[Off-topic] Requests author discusses MentalHealthError exception

[Rustom Mody]

On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 10:36:02 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Mar 2016 04:08 am, Rustom Mody wrote:
> 
> > And who is the last arbiter on that 'reality'?
> 
> I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is a genuine question, and
> not just an attempt to ask a rhetorical question to demonstrate your
> profundity.
> 
> You should not assume that there is any such thing as "the last arbiter" of
> reality. There is no arbiter at all, let alone a final one. But what we
> have are various ways of managing and uncertainty and error. One of which
> is consensus. For instance, there are seven billion people on earth who
> think they are people, and one who thinks he may be a butterfly. Which is
> more likely to be correct?
> 
> https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zhuangzi
> 
> To quote Terry Pratchett:
> 
>       'The poet Hoha once dreamed he was a butterfly, and then he 
>     awoke and said, "Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or 
>     am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man?"' said Lobsang, trying
>     to join in.
>       'Really?' said Susan briskly.  'And which was he?'
>       'What?  Well...who knows?'
>       'How did he write his poems?' said Susan.
>       'With a brush, of course.'
>       'He didn't flap around making information-rich patterns in 
>     the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves?'
>       'No one ever mentioned it.'
>       'Then he was probably a man,' said Susan.
> 
> 
> Because there are limitations on how we observe reality, there are limits to
> how objective we can be. We have an imperfect ability to observe the world
> around us (including our own mental states) and are prone to errors. But,
> over a wide range of conditions (although not *all* conditions) we can
> eliminate many classes of error by comparing notes with our fellows, so to
> speak. If I think I am a butterfly, and my wife thinks I'm a man, and my
> co-workers think I'm a man, and my neighbours think I'm a man, chances are
> good that it is me who is mistaken, not them.
> 
> Consequently reality is a shared construct -- or rather, our understanding
> of reality is at least partly a shared construct.
> 
> In principle, at least, *everything* is subject to disproof. But in practice
> some things are more certain than others. I wouldn't bet $100 on quarks
> still being considered the fundamental building block of matter in 200
> years, but I would bet a million dollars on the sun still seeming to rise
> in the east every 24 hours.
> 
> As Isaac Asimov put it:
> 
>     When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. 
>     When people thought the earth was spherical, they were 
>     wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is 
>     spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, 
>     then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong
> 
> http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
> 
> It's not that reality itself is subject to change (except in the trivial
> sense that we can take actions that modify the state of the world: I can
> pick this cup up and move it over there, you can eat that apple) but that
> our understanding of reality is subject to change. Sometimes our
> understanding is full of uncertainty and doubt, sometimes it is subject to
> re-interpretation, and sometimes our understanding is almost certainly
> correct: it is difficult to imagine any credible or believable
> reinterpretation that would change the facts as we know them. A thousand
> years from now, the sun will still appear to be rising in the east.

Consensus? Um lets see...

Here are two writings:
[1] http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/blake/to_see_world.html
[2] http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html

If you see [2] around line 75 it almost verbatim echoes Larry's complaint
of what 'they' did to Kennneth

And how is [1]'s starting different from Kenneth's finding his weight
to be the weight of the universe?

Maybe the authors of these need the services of a psychiatrist?

If not you may find some appeal in this modernized version:
http://blog.languager.org/2011/10/vagaries-of-intelligence.html


As for Asimov, yeah he's right perhaps in distinguishing wrong wronger and wrongest
Not so much in underestimating the time for humans to autocorrect their errors
A collection [inspired by earlier comments of yours :-) ]:
http://blog.languager.org/2016/01/how-long.html