Beverly Hills High School was different than Soviet Education. At Beverly Hills High School, you had to take all kinds of requirements that had no relation to your future goals. In the Soviet Union, things were almost the complete reverse. You had to choose a direction when you just started out, [and it showed]. I recall walking by a music school over there, and was astounded at the quality of some violinist that I heard as I was walking by the open windows. Someone over there told me that Jasha Heifetz [by all accounts, the greatest violinist in the world during his time] came from that area [and maybe that same school],-- and I totally believe it. I forget the tracks for students in the USSR that they had. There was music and math and physics, and I imagine a biology track. But for me, having to divide my attention between chemistry, language, world history, English lit.,etc.. wore me out. I certainly did not like it at all. To my mind, it was taking away time and effort from things I wanted to pursue. At the beginning, I wanted the physics route, but physics (I discovered) needs a lot of time and effort unless you are among the blessed few that have 150 I.Q. and higher. [I am by the way - way, way, way…. below. English literature etc. and etc. was not my cup of tea. Over the yearS, I have begun to appreciate the balanced approach of my high school,] but I think I might have made it in physics if I had the time. Being forced to learn some foreign language and a mediocre existentialist novel in English literature and not even getting home until 6:15 every day drained all my energy. [I could have walked home but have gotten there anyway tired until 7 PM.] (However, I think it I also had a tremendous love for the orchestra and music. {Mr. Smart was a tremendous conductor, and also my teacher in violin, Mr. Chassman was a great violinist. He taught in the Valley, at that univerity there. I forget the name.} I think I must had inherited this from father who obviously had a tremendous love and respect for the great classical composers. Clearly, he would have become a professional violinist if not for his other love-- invention. He got a bachelor’s degree at Michigan university [somewhat close to home where his parents lived in N.J., not walking distance but at least closer than California where he eventually went to.] then he got a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Caltech. at that point, I have no idea what he might have done, but WWII began and he joined the Airforce and never returned to university. still the USA government was hungry for his kind of talent. he created the first infrared telescope and camera and a second camera for the U-2 and then laser communication between satellite [] now that tuff has become the basis for fiber optics an and the Elon Musk satellite e array and that use that technology of laser communication. [the idea I really similar to telephone. You modulate the signal in order to end a message. But the time my dad developed this it had one goal alone. To keep the soviets from being able to monitor our communications. {radio signals spread out and can be intercepted. Not lasers.}}]. But, I still believe that all that was simply for the sake of making a living and supporting his wife and children. I believe his real love was the great classical composers. maybe Mozart. but it is hard to tell. but my best guess is Mozart. [As for me, I think the emphasis of my mom of marrying a “nice Jewish girl” and to be a mensch got me interested in gemara. (“Nice Jewish girl” were synonyms to the mind of my mom. However, I believe these are two separate requirements) I still have a tremendous love and thrill for Gemara, Tosphot and Maharsha]-- Eventually I went to the Polytechnic Institute of NYU for Physics.

The religious world has found a way to make Torah into a tremendous source of profit. I doubt if Moses would be happy about that

The approach of the Gra is important from many angles. But much of it the Litvak world has missed a few of the most important points. The main thing is learning Torah for its own sake not for money. Nowadays Torah is big business. Why not serve in Zahal, The Army of Defense of Israel? The reason is that that would dig into the status of the religious fanatics. It has nothing to do with what the Torah requires.("You will sit here, while your brothers go up to war?" That is from the book of Numbers.) It is a major characteristic of the religious world to make big deal about minor details while ignoring direct un-mistakeable commandments of the Torah .[the law about charity is brought at the end of the first chapter of bava kama in the rosh. it is derived from the general law about presents to the poor in the torah, the forgotten sheaves, etc. The rule is one who has 200 zuz is not allowed to receive charity. So then for people that are getting paid to learn torah, is it charity or is it payment for services rendered? If charity if one has the amount of a ketubah then it is forbidden to receive charity. if it is payment for, that also is forbidden because of the prohibition of using torah as a shovel to dig with]

You cannot eat an egg, or drink a glass of water without Faith.Religious fanaticism and secular fanaticism just do not work. But to find the middle ground is just as hard.

Georg Hamann quoted Hume that one cannot eat an egg, or drink a glass of water without faith. [You have to believe it is of benefit before actually trying it. Maybe it was tampered with?] {He tried to wean Kant away from the Enlightenment. ) This failed to convince Kant, but it does show that all experience starts with faith. Kant was not convinced. Hegel tried to reconcile faith and reasoning in the Phenomenology {and later in all subsequent writings which are a reformulation of Plotinus ‘approach to Plato with Aristotle integrated in the system.}. Hegel in the meantime struggling even for a loaf of bread eventually rose up to super stardom, until that was cancelled by Schelling. In the meantime, the importance of faith and reason has never been diminished and still remains a vital point in any balanced and sane human being.However, Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross developed an idea of non-intuitive immediate knowledge. All reason has to start with unproven faith, axioms that cannot be proven (but can be refuted if enough evidence shows them to be flawed. Religious fanaticism and secular fanaticism just do not work. But to find the middle ground is just as hard. Just to take a middle approach without reason is just as ridiculous as the extremes. You need a valid criterion for the middle

It seems the higher the IQ, the more that one can deceive himself

There are a lot of mistakes about what is going on in physics and in particular philosophers seem to get everything wrong about it. It seems the higher the IQ, the more that one can deceive himself about what reason actually says. Like Rav Nachman said reason reason fools to those that possesses it[. In fact, Einstein never showed that absolute space ether does not exist bur t rather that it is undetectable. And in and an odd way photons and matter are really harmonic oscillators vibrating violin string. Just like Pythagoras held that about the Music of the spheres. What else could that be except vibrating musical instrument. And in fact, the uncertainly principle of Heisenberg really fit in perfectly into the harmonic oscillator equations of some kind of oscillating medium The uncertainty of momentum and position of any particle fits in the standard variation, the average value of a harmonic oscillator. The average value of momentum is equal to the mass times the angular velocity times h bar over 2. The

Debunking Skepticism, At some point, rational people should just disregard everything we have to say about our radical skeptical theories.

Debunking Skepticism Michael Huemer Mar 23 Here, I debunk the debunkers — the moral skeptics.* [ *Based on: “Debunking Skepticism,” in Higher-Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology, ed. Michael Klenk (Routledge, 2020). ] 1. Introduction Moral skeptics argue that either there aren’t any moral facts, or there are but we don’t know them. Why? Because our mechanisms for forming moral beliefs are not reliably truth-directed. Two sub-arguments: a) Our moral intuitions are produced by something that is insensitive to moral truth, like natural selection, or the cultural traditions we happened to be born under. b) There is so much disagreement among moral judgments that we have to conclude that humans can’t reliably judge morality. I suggest that there are similar arguments debunking skepticism itself: skeptical beliefs are produced by unreliable processes that produce lots of disagreement. 2. Skeptics Are Unreliable 2.1. Philosophers’ General Skeptical Leaning Philosophers as a group have an extreme skeptical leaning, compared to people from other disciplines. For virtually anything that philosophers talk about (not just morality), one of the leading philosophical theories will be an extreme form of skepticism. This is not true of any other field of study that I know of. E.g., among chemists, a leading theory is not that there are no chemicals or that we know nothing about them. Among geologists, there is no theory that anyone takes seriously that says there are no rocks. Among art historians, a major view isn’t that there is no art or that it has no history. But among epistemologists, a leading theory is that there is no knowledge. Among ethicists, a major theory is that there is no right or wrong. When philosophers theorize about free will, someone is going to say that there is no such thing; when we talk about beauty, someone will say there is no beauty; when we talk about time, someone will say it isn’t real; etc. Basically, for anything that philosophers talk about, some of us are going to pipe up and propose that that thing “isn’t real”, or that we know literally nothing about it. Of course, these radical skeptical positions are usually small minority views. Nevertheless, the profession takes them seriously and spends a lot of time discussing them, as no one in any other discipline would do. 2.2. When Beliefs Are Open to Bias What kinds of beliefs are most susceptible to being influenced by bias? Here are some: Beliefs based on abstract reflection, rather than observation, scientific study, etc. Beliefs stated in vague terms rather than precise terms. Beliefs that rely on empirical speculation. Beliefs that are ideologically significant. Beliefs that require high-level judgment calls, e.g., weighing up complex bodies of evidence. I assume it’s obvious why each of those types of belief would be relatively easily influenced by bias. Notice that moral skepticism, or the premises of the arguments for it, have all five of these traits. (Examples of 3: the claim that moral beliefs are adaptations; specific evolutionary explanations for specific moral beliefs.) So moral skepticism and the arguments for it are exactly the type of belief and argument that we would expect to be easily influenced by bias, should someone have a pro-skeptic bias. 2.3. Sources of Pro-Skeptical Bias Why might philosophers have a skeptical bias? There are many reasons. I can’t list them all; here are a few: Some people have an abnormal fear of being duped, which they express by taking extreme skeptical philosophical stances. Some people get a sense of superiority and cleverness, or a pleasurable feeling of rebelliousness, from “debunking” the beliefs of others. Skeptical stances make intellectual life simple and easy. It’s a lot easier to just reject or pretend to doubt X than it is to figure out the actual nature of X. Arguing with others is easier too; just reject every premise that the other person puts forward, or claim to not see why it’s plausible. The profession (academic philosophy) rewards people who give clever defenses of “interesting” positions — which often means surprising and radical positions. Skepticism is perhaps the easiest such position to think of. Those are all about skepticism in general. Now a few about moral skepticism in particular: Many people think that it’s bad to be “judgmental”. The ultimate in not being judgmental is being a skeptic. Many people have succumbed to the ideology of scientism. Since ethics doesn’t sound like “science” (i.e., natural science), the science-worshippers have to reject it. Morality is often inconvenient for us. 2.4. Bias or Virtue? Ok, philosophers are way more skeptical than researchers in any other field. There are two salient explanations: (a) Maybe it stems from philosophers’ intellectual virtues; e.g., perhaps we are more rational, open-minded, and intelligent than other researchers, and maybe these things lead to skepticism because skepticism is correct. (b) Maybe it is a bias, as I’ve been suggesting. Theory (b) is obviously more plausible than (a), for at least 3 reasons. Again, philosophers develop and take seriously radical skeptic theories about virtually everything they look at. If we did it for just one thing (say, morality), it might be plausible to say that that one thing isn’t real or isn’t knowable. But the prior probability that multiple different things that everyone else thinks we obviously know about are all unreal — morality, time, consciousness, free will, numbers, matter, meaning, truth, beauty, causation, epistemic reasons, theoretical entities in science — is near zero. All of those are things that philosophers have rejected, and been taken seriously by other philosophers. The prior that skepticism is a reasonable position for multiple of those things is much lower than the prior that philosophers have a general bias toward skepticism. Philosophers have taken up forms of skepticism that would impugn the work of all other researchers in all other fields. E.g., inductive skepticism would impugn all work in all the sciences. Therefore, either the skeptical philosophers are being overly skeptical, or everyone else in every other field is insufficiently skeptical. The former is obviously more likely. Skeptics are always telling us that disagreement about X supports skepticism about X. But there is huge disagreement among philosophers about the merits of skeptical theses and argument. This shows that the belief-forming methods that philosophers are using are unreliable. 3. Unreliability Undercuts Skepticism 3.1. The Import of Higher-Order Evidence You might wonder: Why not just directly evaluate the arguments given by moral skeptics? Once we do that, there will be no need to speculate about the psychological infirmities of their authors. The answer is that if there is a pro-skeptical bias among philosophers, then the people evaluating the skeptical arguments are likely to share that bias, and thus our direct evaluation of the skeptical arguments will be unreliable. We need to look at the second-order evidence, which suggests the unreliability of the belief-forming mechanisms leading to skepticism. This, by the way, is perfectly parallel to what the skeptics themselves say about why you shouldn’t just directly evaluate moral propositions and see whether any of them are true. 3.2. Third-Order Evidence Restores Belief What’s the result of becoming skeptical of skepticism itself? Do we just become completely skeptical about everything? Or do we return to our normal beliefs? The answer is the latter. This is the process: a. First, we have prima facie justification for believing certain first-order moral propositions, like “you shouldn’t torture babies”, because these things seem obviously correct and we have no reason (yet) for doubting them. b. Skeptics present second-order evidence that our moral intuitions are unreliable. This undercuts our justification for the 1st-order moral claims. c. Anti-skeptics present third-order evidence that the (alleged) 2nd-order evidence given by the skeptics is unreliable. This undercuts our justification for believing that our moral intuitions are unreliable. With no justification for believing that anymore, we no longer have an undercutting defeater for the 1st-order moral claims. So the 1st-order moral claims are justified again. 4. Objections 4.1. “Philosophers are superior thinkers.” More about the theory mentioned in 2.4 that perhaps philosophers’ tendency to skepticism is due to our being better thinkers: There is at least some reason to think this. E.g., philosophers appear to be on average more open-minded, more rational, clearer-thinking, and more disposed to ask fundamental questions than people in other fields. If philosophers were overall more reliable than other researchers, what would we expect to see? Two things: (a) We’d expect to see philosophers making faster progress than others. (b) We’d expect to see more agreement in philosophy than in other fields. Needless to say, these predictions are the opposite of the truth. So while philosophers may be better thinkers than others in some respects, there is no reason to think we are better at getting to the truth. 4.2. Is Meta-skepticism self-defeating? Some of my arguments suggest that philosophical reasoning in general is unreliable. But that would mean my own reasoning for that conclusion is unreliable, so we should disregard it. But then, we should also disregard the reasoning for disregarding that reasoning, etc. This paradox would confront the view that no philosophical argument provides any justification at all for anything. But that’s a silly view. The paradox doesn’t really confront the moderate view that we should lower our confidence in philosophical arguments, upon learning that philosophers are really unreliable. Moreover, not all philosophical arguments are equally unreliable. We should be especially suspicious of arguments that contradict extremely widely-shared beliefs that we initially would have ascribed very high credence to; follow a more general pattern of arguments that contradict other widely-shared, high-credence beliefs; turn on subjective, speculative, vague, or otherwise unreliable abstract judgments. These are all true of arguments for moral skepticism. They are much less true of the argument, here, for disregarding moral skepticism. 5. Conclusion Appearances can be revealing. A fundamental rule of rationality is to start from the assumption that things are pretty much the way they seem, unless and until you have specific reasons to doubt that. Sometimes, something surprising is the case. If you have a friend who has a conspiracy theory, perhaps you should listen to him — after all, sometimes there are conspiracies! But if your friend repeatedly comes up with conspiracy theories, for virtually everything he thinks about, then at some point, you should just disregard everything he says about these theories. You shouldn’t listen to all the details and try to rebut each specific argument. You should just disregard them wholesale. Philosophy is the friend with a million conspiracy theories. Kant called philosophy “the queen of the sciences,” but perhaps it were better named “the Alex Jones of the sciences.” It’s not one time that philosophers came up with the idea that maybe we’re being radically deceived. It’s every goddamned time we talk about anything. At some point, rational people should just disregard everything we have to say about our radical skeptical theories.

למרות שזה די מובן מאליו, אני חושב שאוכל להזכיר איך הרמב''ם מבין את הגמרא בעמוד י''ט בבא קמא. הרמב''ם לדעתי הכי פשוט. הגמרא אומרת, "אם יש שאלה לגבי אזהרה, זה אומר אוטומטית שאין שינוי". ואז הגמרא הופכת את זה, ואומרת שהשינוי בעצם מוטל בספק. אולם, בצד שאין ספק, חייבת להיות שאלה לגבי אזהרה. הרמב''ם מבין שזה פשוט כדי לשנות את כיוון הסיבתיות. עם זאת, הנחת היסוד עומדת. כלומר לפי הרמב''ם, שאם יש התראה, אין שינוי. לתוספות ההבנה של הגמרא היא כך. אם יש ספק לגבי שינוי, לא יכולה להיות אזהרה. כלומר, שאזהרה ושינוי הם משתנים התלויים זה בזה. אם יש אזהרה על צרורות לפי דרכן הרגילה, חייבת להיות אזהרה גם על שינוי. אם אין שינוי, לא יכולה להיות אזהרה על אזהרה כאשר צרורות מגיעות בדרכן הרגילה------כדאי להזכיר שלרב שך, יש פירוש אחר על הרמב''ם שהוא יותר מתאים לתוספות, אבל לא בדיוק. לפי רב שך, הרמב''ם מבין ששאלות האזהרה או השינוי הן בדיוק אותה שאלה. כלומר, אם אזהרה שייכת, אז יש שינוי. כלומר, נזק ברגל של שור השתנה לנזק על ידי קרן של שור, ולכן אזהרה אוטומטית חלה. אבל אם אזהרה לא חלה, זה אומר שהצרורות נשארות נגזרות של נזק על ידי רגל, ולכן שינוי לא יכול לחול. השינוי חל רק על נזק באמצעות קרן

Even though it is kind of obvious I think I might mention how the רמב’’ם understands the גמרא on page י''ט (that is brought here in my previous blog entry). The רמב’’ם I think is the simplest. The גמרא says, “If there is a question about warning, that automatically implies there is no change.” Then the גמרא turns that around, and says that change is, in fact, in doubt. However, on the side that there is no doubt, there must be a question about warning. The רמב’’ם understands that that is simply in order to change the direction of causation. However, the basic premise stands. That means according to the רמב’’ם, that if there is warning, there can be no change. There can only be doubt about one, or the other. They are variables that are exclusive. To תוספות the understanding of the גמרא is thus. If there is doubt about change, there can be no warning. That is, that warning and change are mutually dependent variables. If there is warning about צרורות according to their regular way, there must be warning about change also. If there is no change., there cannot be warning about warning when צרורות come their normal way.