Reason, Evidence, and Silliness (first posting 3/23/99)

If your reproof about the inadvisability of discussions of proof because of their liability to
silliness is a reference to my posting on algorithms and inductions, I would like to call
attention to the fact that I wrote that "correlation does not prove causation nor does
anything else." Otherwise I have no interest in discussing proof and also have reproved
those who do discuss it in relation to scientific theories. If the point of your other most
recent instruction is that scientific discourse does not attempt to resolve disputes with
reasoning in relation to probative evidence or that such disputes cannot be productive
because all causal assertions are both true and false, then it appears to me that we have no
foundation on which to base conclusions. If this, my understanding, is silliness, then, as in
other matters, I like silliness and regard it a good thing. Since it just so happens that I really
have long regarded silliness as a wonderful thing, a descent into it would not, for me, be
sufficient grounds to abandon that which induces it.

Speaking of silliness, like Voltaire, I think it often is wise to regard god as a comic for an
audience reluctant to laugh. And, with Heraclitus, I believe that "Man is most nearly himself
when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play." Are we having fun yet?

Replies:

Agreement (first posting 3/23/99), by Vic Comello, 5/1/99 No Understanding, No Disagreement (first posting 3/23/99), by Jim Duffy, 5/1/99

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