"Real" knowledge and "artificial" knowledge - I have a dilemma here

[Stocco]

Liz,

"For the more my wisdom the more my grief. To increase knowledge only increases distress" Eccl. 1:18

I believe you said you were still a student. I can't speak for everyone else, but I had the same dilemma and it got worse once I graduated and started working. I too lost interest in my studies except those that I thought brought me closer to understanding the truth. I saw everything as relative and it was very difficult for me to accept things that professors said were right or wrong.
I was a friend to everyone on campus, but I only had 2 or 3 that I could talk to at the level I wanted to.

When I graduated and started working it was a very difficult adjustment. I was asked to dedicate huge amounts of time to projects I thought were meaningless. I realized then how different my perception was from the status quo. It was like being an adult and forced to 10 hours of Barney on television every day! After awhile you just want to run away and immerse yourself in something of substance. I AM SO THANKFUL THAT I FOUND THIS WEBSITE.

Maybe it will be different for you depending on the field you will be getting into. What are you studying?

 

[te jen]

yesemina:

Knowledge is a tool. Pick it up, keep it sharp and free of rust, make sure it fits your hand, enjoy putting it to its proper use and then put it away and go for a walk.

 

[Squashbuckler]

Originally posted by yesemina
It seems like what I would be learning in school would be giving me extra tools in order to define reality, but I don't feel that I really need that.
Liz

That is what you REALLY NEED. A conceptual reality! Reality is A.
Reality is not some unknown,undefined, special place in who knows where.

"For the more my wisdom the more my grief. To increase knowledge only increases distress"
-This depends on that knowledge that you are accepting into your engine! if you fill it with worthless contradictions and mysticism, how can you expect to live sanely?

 

[linus]

another good thing to remember is this. words are communication for the majority of the world. when great teachers, leaders spoke, they always spoke not to whoever was there, but to their audience. when jesus talked to the fisherman, he said "come with me and i will make you fishers of men", when he talked to the farmers he said "we reap what we sow", you get the idea.
when you learn things like facts that may or not be useless in terms of exact application in your life (i.e. you may have to study biology but not end up becoming a botonist), it is still another chance to learn something that you can apply for better communication wtih other people.
knowledge, more than facts, is about concepts. it's about being able to see the undercurrent of an idea and see it's practical uses. (for example, to learn phtosynthesis, is an example of the natural world, needing what it does not have [chlorfil] and using what theere is an abundance of [sunlight] to create it. it is an example of evolving and problme solving at it's height and much can be learned about the nature of existence from watching a survival instict even in a non-sentient organism).
at any rate, i hope maybe that gives you some other ideas about the value of knownledge besides just the value of the particular information itself.

 

[linus]

Originally posted by Alpha
It must exist, or our minds would be able to directly influence 'reallity'.
You're assuming that if reality is subjective that there even ARE other people.
Now these substances would be a part of objective reality. If not, then it's only your mind... See my point?
Infinity is paradoxical, and therefor does not exist in reality. Incomprehensibly huge numbers exist, yes, but not infinity. Infinity is more of a process (it's not a number), and is therefore limited by time.
Only if reality was subjective as opposed to objective, but it has been shown that it is not.

the mere statement that infinity is paradoxical is a paradox in itself. logically, iuf something was, it came from something, and therefor there must have alwyas been something, if only space itself and the potential for something, that is still existence, being that there is no spontaneous generation.

and infinty by nature, whihc you state yourself is not a number, cannot be limited by time and therefor it transcends the umber system altogether.

and as for whether or not reality is subjective or objective, one can say for certain that it is not soley objective based on einstein's studies of light particles in which, tested as a photon, it proves to be what we expect, and tested as a ray, it proves to be what we expect. couple that with wheeler's studies of coomunication of distance by light with the reflective mirrors creating an arch effect or a direct effect to the planet and the star from which the light comes, the light reurns actually before the light can be reflected or after based on what you test for. reality is directly effected by us in fact observing it, whihc necessitates that reality is not wholly objhective, but that leaves open the question of whether or not it is completely subjective.

of course, even in quantum physics, all things are tentative which makes it the most real of sciences in whihc it predicts probablities rather than truths whihc, as such cannot be measured.

but on all other points in regaurds to the relity of faulty and unfaulty logic i am in complete agreement.