Is Max Eberle as big as a goof as I now think?

BmoreMoney said:
PT, I don't know how many of Max's conversations about this and many other things on FB you have been privy to. You are right, I could have used a plethora of other descriptors but I settled on GOOF because it was the best " PG " word I could think of athe the time and to be honest after all this time I'd use it again. As I said earlier, I have no I'll will towards Max, and he is a brilliant artist and a great pool player. I was strictly talking about these off the hook, out of this world, really really strange beliefs that he has. As discussed earlier, Max is a fairly popular public figure and being so it does leave him open to scrutiny - good, bad, or indifferent. Taking it a step further, when you post up on a public forum ( whatever the media ) you are inviting discussions, opinions, and usually a bunch of flak as we see daily right here on AZ. Lastly, not only did he post up in very public places - he pushes his beliefs on an almost daily basis so not only must he be OK with the blowback but he is actually inciting and inviting it. He is a nice enough guy and truthfully I've never seen him get nasty not even one time when he is debating and preaching his agenda.
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Well, B, it's been a pretty good thread, regardless of the title....
...and I have expressed earlier that Max's way of thinking is in the public domain....
...nobody swiped his diary, he put it out there....as weird as it is. :eek:

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Poolplaya9 said:
I think you have completely missed my point (or I may not be understanding what you are trying to say). PoolBum rephrased it in a different way a couple of posts above. My point is that at worst critical thinking and logic will accomplish the same thing as anything else, but in most cases it actually does it better. There is never a case where it has to be worse though--never. There are no drawbacks to *good* critical thinking and logic, ever, but there are often and even usually tremendous benefits.

Lets take another analogy, a lion and a gazelle. Instinct tells the gazelle to run when the lion starts to runs after it. Some people would argue, like the rabbit guy in the article, that this is one of the rare exceptions where dumb blind instinct is better than critical thinking and logic. I say bullsh!t. If the gazelle was capable of good critical thinking and logic he can recognize and reason that lions like to eat gazelles, and that when a lion runs at a gazelle it is because he wants to eat it, and therefore when the lion runs at him he better try to get the hell out of there because the lion is trying to eat him. And this decision will come as quickly as instinct. And those that have have mastered always using good logic have an instinct that has also been shaped by that logic. Good critical thinking and logic will never, ever, give you a worse decision than instinct, emotion, intuition, experience, bias, perception or anything else but will often/usually actually lead you to a better decision that is of greater benefit. It is those other things that often lead to bad decisions and beliefs.

pt109 in so many words tried to raise what on the surface would sound like a natural and reasonable argument against critical thinking and logic in some cases. The argument essentially is that sometimes there isn't time to think things out, or that the thinking process may interfere with what your subconscious already knows to do. But there really is no conflict there like he believes there is.

First, if you have trained yourself in the good use of logic, and to only be led by logic, the thought processes are usually as quick as instinct or anything else. They may be slower for someone that has not yet mastered being a logical being, but not usually for those that have. But besides that, your constant use of logic shapes your instinct or intuition or subconscious anyway. Yes, maybe you don't want to consciously over analyze at times during a match but there is no need to because as someone who only uses logic your intuition has been shaped by that logic and it will make far better decisions than the intuition of someone who is not very logical. A logical person can make the logical decision to let their pool intuition (which has also been shaped by their logic) do the thinking at the times where that would be best. Again, good logical critical thinking will never be worse than something else and will usually be better.

Instinct, emotion, intuition, experience, bias, perception and similar things can be a benefit to a dumb person (or a dumb rabbit or gazelle) who is not capable of good critical logical thinking. But for someone who is capable of good critical logical thinking, that will at worst be at least equally good to anything else and in most cases be much better. This being the case, we should obviously all be striving to master the use of good critical logical thinking, always.
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Logic is only reliable when the assumptions the logic relies on are true. Logic can't be subjective but the assumptions certainly can which means the logic can be incorrect since the conclusion of logic is dependant on the assumptions being correct.

When discussing flat earth even a master of rational thinking and logic has to rely on assumptions that they have been taught. Are those assumptions correct?
 
Colin Colenso said:
Most people think most of what they see on the news is the accumulation of ideas on recent events from smart minds.

I'd rather listen to those with disparate viewpoints, right or wrong, because it's plainly evident that almost all 'so called' experts in the mainstream are liars or delusional.

Colin
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Masters of rhetoric maintaining control over the so called masters of logic.
 
Arete said:
Logic can't be subjective but the assumptions certainly can which means the logic can be incorrect since the conclusion of logic is dependant on the assumptions being correct.
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It's not the logic (i.e., the reasoning) that's wrong in that case, it's the assumptions. Logic is about how to reason well. The actual truth of one's claims is not part of the logic itself, strictly speaking.
 
PoolBum said:
It's not the logic (i.e., the reasoning) that's wrong in that case, it's the assumptions. Logic is about how to reason well. The actual truth of one's claims is not part of the logic itself, strictly speaking.
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"Claims" are a part of the logic. Depending on which claims you rationally believe determines your logical conclusion. There are many claims on both sides of the argument that I can't say for sure are true so I am not going to pretend to know wether or not the earth is global or flat.
 
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Arete said:
"Claims" are a part of the logic.
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No, they're not, unless you're just using the term "logic" in a loose or colloquial sense.

Logic is about what principles of reasoning are good principles of reasoning, not about which beliefs we hold are reasonable to accept and why.

If I claim that the earth is spherical that is an empirical claim, based on empirical evidence. It is not a claim of logic. Logic tells us which inferences are reasonable to make, not which empirical beliefs are reasonable to hold.
 
PoolBum said:
No, they're not, unless you're just using the term "logic" in a loose or colloquial sense.

Logic is about what principles of reasoning are good principles of reasoning, not about which beliefs we hold are reasonable to accept and why.

If I claim that the earth is spherical that is an empirical claim, based on empirical evidence. It is not a claim of logic. Logic tells us which inferences are reasonable to make, not which empirical beliefs are reasonable to hold.
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My point remains.

You can use your principles of reasoning to examine claims from both sides of the argument and come to your own logical conclusion. But, your conclusion will only be correct if in fact the claims that you support are correct.
 
I'all give an example of how instinct can be better than using logic.

Suppose you run out of gas in a part of town that you are not familiar with and you have no cell phone coverage. A nice man offers you some help and instinctually you would have taken it only logically you are messed up because you watch the news and you have came to the logical conclusion that a man who looks like this young man is potentially dangerous.
 
Arete said:
I'all give an example of how instinct can be better than using logic.

Suppose you run out of gas in a part of town that you are not familiar with and you have no cell phone coverage. A nice man offers you some help and instinctually you would have taken it only logically you are messed up because you watch the news and you have came to the logical conclusion that a man who looks like this young man is potentially dangerous.
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Instincts are different than learned knowledge, even if it were to only be on a sub conscious level.
 
Max Eberle is a GREAT GUY. He's good for pool. He's good for art.

He is one of the pro players that I genuinely enjoy breaking bread with.

GO MAX!

JoeyA
 
Arete said:
You can use your principles of reasoning to examine claims from both sides of the argument and come to your own logical conclusion. But, your conclusion will only be correct if in fact the claims that you support are correct.
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Of course, good logic doesn't guarantee that your conclusions are correct. That's obvious.

But if someone's beliefs lead them to conclude that the earth is flat, they've gone terribly wrong somewhere.
 
JoeyA said:
Max Eberle is a GREAT GUY. He's good for pool. He's good for art.

He is one of the pro players that I genuinely enjoy breaking bread with.

GO MAX!

JoeyA
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What I have seen of Max in the pool world agrees with what you say.

But Buzz Aldrin had a stalker....the guy would follow him to events and call him a liar.
a fraud, and a coward....finally, Buzz, in his late 70s, threw a shot at him.

So I asked this question much earlier in this thread....
..."What would Max say to Buzz if they met?"

Pretty tough to be a nice guy....and call a whole bunch of very brave men frauds.
....I'm calling Max a good pool player....and a kook in his spare time.
 
pt109 said:
What I have seen of Max in the pool world agrees with what you say.

But Buzz Aldrin had a stalker....the guy would follow him to events and call him a liar.
a fraud, and a coward....finally, Buzz, in his late 70s, threw a shot at him.

So I asked this question much earlier in this thread....
..."What would Max say to Buzz if they met?"

Pretty tough to be a nice guy....and call a whole bunch of very brave men frauds.
....I'm calling Max a good pool player....and a kook in his spare time.
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Lol, and yup
 
PoolBum said:
Of course, good logic doesn't guarantee that your conclusions are correct. That's obvious.

But if someone's beliefs lead them to conclude that the earth is flat, they've gone terribly wrong somewhere.
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Are you convinced of a global Earth?
 
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West Point 1987 said:
Not sure about the flat Earth stuff, but there's something to be said about the center of the universe...I think Stephen Hawking recently talked about it. Think of the Universe as a pool full of eddies...lots of things swirling around each other, in different orbits and directions. If you discount the bank of the stream, you can anchor your perspective on any twig or leaf in the stream and consider that the "center perspective", and everything else is moving in relation to it. Looking at the universe this way, if you "anchor" to the Earth, than everything else is rotating around it, just at different orbits, directions and paths. This theory is a re-examination of five hundred years of attempting to find the true center of the Universe (proving the Big Bang theory), which scientists haven't been able to do. If you can't anchor the universe to a single point by which to gauge all the bodies moving in relation to, then what does it matter what you use as an anchor point?

I wouldn't know, but I've heard it helps to smoke some pretty primo weed to see this clearly...:wink:
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Just to clarify a few things here.

You are correct in saying that there is no "center" to our Universe. There is no central point that went "bang" at Time = 0. Every spatial point in our Universe can be thought of as equivalently "central" or "peripheral" to every other point.

But, there is no "search" underway for any "true" center, that idea defies everything we know about cosmology. And the theory of the Big Bang is very well supported by a variety of lines evidence (as proven as anything ever can be). 1) General Relatively + observations of the expansion of the universe. 2) Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. 3) Observed ratios of elements in the cosmos agree perfectly with models of nucleosynthesis from the early universe, shortly after the "bang" (which in no sense should be confused with an actual 'bang' produced by anything like an 'explosion'.)

I realize this thread has probably wandered afar since this post, but I am a fairly large physics geek, and I just wanted an excuse to talk about Cosmology.
 
Arete said:
Are you convinced of a global Earth?
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There's a great deal of evidence for an Earth that's roughly 8000 miles in diameter and roughly spherical. I find it convincing.

Do you believe that the Earth is flat?
 
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