that it cannot be proven because you never know whether or not there is a raven that is different than and completely unaffected by your past experience. Next this is an unconnected metaphor. Of course my claim does still apply to the white raven scenario - How do you know the raven wasn't just painted white? How do you know its a raven? etc But white ravens have nothing to do with what I am talking about. If you want to compare the two you have to make sure there are no signifigant differences. That means for example if Bob the scientist said he saw a white raven do you just take his word for it as "proof", or do you realize that he might have some reason to say he saw one when he didn't. Or maybe he didn't realize that it was just painted. Or what if it could only be seen through a deductive reasoning device. What if Bob's device was poorly calibrated or malfunctioning? Do you know how adept bob really is at operating this deductive reasoning device? Anyone who is competent would be open to any criticism and would encourage dissenting opinions to help him discover truth. Does bob do this? White raven or not there is no such thing as proof, and if there is something that is close science certainly does not always deal with it. Finally, there is a difference between recognizing that there could be unkown sources of bias and recognizing that because of them a scientific experiment is not really capable of disproving anything.

there is no such thing as proof and plugging your ears and saying "nope! lah lah lah" is not going to change that. If only it were as simple as many scientists with ulterior motives (like selling drugs) attempt to claim. To begin with any experiment is not only capable of being fundamentally flawed from the getgo in the form of using biased samples, but it is almost impossible to prevent this because of the potentially unlimited and infinitely complex sources of bias. Science is based on the unfounded assumption that no such unkown sources of bias (which would signifigantly affect the outcome) exist, and such beliefs are mostly reinforced using simple experiments regarding basic physics. Simply put, you can't use science to override an opposing belief. If you think science has disproved something, your assertion could simply be based on experiments with a sample drawn from a population that was different that the population you are trying to make predictions for. The only way around this is if there is no indication that there is such a difference. But someone arguing the opposite of your claim is an indication of such a difference. Secondly empyrical data doesn't prove anything, rather it is reasoning based on aquired data that is in favor of or against a given belief. And unfortunately such reasoning is quite prone to error, bias and everything else that philosophy is. Rather scientists simply attempt to create the illusion that THEIR beliefs are direct results of aquired empyrical evidence. Well heres some news for you: EVERYBODY believes their beliefs to be direct results of aquired empyrical evidence. Saying someone is ignoring empyrical evidence is no different then your opponent saying that you are ignoring his arguments and just repeating your own.

Because unless he admits that it undermines his argument you cannot be sure that it really addresses his argument. It might be that it seems like the data affects his argument but thats because you have a distorted view of what he is saying. However if you think someone is making no effort to show how this is the case and instead just argues past what you say I would just stop arguing with them. In this case you honestly tried to reconcile the differences between the 2 belief sets but he was either unwilling or unable. This still doesn't give you claim to understanding and rejecting his argument, but without adequate information to consider regarding objections voluntarily provided by him you do not have what you need to consider what he is saying and thus should simply not worry about it until such a time as you do. The important factor here is that everyone be given the best motivation possible to reconcile differences between beliefs. Calling your opponent a crackpot doesn't serve this purpose. Recognizing it as valid behavior also makes it really easy for people in positions of power to prematurely squelch opposing beliefs rather than actually considering them. That being said a social enviornment adhereing to this model would regard the person who hinders communication as negatively as one might regard a crackpot now. The term crackpot is an imprecisely defined label that is not limited in scope, might cause confusion and anger, and leave room for abuse by the person using it. In contrast saying someone is purposely hindering communication is a precise accusation that he could easily disprove by making a more honest effort to communicate. I feel like a set of debate fouls should be established and objectively applied to any discussion to recognize when this type of behavior is occuring.

The really scary thing about the concept of teleportation is that because the result would have all the same memories etc there is never any way to know prior to using a teleport whether or not you were going to your death. It could be that your consiousness ends at the teleport entrance and a new one is created on the other side that acts in every way similar to you.

This sounds like the people mistreating the other person are afraid of dissenting opinions. IE it's ok for the younger person because he just hasn't heard our viewpoint yet. But the others might be expressing disagreement, and so we are going to try and intimidate him out of it or make a preemptive strike attempting to undermine his credibility. Personally I think there is no justification for calling someone a crackpot for several reasons. First no human is capable of having any knowledge other than the abscence of dissenting information. That means you have to be open minded to anything which might disprove what you have to say. If someone disagrees with you, then you do not know you have an understanding of what the other person is saying unless that person admits that your explanation undermines their argument. Otherwise you might just have a straw man understanding of what they are trying to say. That being said if the person fails to provide any more information or counter arguments and/or avoids discussion then you have no dissenting information to consider. But it's better to come to an agreement with your opponents. Treating your opponent with respect makes them more likely to admit when they are wrong thus making everything clearer for everyone and further reinforcing your belief, being disrespectful is counterproductive to everyone. Once their opponent admits they are wrong, few people are going to be like "that's right gosh what were you thinking you crackpot", rather aggressiveness is more a sign that you fear your opponent is right and you are trying to stop them from making their point so you appear correct.

So your argument is the fact that he got a phd means he was not considered a crackpot? Well, my argument isn't that ALL people think Einstein was a crackpot just that some. Sure there are intelligent and objective people around all the time who consider other's viewpoints. Then there are average insecure people who have average understanding of reasoning in general or of the subject matter they pursue. These people tend to look to other people or some social structure for validation of claims rather than looking for truth. These are the people whom one such as I would be referring to when saying that someone was considered a crackpot prior to becoming a signifigant historical figure. If you agree that there are some of each of the two above categories, then which do you think there were more of? I say the latter. And yes I think all historical figures came into disagreement with some signifigant group, and at least some if not most members of that signifigant group did not treat the historical member's claims objectively. It's not so much about some rebel changing society as it is about people overcoming those who evaluate claims on their social status and use all manner of tactics to prevent anyone excelling past them. What conspiracy? I was showing how a string of unrelated events could lead to someone on a science forum believing and claiming that Einstein never failed a math class when he actually did. I can't prove that he did, and he can't prove that he didn't. Science sometimes provides additional data that would create restraints on such coherent belief sets. If someone did not have access to the additional data they might create a belief set that was coherent including most common experience, but not the data aquired from scientific experimentation - and then their belief set would be wrong assuming the scientific data was accurate. However any well developed coherent belief set based even just on every day experience should include that any additional information could potentially be a disproof of any part of the belief set so additional info should be sought out wherever available. That being said, given any amount of information there are potentially infinite coherent belief sets that can be formed. It starts with deviation just in how even conservative scientists remember the most well respected theories - a different sentence sticking in the perosn's head, different ways of visualizing, learned in different languages etc. But it there is no limit to how different it can be. A native american elder can create a belief set that complies with all restraints (perhaps even conducting his own set of experiments to determine said restraints) and describe it with statements like "the spirit of the earth would never allow an acorn to float in mid air rather than fall to the ground" and defend the statement succesfully until his death. For these reasons (the small deviations if you do not interact with many native american tribal elders) it is always valuable to learn to transate coherent belief sets quickly by recognizing the constraints each belief set has and not paying much attention to how the belief set is realized in language.

Simple imo. We live in a world of uncertainty and straw man arguments. Imagine you see a rich attractive woman and look at her that certain way that makes her know you want her, but you have no money and she makes some kind of statement to that effect as if to disqualify you from being a potential suitor. But you do not let that stop you and you keep trying and she finds that attractive. She didn't really have some infallable argument as to why she shouldn't marry anyone. Maybe money doesn't buy happiness. Maybe by not giving up you are giving her what she REALLY wants -someone who will fight for her. I think most (males at least) can see the appeal of this situation. It's like if you give someone what they really want in life, they will be more open to your views and what you have to say. On the other hand if you give someone a choice between dying and being more open to your views, behaviors and beliefs they are usually going to choose the ladder. What is it officially called? Stockholm syndrome or something... It's like getting someone to admit you were right.

Well, your argument is that if you did a search on famous people being crackpots (now after their theories have already been determined to be correct) you would find more hits about them being well respected. Well of course you would, noone considers them crackpots NOW. That's when all the documented criticisms of them are swept under the carpet (perhaps by the people who wrote them) or just burned or something. I had always been told from credible sources (like in school) that Einstein failed an early math class. You claim he didn't, and it just happens to go along with your belief that historical figures were always well respected before becoming historical figures. Maybe the people who told me had some kind of defeating adversity belief set and were also biased. Well, since I wasn't there, and I know that history is rarely reported without bias, I'm just going to trust what I have always been told about it because it seems more likely given what I know about human nature. The only proof or disproof would be to go back in time and see it happen or not happen. Think about it - the school would probably delete the records or forgive his grade or something out of embarrasment once he reached a certain level of notoriety, and then someone might pull up the school records and find no F then report it was a false claim. That's the way history works. I don't even understand the reasoning behind the belief set that historical figures were never considered anything similar to "crackpots". How do they become historical figures if not through implementing changes, which of course implies disagreement with past belief sets? Is this limited only to scientists? Are you going to claim that someone like Martin Luther King wasn't called all kinds of names prior to instituting changes he was responsible for? If not then what? Scientists are part of some group where people are always perfectly objective and never become attached to theories or current belief sets and attempt to declare opposing belief sets false by fiat? That scientists put in a position of power always act perfectly authoritative? That would not be coherent with my experience...

This thread will be the first of many ideas that will start with a model of the human mind and end with arguments regarding ethics, morality and life in general and eventually an anonymously published contemporary philosophy book. Feel free to poke and prod all you want, as your criticisms will help better organize the ideas. If you see these ideas show up anywhere else they were stolen unless I say otherwise (I will come back and alter this if the ideas are to be published) Intro Since people are capable of coming to mutually exclusive conclusions regarding questions to which there is only one answer, the human mind must be flawed. Therefore IMO understanding our own minds and the nature of any such flaws is the first step to solving any external problem with certainty. The source I will attempt to create a model of the human mind based on common human experience that might bring such flaws to light and give more than common insight into human behavior. With this information perhaps external problems will be easier to solve. This model will depend on some assumptions that other people have experiences that I outline by saying things like "A person can X" or "We X". If in your experience these assumptions fail then the model fails. 1. Memories A person can store previous perceptions. We will call these stored perceptions sense memories, and a memory which contains previous input from only one sense visual memories, sound memories, smell memories or whatever sense applies. 2. Functions of sense memories: sense ideas A person is capable of breaking down something they have perceived into parts. A person is also capable of rearranging these parts inside their mind at least to whatever degree they are motivated to. We are also capable of comparing perceived memories to other memories as well as things we are currently percieving. We will define sense idea as a collection of sense memories of any size or order and any basic operations (such as the ones mentioned above) performed on these sense memories. 2. Coincidental Perception Definition A person can perceive from multiple senses at the same time. A person can also recognize similar perceptions. From these two abilities we can derive a special kind of definition which we will call a Coincidental Perception Definition. The Coincidental Perception Definition of any sense memory is all sense ideas which a person: A) Has frequently been perceived close in time to the sense idea being defined. Note that this includes simultaneous perception from the same sense as well as from different senses, so that if you always saw a bed in a certain room then part of the Coincidental Perception Definition of the image of that bed would be the image of the room as well. and/or C) Has been perceived as being referenced by a sense idea which was previously defined by coincidental perception. An example of this would be if you saw Bob told to "Get the hammer from the table". If you already understood the concept of a command and that it sounded like that, and you understood the action of "getting x from the table" where x was whatever would be aquired by the hand of the person getting, then you would relate the sound of the word hammer to whatever you saw Bob pick up. 3. Forming complex sense ideas Suppose for the first time you heard me say "Pick up the ball" to my friend who you then saw picking up a ball. You then percieved these events multiple times such that you gave the entire phrase "pick up the ball" the coincidental perception definition of the vision of seeing a man pick up the ball. Then however, you heard the phrase changed to "pick up the bat". There would be two differences between what you had percieved before and what you now percieved. Both the beginning of what you heard, "pick up the" and the vision of the man going to pick something up would remain similar. However the final word of the phrase bat and what you see the man pick up would be different. If you were to then experience this enough times to give the new phrase the coincidental perception definition of the sight of the person picking up the bat, I claim that additional concepts would be cpdefined using the basic operations mentioned in the sense idea section. Firstly, the phrase "pick up the" could be seperately cpdefined as the vision of a man going to pick up something, minus whatever is being picked up. This connection has remained the same regardless of the difference in the object being picked up. Secondly, there could be a connection made between the different objects being picked up. IE associated with the sound of the phrase "pick up the" would be not merely a ("ball" OR "bat") and the associated visual memories, but some general connection between the two. An object... something which was heard after "pick up the" and could be percieved visually as something a man went to pick up. Here object is a comlpex sense idea that was defined by perception. We now have the more general concept "pick up the (object)" defined as the view of someone picking up something. Of course this model is simplified... because we would have already used this process just to be able to recognize the connection between "pick up the ball" and the view of someone picking up the ball. Since it does not look the same every time someone goes to pick up a ball, or sound exactly the same every time someone says the phrase, our concept of "pick up the ball" and the associated vision would already be a complex sense idea rather than exactly what we had percieved any one time. It would be composed of only what was similar about each time we heard the phrase and saw the action. The next section is an example of this. 3. Recognition of Rotation As adults we are capable of recognizing objects by looking at them. An object looks slightly different from each angle, yet we can still recognize them. A visual memory or visual perception can be broken down into a number of simple 2d geometric shapes. Rotation performed on different instances of these simple geometric shapes would look the same, therefore it would be possible to predict how any object would look when rotated by breaking it into such simple shapes and performing rotation on them. Also a person would not have to store images of an object from every angle to be able to recognize it from any angle. To learn this ability, a person would only need to see some objects rotated and recognize the similarities in how shapes transformed when rotated. 4. Non sense ideas are nonsense The next question to answer is, are there such things as ideas which are not sense ideas? To start with, I suggest the reader choose the most complicated concept he or she can think of and then look up it's dictionary definition. Then take any concept which cannot obviously be defined by a function of perceptions in the above mentioned manner and look up its definition. Repeat this process with all words that you doubt are sense ideas. I claim that you will always eventually come to concepts that you can see are sense ideas, and therefore the concepts they define are also sense ideas. Also, a person could simply consider that all understood concepts must have been communicated by perception if said person was not born understanding the concepts, since perception is the only input we have. 5. Symbolic logic model of the above reasoning Let any phrase encased in 2 @'s represent a visual perception and any phrased encased in 2 " 's represent an audio perception. Let C represent Coincidently, as in coincidental perception definition outlined above. (simultaneous perception, perception close in time, or perception of something at a point that is meaningful to some previously defined concept) Let x (some number) represent the number of times a perception or sense idea has been experienced. Let S(X) represent a sense idea, or function of perceptions that contains the least amount of information but still allows the recreation of all memories it is a function of. Object might be an example of S(@hammer@, @book@, @ball@, @bat@) where here object would be a collection of 2d geometric shapes that could be altered to any shape, size or color and combined with each other. Giving a mind the following experiences: "Get the book" C @Person getting a book@ x 2 "Get the hammer" C @Person getting a hammer@ x 5 "Get the ball" C @Person getting a ball" x 3 "Get the bat" C @Person getting a bat" x 4 Would additonally result in the following given our model of the human mind: "book" C @book@ x 2 "hammer" C @hammer x 5 "ball" C @ball@ x 3 "bat" C @bat@ x 5 "Get the " C S("book", "hammer", "ball", "bat") x 14 @Person getting a@ C S(@book@, @hammer@, @ball@, @bat@) x 14 "Get the " S("book", "hammer", "ball", "bat") C @Person getting a@ S(@book@, @hammer@, @ball@, @bat@) x 14 This allows me to give more examples of how ideas would be formed using this model in less space. Let S("book", "bat", "hammer", "ball", ... ) be called object name. Let S("hallway", "outside", "park") be called place name Let S(@book@, @bat@, @hammer@, @ball@, ...) be called object Let S(@hallway@, @park@, @outside@ .... ) be called place "Get the (object name)" C @Person getting the@ object x 14 "Jump" C @Person Jumping@ x 5 "Go to (place name)" C @person going to@ place x 10 Would additionally result in the following given our model of the human mind: S("get the (object name)", "Jump", "Go to (place name)") C S(@Person getting the (object)@, @Person Jumping@, @Person going to (place)@) x 29 Let S(("get the (object name)", "Jump", "Go to (place name)", ...etc) be called command Let S(@Person getting the@ object, @Person Jumping@, @Person going to@ place, ...) be called (a person taking action) Let S(object name, place name) be called (a noun) Part 2: Motivation Intro To consider the motivations people have for the actions they take, it seems like the best place to start is with emotion as emotion is an easily observable drive for actions that people take. It often seems as though the most emotional events of our lives are also the most memorable. If there is indeed some link between memory and emotion and our model of the mind to this point is accurate, then we might be able to identify exactly where this link is. My favorite sense idea We all know there are things we like to percieve in the world. Some people like to be smiled at, to be hugged, to feel the warm sun upon them, to listen to music etc the list goes on. To attempt to understand this in the context of the model we have created, we might try to associate desirable feelings with these sense ideas. However there are some problems with such a model that indicate that reality is more complex than this. One such problem is that if experiencing a given perception or sense memory was the main motivator for human behavior, one would expect a scenario such as the following. Two people would walk up to each other, smile, and then stay there forever. Of course in reality the situation would quickly lose its appeal. A given song is another example of something which at first is entertaining but after repeated exposure will lose appeal. Listening to the same song in the same enviornment over and over will eventually cause the song to become less entertaining to listen to. Nevertheless certain things for example sunshine and lollipops seem to be assocated with pleasant feelings somehow. In general we will refer to these as favored sense ideas, and we will recognize that like many things in our model they are likely different for each person. Favored sense idea not sense memory In the model we have created, we already know that a concept like smiling would not be cpdefined exactly as we have seen one person smile in the past. Rather it would be a function of all the various people we have seen smiling. Perhaps some sort of outline of the general shape of a smile that would allow us to recognize when a variety of different people with slight differences in face structure etc were smiling. Drums are the new heartbeat It follows the design of our model so far that the experience of percieving a new person smiling would be compared to our sense idea of smiling. The new memory would probably also be related in our mind to the sense idea of smiling, and perhaps our concept of smiling would be amended to include any new information given by this experience. What if it was one of these acts of comparison or relation in memory that was linked to stronger emotions? This would allow us to create a viable link between our model this far and emotion. Since it seems unlikely that two experiences would ever be exactly the same, it follows that there would always be some comparison and relation taking place within the mind. For instance, listening to a song in your room multiple times where the only difference in what was being percieved was slight changes in lighting due to time of day might not require as much comparison and relation the last few times in order to process what you were perceiving. On the other hand, listening to a brand new beat in a dance club, while watching an attractive member of the opposite sex that you only recently met dancing in concert with the beat while smiling at you might require much more processing. If these two cases involved favored sense ideas, such as a beat, a smile, the visual attributes of an attractive member of the opposite sex etc, then our model so far would indicate that processing what we were percieving would create favorable emotions. I believe we can recognize the night club scenario as the one in which we would experience more intense favorable emotions. If this pattern is followed throughout our experiences, then it follows that the intesity of favorable emotions felt is linked to the amount of comparison and relation to favored sense ideas taking place. Action to increase favorable emotion Suppose a person whose mind was governed by our model was walking down the street and saw an attractive member of the opposite sex smile and wave at a guy in a red sports car and say "Hey there!... nice car". Having a newly formed mind you processed this experience and associated the car with attractive females smiling, waving and saying "Hey there!". You want to experience this more often, and you want the person to adress these things at you. So you set out to aquire a red sports car. You have previously associated red sports cars with money, and money with success in life. Therefore in order to experience more favorable emotions, this person would be indirectly motivated to do things like recieve an education, go to work every day and attempt to do a good job in hopes of recieving recognition and getting a promotion etc. This simple motivational system would be just as capable of motivating the most difficult human accomplishments as it would be capable of motivating an animal to aquire food to attract a mate. Planning One might wonder if there is anything about how these favored sense ideas motivate us to act that we can see from our non scientific perspective. There are some things we can consider that might provide some insight. For example, the experience of emotion is not something we can measure very precisely. Though we can tell when we are experiencing an intense emotion, there seems to be no clear line between this and the emotion being gone - rather it just seems to wane. If we consider the sports car and the money used to buy it from the above section, we might guess (from real life experience) that receiving a new car or a large sum of money might also produce favorable emotions rather than only doing so when it causes an attractive member of the opposite sex to smile etc. In the example from the section above, the person wants a red sports car as a means to an end - to impress the attractive member of the opposite sex. However one might make an argument that in real life a person might want a red sports car for its own sake (ie the car itself is already a favorable sense idea) and those reasons could explain the experience of emotion when aquiring one. However in the case of the money, it would be much more difficult to make this claim. Money is always a means to an end, so it seems illogical that it would start out as a favored sense idea. Rather the receiving of money must invoke emotion either because A) upon recieving the money the person realizes that it will allow him to experience more favored sense ideas, or B) when money was associated with the ability to experience favored sense ideas, money BECAME a favored sense idea to some degree lesser than the original favored sense idea. In either of these cases, it is shown that anything that could result or help in the process of experiencing a favorable sense idea is itself capable of causing the experience of favorable emotion. So while receiving money causes the experience of favorable emotions because of money's connection with experiencing favorable sense ideas, working hard and being recognized for it might cause favorable emotion because of its connection with recieving money. And so forth. Thus it seems possible that everything a person experiences may cause him to experience emotion to some degree. We also know that remembering memories can cause us to experience the emotions. We also know that we are capable of rearranging memories in our heads to form new sense ideas. Thus it seems possible that a person be able to plan action by reorganizing his memories to play out scenarios where different courses of action are taken and each one results in success and experience of favorable emotions or failure. He would then play out the plan he believed to be most succesful. Both the ability to make plans and the connection (however indirect) between all experiences and favorable emotions allow for the possibility that a person is experiencing emotion at all times. Aside to forum members: A possible link to the physical Here I will supply a possible model which would connect everything stated so far in this part to what is known from science about the human mind. I will do this by suggesting a possible model that is coherent with the above as well as more scientific findings. The purpose of this is to show how the plurality issue of coherentism (more than one belief set can be coherent with all known information) can be used to validate a scientific and first person experience based approach to mind simultaneously. Suppose that the experience of favorable emotions was related to the reception of certain chemicals in the brain. Suppose that these chemicals were being recepted at all times to some degree or other. Now suppose that the experience of certain things caused a person to remember past experiences, which caused the person to recept the chemicals not just to the normal degree but in addition to the degree associated with the remembered past experiences. Such an experience would add the given degree of reception (that all experiences came with) to the given degree of reception awarded to all related memories. Thus, the more memories a given experience could be related to, them more intense emotions it would invoke. Therefore favorable sense ideas would simply be things we had been exposed to the most amount of times in the past. This is coherent with fairly common favored sense ideas such as a hearbeat, warmth, or a smile and is an evolutionarily sound principle. If something didn't kill you the many times you experienced it before, it is a good thing to experience. This still leaves a question about whether or not experiences could be related to memories from past generations in this manner, where here memories means functions of sensory input recieved in the past.

I thought most famous intellectuals were crackpots prior to being famous intellectuals? The way I figure it Einstein got an F in math probably for harrassing the teacher by poking holes in his arguments or using abstract algorithms the teacher didn't understand to solve math problems. Seriously though, I think the problem with authority such people have is really a problem with people in power being authoritarian (is that a word?) as opposed to authoritative. (authoritarian figures usually fail to recognize that as the complaint) Authoritarian figures believe they have the right to dictate what is right and what is wrong. When confronted with someone with a dissenting opinion they simply use any means available to squelch that dissenting opinion. Using force to override reason in such a manner has many negative side effects depending on the situation (reducing morale and increasing turnover in the workplace, breeding hatred from kids) the worst of which is of course is encouraging violence. Discussion is supposed to be had in place of violence being used to achieve ones goals when they clash with someone else's goals. To be authoritative is to recognize that any power given to you is not inherent to you but a function of your ability to determine what is right and wrong. An authoritative boss considers feeback, input and dissenting opinions because this is neccesary to be certain that yours is the best course of action (except maybe, for example when time is limited and a decision must be made and then this is the reason given for ending discussion). The authoritative boss does not make up reasons to admonish employees just to show whos boss. The authoritative parent carefully explains why rules are necessary and attempts to demonstrate the danger of not following them, and never says "Because I said so". The assumption is that someone making such a claim against authority if given a position of authority would be an authoritative figure not authoritarian.