The Freedom To Say: I Don't Know

[Jake49]

• The more I know the more I realise I don't know.... and this position of "I don't know" I think is a great one to be in... it's also a position which I have found religion is not in.
   
  Religious doctrine is in the position of "knowing".. so is a lot of conditioning in the world where you meet people who "know" what they're talking about. At least they will assert a knowing. A view that I'm currently connecting the dots to see, is that to assert a knowing in something is flawed, because all we can base our understanding on is assumptions from using the information available to us, which we base our understanding on..
  The assertion of a knowing is based on assumptions.. which is inconsistent and what often creates behavior from religious people and people who assert a knowing which is perceived to be ignorant or arrogant (or alternatively people are persuaded or manipulated into believing what is being asserted).
   
  So I don't see that we can "know"... and I think that the questions are important.
   
  A famous Astro Physicist Neil Tyson DeGrasse said, "When I reach to the edge of the universe, I do so knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery there are times when, at least for now, one must be content to love the questions themselves.”
   
  I assume that there will always be questions, but through science we can discover information to make the best assumptions we can to base our understanding on the answers. Religions answer to this is called "Faith"... where someone might say, "I don't need to see the evidence, logic or the reasoning, because I have faith"..... Which has the next answer (can't remember who said this), "Faith is the ultimate suspension of critical thinking". When you have so called, "Faith" (in the main definition of that word, which can be used in many ways)... You lay down the desire to ask questions, explore or think for yourself. Which is pretty much the whole point of religion... to stop thinking for yourself and do what you're told. This is a place of blindness and ignorance... it's a self constructed prison for the mind which clips the wings off human consciousness, limiting understanding through the roots of fear. The unknown is feared, so there must be a constant reinforcement of a 'knowing' AKA "faith" in order to maintain the stability of the delusion.
   
  So in this position of "I don't know" also opens up some other interesting ideas.
  Albert Einstein said,
  "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
   
  We can look up into the 70 quadrillion mile wide milky way galaxy where our dot of our planet is suspending in a sunbeam, amongst around 400 billion stars and 50 billion other planets, which is a galaxy amongst hundreds of millions that we see through telescopes.... And we feel that sense of awe and wonder at it's mystery. Through science we can understand more about it as we explore it. In religion, we don't need to explore it, there are no questions, because God made it, the end. Both religion and many other kinds of delusions and constructed realities act as something to put the mind INTO so that it doesn't have to experience what it cannot cope with... this is the ignorance, lack of consciousness and blind position which delusions put the human mind into. This is the effects of fear and manipulation, the purpose of religion and conformist conditioning and indoctrination.
   
  So I'm connecting this with other things which shows me that the position of "I don't know", as well as encouraging an exploration and searching for the answers using science... also opens up our emotions to really perceive and enjoy the experience of mystery, awe and wonder of the universe and life. That it is a source of "true art and true science".... Neil Tyson DeGrasse says he doesn't often consider a person of religious faith to work in his labs, because they don't have the same hunger and desire to find the answers.... because faith already has the answer, it already knows... and connecting this to Einsteins quote and other things I'm seeing that this is blindness, "blind faith".. as Einstein says, "his eyes are closed".
   
  It took me time to deconstruct religion through critical thought, but piece by piece I did it... which also illuminated thinking of this nature which is also found in conditioning in the world. Martin Luther King, when speaking to people and reasoning with people found it difficult to get his message through, which we don't see in the pictures of him speaking to thousands... but if you think about it, you can imagine getting that message through wasn't easy for the years leading up to his iconic speeches... he said, "man does not move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within oneself and within our surrounding world". This conformist thought, this conditioning is where people on a mass scale are not people who are thinking for themselves... They are people who have been taught how to think. Even when reason is presented, they cannot hear or see it, because their delusion, ignorance and blindness rejects it.
   
  The delusions of the mind can get really complex and people can argue some very convincing reasoning... delusions/constructed realities must be as stable as possible in order to keep the person in the position of asleep/blind/ignorant/hiding... So delusions are constructed combining truths and inconsistencies, "The half-truth is the most dangerous form of lie, because it can be defended in part by incontestable logic.” - Manly P Hall... a persons delusion has to be defendable. With peoples delusions they're not only deceiving others, but they are deceiving themselves... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free". Icke describes it as "The prison without bars". There's a number of ways to say it... blindness, ignorance, constructed reality, delusion, conditioning, prison for the mind, slumbering consciousness, asleep... And it's in my understanding that delusions are part of a slumbering consciousness and that if we put this measure of a persons consciousness to a linear scale, that no one is either fully asleep or fully awake... of course including myself. This is a position which is feared in religion, but what I believe is embraced by consciousness.
   
  Which is the unburdening nature of enlightenment, awakening, seeing, thinking for oneself, freeing of the mind.... Bob Marley, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind"... But that awakening is NOT, as many believe it to be, awakening into some position of KNOWING... like some epiphany of life, "I SEE EVERYTHING NOW".... which religion and delusions try and emulate.... but I'm starting to see that it could be more the position of letting go of the fearful desire to hide inside a constructed reality, and instead embrace the mysterious, the unknown, the questions... the "I don't know". The acceptance of our limitations.. and realisation of what we can do.
   
  Einstein said, “We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects. That it seems to be is the position of even the most intelligent human being”
   
  Based on what I'm looking at, there are answers, but these answers are based on assumptions and we have to search to find them ourselves and think for ourselves. My choice now is to look to science and critical thought, thinking for myself, which I can see, touch and explore the evidence for myself.
   
  the assumptions I can make based on the best evidence that has been found in science, that all matter is energy vibrating at different frequencies.. we see and experience things from the model of reality we create in our mind, but that beyond the limitations of our natural human senses, everything is one big energy field.. which is basic quantum physics I'm exploring now.. and very interesting!
   
  
  
  

[Legion]

Another interesting tid bit here Jake before I read the remainder of your post...

 

Few people realize it, but the admission of saying, "I don't know" is just as much an affirmation of our authority as what we DO know.

[Jake49]

Another interesting tid bit here Jake before I read the remainder of your post...

 

Few people realize it, but the admission of saying, "I don't know" is just as much an affirmation of our authority as what we DO know.

 

Ok, that has the ring of sense to it! but I didn't get it yet... I didn't connect the dots to understand your meaning. Please can you share with me in more words so I can grasp it.

What you said definitely sounds like awesome jigsaw pieces for me to think about.. and I think might open up some new understanding.

 

edit: I'm sure it WILL open up some new understanding!

 

edit: I guess I should ask a question about what I didn't get. So when someone might say, "I know ...." that is an affirmation of their authority. What does this mean?... And so when I say "I don't know"... that is also the same affirmation of authority. So am I right in assuming there is a specific context, where there is no difference between the two?

 

Please can you explain more to me about the meaning of "affirmation of our authority" and its context... some of the things it connects to.

 

Thanks Legion, really appreciate any info on this! I'm really exploring all this, so even the, as you say, 'tid bits' of understanding are profoundly meaningful to me... they can be the last jigsaw piece that goes in, and then I see a bigger picture (and then that bigger picture just turns into 1 big jigsaw piece in itself in an even larger picture hahah). Thank you

 

edit:

[Positivist]

Hey Jake

 

I agree. There is a certain humility that I love about saying "I don't know". I really don't know much. I am ignorant of much science. As a fundy, of course, I thought I had all the answers! Gawd. What an arrogant lunatic I was!

 

The questions of the universe are huge and gaping. They stare back at us and make us feel small! I can't find my way through the universe and its mystery; so, I just enjoy being human. Drinks?

[Guest Valk0010]

Another interesting tid bit here Jake before I read the remainder of your post...

 

Few people realize it, but the admission of saying, "I don't know" is just as much an affirmation of our authority as what we DO know.

Its a admission of authority, if you consider there to be much authority in saying. Hey I don't know enough to answer a question?

[WMDKitty]

I think that "I don't know" is often the wisest answer one can give.

[Guest wester]

Pose Socrates "All I know is that I know nothing."

next to a fundamentalist who knows exactly what god wants, feels and likes, and exactly what jesus h. christ, saint peter and satan ate for breakfast.

 

 

A claim must be supported by evidence.

The inference is what allows you to make the claim from evidence.

The warrant is what allows the inference to take place.

 

Relying on faith for anything is asking to get your arse kicked. There are too many predators in the church who consciously or unconsciously take advantage of those wearing cognitive blinders.

[Jake49]

Another interesting tid bit here Jake before I read the remainder of your post...

 

Few people realize it, but the admission of saying, "I don't know" is just as much an affirmation of our authority as what we DO know.

Its a admission of authority, if you consider there to be much authority in saying. Hey I don't know enough to answer a question?

 

Not sure if you're responding to what Legion said, or if you're answering my question of what Legion means by affirmation of authority.

 

If you're answering my question of what is affirmation of authority. Also if your answer is saying that to say "I don't know" is to say, "I don't know enough to answer a question"...

 

(I'm totally not sure of any of this hahah! so just guessing)...

 

I would say that, to say "I don't know" doesn't mean that these are the words I use to answer a question (sometimes perhaps). To say, "I don't know" doesn't mean I don't have LOTS to say.

 

It's just that what I do have to say is ultimately based on assumptions and so can not be a knowing. When I approach a discussion, listening to or expressing views, that I approach it with the open mind that I don't know anything and that the discussion is an exploration of understanding more... as opposed to asserting a knowing.

 

I think that this position could be a great place to be open to the exploration and search for the best kind of information I can use to base assumptions on which I would call my views. Through evidence, critical thought, science, I think things like this could be the way to find the best information for me to base my views of discussion on and become informed in my understanding.

 

I can sense that I am talking absolute shit right now hahahah... I'm throwing out the vaguest picture of something which makes sense to me... but because I'm squinting to see it in the distance, I'm probably describing a lot of nonsense in my head too hahah...

 

Anyway..... I'm going to listen some more lol

[Legion]

Ok, that has the ring of sense to it! but I didn't get it yet... I didn't connect the dots to understand your meaning. Please can you share with me in more words so I can grasp it.

 

Uh oh. You mean I have to try and explain it Jake? I don't know if I can.

 

 

I tend to think of both knowledge and authority in terms of domains or territories. And so whether I say, "That is outside my domain of knowledge" (i.e. "I don't know") or "That is inside my domain of knowledge" (i.e. "I know") then in either case we still recognize that a domain of knowledge, or an authority, is in existence.

 

Does that make sense? Or am I just imagining things?

[Legion]

A claim must be supported by evidence.

The inference is what allows you to make the claim from evidence.

The warrant is what allows the inference to take place.

 

I really like this Wester. It seems to be very much in keeping with a branch of math I'm learning called category theory. This math concerns itself with arrows, or morphisms, or transformations called "maps".

 

So in categorical terms I would write would you've asserted here as....

 

warrant: evidence ---> claim

 

Or, I suppose we could try and cast it in terms of knowledge? If knowledge is a justified belief then maybe something like...

 

justification: belief ---> knowledge?

 

[Jake49]

Ok, that has the ring of sense to it! but I didn't get it yet... I didn't connect the dots to understand your meaning. Please can you share with me in more words so I can grasp it.

 

Uh oh. You mean I have to try and explain it Jake? I don't know if I can.

 

 

I tend to think of both knowledge and authority in terms of domains or territories. And so whether I say, "That is outside my domain of knowledge" (i.e. "I don't know") or "That is inside my domain of knowledge" (i.e. "I know") then in either case we still recognize that a domain of knowledge, or an authority, is in existence.

 

Does that make sense? Or am I just imagining things?

 

Yes that makes sense. Understanding the angles of it and connecting the dots with other things is now on my mind!

 

What I'm thinking is, that a position of "I don't know" might recognise that there is a domain of knowledge or an authority in existence... But, that recognition is based on assumptions... and so still remains "I don't know" in relation to whether there is a domain of knowledge or authority in existence. Which makes it different from the assertion of a knowing, which also asserts that there is something like "a domain of knowledge or authority in existence".

 

Perhaps that is incorrect... perhaps that is another angle using the definition of these words differently.

 

I think from one angle, saying 'I don't know' doesn't suggest that there is something to be known, which is outside my domain of understanding... "I don't know" is as open to the idea of there being a domain of knowledge as it is to there not being... "I don't know" from one angle (perhaps) is recognising our limitations, and that all we have is assumptions. Those assumptions can be based on reasoning, science, evidence.

 

This assumption suggests that a domain of knowing is an assumption. It suggests the assumption that our human mind which cognitively develops models of reality is limited to the domain of assumptions. And that everything I have just "suggested" and said there is all assumptions.

 

REAAALLY have no idea what I'm talking about... sigh! LOL... I have a jumble of jigsaw pieces here..

 

2 words are illuminated in my mind... 1. Knowing... 2. Assumption

 

I'll look into those.

 

I watched this today.. i think it's good on this topic!

 

As you can see he does a "retard count" where he has to repeat the point that an assumption is something you can't "know"

 

[Legion]

 

Well, we're hovering around SOMETHING Jake.

 

There it is --->

 

Do you see it?

 

Another thing I thought of here is... Sometimes saying, "I don't know" is a falsehood. If there is some fact in existence, called X, and someone asks us if we know X then we have these possibilities...

 

We can...

 

truthfully say, "I know"

falsely say, "I know"

truthfully say, "I don't know"

falsely say, "I don't know"

 

 

lol... I need a book entitled Philosophy for Dummies.

 

In any case, I very much agree with the 'spirit' of your opening post. I've had the good fortune of speaking with scientists at the frontiers of human understanding. And I am struck by the fact that those who "know" many things, are painfully aware of how little they know.

[Jake49]

Yes, I see this other angle you're saying about the fact X... and the different responses to that we can have.

 

I can't remember who said this, but someone said, "If there's facts to look at, why have an opinion?".. Referring to specific subjects,

where people have all kinds of opinions about something, but have no interest in looking at or listening to facts (from evidence, science, reason).

 

To explore what that guy in the video throws in, I know that if I am thirsty, that some measure of water will quench my thirst.

This is still based on 3 assumptions:

 

1. that the universe exists

2. You can learn something about reality

3. Models with predictive capabilities are more useful than models without predictive capabilities.

 

So even though my thirst and drinking water has so many facts involved in it... from this point of view it's all based on assumptions that I am a human, experiencing thirst, I have learned that water will quench my thirst and rehydrate my body. So from this point of view, all these "facts" are still based on assumptions.

 

Bill Hicks throws in the quantum physics based idea that everything is energy..

"all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves."

 

He talks about a presence of infinite consciousness which manifests itself and experiences itself subjectively, you and I.

 

Einstein says,

"Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics."

 

There's so many dots I'm connecting vaguely here, but there is some kind of order to all of this... going to keep exploring!

[Jake49]

Hey Jake

 

I agree. There is a certain humility that I love about saying "I don't know". I really don't know much. I am ignorant of much science. As a fundy, of course, I thought I had all the answers! Gawd. What an arrogant lunatic I was!

 

The questions of the universe are huge and gaping. They stare back at us and make us feel small! I can't find my way through the universe and its mystery; so, I just enjoy being human. Drinks?

 

Ye, I like your style! I could also nutshell my journey a bit like that!

 

When you say, "The questions of the universe are huge and gaping. They stare back at us and make us feel small!"

 

There two responses in me...

 

One is that I don't feel small... because when I look at basic quantum physics and listen to countless physicists, there's this picture that everything is one giant quantum

field... and we're all part of it.

 

So in this sense, I feel BIG... I am the mountains, the oceans, the earth, the 70, quadrillion mile wide milky way galaxy. Without digressing too much, I also recognise that I am desperate to see something that say I have value and worth, that I can not just "believe in" or have "faith" in... but that I can see, touch, taste, smell... have evidence of... and quantum physics does that for me on an overwhelming level.

 

You might have watched that already above, where Neil Tyson DeGrasse is talking about how big he feels when he looks at physics and the universe.

 

 

And the response when you say, "The questions of the universe are huge and gaping. They stare back at us and make us feel small!"

 

Is that perhaps I still look at these questions from the safety of some comfort zone... and I still have to make my way out of that in my journey.

I do have an awareness that there are things I'm terrified of and feel totally alone in, and that there are comforts, "blissful ignorances" that I have made

for myself, which if I stepped out of them... I would feel terrified... of what, I don't know... but I'm sure that what I fear is only illusions.. made by a child

who didn't know any better.

 

I made this music last year... called 'deserts and wellsprings'... it's 20 minutes long so, no expectations to listen, just throwing it out.

 

It's about a lot of things.... stillness, places, journey, the heart.. and resolving things in the heart, so that the life within can be expressed and the eyes of our consciousness can see.

 

http://soundcloud.com/yack49audio/way-of-the-wellspring

 

also, this music I made last month is about the quantum field of energy that we're all part of and connected..

 

http://soundcloud.com/jake49/i-am-you

[Guest Valk0010]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.....