wandelaar

The game has been transported to the newly created topic. And as far as I'm concerned the game has already been finished there as well. See the other topic to see what happened. As to the value of science in general, that deserves still another topic. But you will have to start it yourself. My motivation to talk about science on The Dao Bums has been steadily declining ...

Thank you! Your previous post saves me a lot time and trouble. Anyone who would have taken the trouble to actually read some more about general relativity (and not just the criticism-part that happens to accord with his own preferences) would have known that the theory of general relativity has a lot of empirical support and that Newton's laws fail on the subatomic level and in the case of very high speeds and very strong gravitational fields. So you are complete wrong but you nevertheless imagine to know better than those who do know something about it. Good luck with this topic. I am not going to waste any more time on willful ignorance.

So yes: there are still critics around, but that doesn't make general relativity into a pseudoscience. There is no part of science that is absolutely without its critics. One can never convince everyone even with the best of arguments. If that is your criterion than all of science should be considered pseudoscience. And in that way the very term "pseudoscience" loses its meaning. Lets return to your earlier Wikipedia-link to "pseudoscience". The following possible criteria for something being a pseudoscience are mentioned there: As you claim that the theory of general relativity is a pseudoscience please tell us what properties of general relativity point in the direction of general relativity being a pseudoscience.

New topic started:

@ Taoist Texts What is GOT ? Do you mean the general theory of relativity? If so we better start a special topic about that as we are getting very much off topic now...

Having (many) insights isn't enough: the elevator idea that lies at the basis of the general theory of relativity is simple enough (any high school student could have had that), but to work out the mathematics of the general theory of relativity necessitates the study of differential geometry (for curved space-time) and tensor calculus that even Einstein found difficult to learn. As the saying goes: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

In my case intuitive solutions to problems almost always come when I am doing something unrelated to the problem and am no longer consciously thinking about it. Like a bolt from the blue! So recognizing those insights for what they are isn't that difficult. I don't have to train that. What I was wondering was whether you can train to have those kind of insights more often, and that was what I thought you were hinting at...

How do you do that?

Looking through a modern book on the dynamics of complex systems I wondered whether the I Ching is basically talking about the same sort of systems. Have the two approaches already been compared?

Yes - I think that for becoming a master in some (theoretical) subject you first have to consciously and deliberately learn a great lot. So that's a necessary but not yet a sufficient condition. After you have learned the basics (which might still be a lot), you have to "forget" them. And by that I mean that all the basic knowledge you acquired has to sink into your unconscious so that you don't even realize that you are constantly and automatically using the basic knowledge you learned. But it is not the automatic application of basic knowledge alone that makes the scientific genius! The flashes of genius happen when the unconscious suddenly and without warning comes up with the inspirational idea that solves a difficult problem. That's where the miracles happen, in the unconscious. And for the rest it is lots of hard work to test and develop the flashes of inspiration.

And that's why it is not my kind of thing. But it will doubtlessly help some people in exploring their own thoughts and feelings and the situations they are in.

That's enough for most things. Nobody is supposed to be a specialist in everything. But if you want to be a master in some subject you certainly must know a great many facts by heart, in that case it will not work to stop and search for more information at every turn you make.

All kinds of things are happening inside our mind, and as our mind is also part of the world one can learn about (part of) the world by noticing what happens inside of us.

Perhaps you can see it, but apparently nobody can explain or demonstrate it. So it might just as well be a case of I Ching users collectively fooling them self. It rather looks like all that is really happening is them unconsciously picking out patterns from the mess of possible interpretations. Those patterns might very well be meaningful from a personal point of view (as the picking is done by the unconscious), but they don't seem to point to anything objective in the sense of understanding complex systems. At least not beyond what common sense and tacit knowledge could also tell us. Not one convincing example is brought forward of how the I Ching helps in seeing through the complexity of complex systems. The books and articles I found on the subject deliberately stay on the most abstract level imaginable to avoid being put to the test. Yes - the world is changing, there are ups and downs. Overdoing things can result in the opposite of what one wants. All true, and very important to know! But we don't need the I Ching for that. And the rare parapsychological tests of the I Ching that have been done only gave marginal positive or mixed results. I don't think it is useful for me to put much more time in investigating this subject. The more I study the I Ching, Chinese alchemy, Chinese astrology and the like, the clearer it becomes that that's not my cup of thee. I would do better to restrict myself to philosophical Taoism (plus meditation).

That is so - when used as an oracle. But my question is whether the I Ching contains some texts that point to an intuitive understanding of some patterns of behavior of complex systems.

Maybe we have to look in the commentaries then...?

@ LiT Yes - I know. And that's why the I Ching works regardless of the hexagram(s) thrown whenever you allow yourself to be unconsciously drawn to the one interpretation that's most useful for you. But I like to keep the discussion focused on the text of the I Ching (or the Tao Te Ching) and not on the oracle.

@ LiT http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu09.html Here we see a sensibility to the cyclical nature of things. But it remains to be seen whether more complicated dynamical patterns of complex systems were also comprehended.

Yes - it will be a big problem to have so few possible changes to work with!

I am not trying to prove or disprove the I Ching , at least not in this topic. What would be nice is when certain texts in the I Ching (or the Tao Te Ching) could be understood as referring to certain known behaviors of complex systems. In searching the internet I saw some books and articles that talk about it, but sadly they were much too nonspecific to be of any use.

Found this: https://www.systemdynamics.org/assets/conferences/2010/proceed/papers/P1169.pdf Maybe this article will help us to find more stuff comparing the vision of change in the I Ching to complex system dynamics.

@ Marblehead I think you are mostly right and generally a pleasure to discuss with. No problem here.

@ Walker In my experience/opinion you will meet a large amount of nonsense here on the Dao Bums and only time will tell you who are the more knowledgeable posters. I personally have a large list of ignored users and some Bums went on and off my list before I could finally make up my mind. There are also some Bums who are mostly right but who present their opinion in an irritating manner. When you plan to dispute anything you see in here that you think is harmfully wrong than that will give you a full time job. And you will not achieve anything useful by that because just as you are motivated to defend your point of view others will be motivated to defend theirs. It will usually end in both parties becoming more convinced of the correctness of their own position. See: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect

@ LiT That's not what I am thinking of. The I Ching as a book may contain hints about how the world as a complex system behaves. Those intuitive understandings of the dynamics of situations could be compared to the insights of modern science on the dynamics of complex systems. I didn't suggest that the I Ching itself (when used as an oracle) is or isn't a complex system. That might also be an interesting question, but that's not what I want to discuss in this topic.

Wikipedia has a nice explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system The important thing here is that the I Ching as an oracle was invented for predicting the probable development of situations where we could not oversee all the relevant factors to rationally predict the probable future development ourselves, in other words for predicting the behavior of what are now called "complex systems". So it might just be possible that the text of the I Ching contains pieces of intuitive knowledge about peculiarities of how complex systems behave. Whether the I Ching objectively predicts the future is another matter on which I do not want to talk now. The subject of this topic as far as I am concerned is only whether or not the text of the I Ching contains intuitive knowledge about peculiarities of how complex systems behave as they are now investigated and proven by modern science.