Why do I need to contemplate theory when I can just field-test it?

[benny]

Topic. Can't I just determine if something is true by going out and putting it into practice? The feedback I get from reality will tell me if it has legs.

[Hello from Russia]

There is a room for both for sure

[benny]

@Hello from Russia What would you say spurs you to contemplate something you read? I find my mind will automatically begin to tie what I read to previous knowledge I have, and if I detect BS, my mind will automatically send up warning signals. I'm having difficulty finding the merit in reading for a while and then just contemplating for the sake of contemplating.

[Leo Gura]

Your time and energy is limited. You can only field test a tiny percentage of everything. You can figure many things out through contemplation and save yourself time and painful mistakes.

To act without contemplation is to be an animal.

[How to be wise]

@Leo Gura You’re going to be 36 soon. How does it feel to approach middle age?

[Origins]

@benny to add to what Leo said, imagine you’ve got a perfect model of yourself that you can seamlessly contemplate in your mind, you can skip over a lot of experience that way allowing you to just move to those experiences that are more suited to you. This starts and ends with field testing of course, however you should remember to exhaust your capacities for simulation which comes after you’ve had an experience. That’s where the gems of wisdom come that no one else sees as they’re too busy repeating the same uncreative patterns they did yesterday.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Origins

[Megan Alecia]

Without contemplation life is but a dream which you're without a doubt unconscious of, and a useless one at that. 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Megan Alecia
Well basically the unexamined life is not worth living... just made it more dramatic lol

[At awe]

@benny Can we trust our observations though? Are we qualified to judge?

[Leo Gura]

If you are so hot on field-testing everything. You can start by field-testing a dog turd.

The rest of us will contemplate

[Hello from Russia]

@benny sounds like you have difficulties with intention. Why do you contemplate anyway? What are your motivations? In practice answers to these questions will give you a direction what to do next. Maybe they will tell you to contemplate more. Or they might tell you to go test this stuff in fields . Or even quit the contemplation altogether because it's not worthwhile of a subject to investigate

[benny]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

If you are so hot on field-testing everything. You can start by field-testing a dog turd.

The rest of us will contemplate

@Leo Gura I see your point, but that also highlights my own. I don't need to sit down and consciously reflect on whether or not I should eat dog shit. That's self-evident. I can see the merit of contemplating theory when the answers aren't immediately obvious, and sometimes I do this. But I find that I'm able to spend most of my time studying theory and implementing things without spending too much time in deep reflection. Perhaps that's limiting my results, I don't know.

[benny]

13 minutes ago, At awe said:

@benny Can we trust our observations though? Are we qualified to judge?

@At awe My benchmark is that if I'm moving closer to producing desired results, I'm on the right track.

 

[Danioover9000]

@Origins

5 minutes ago, Origins said:

@benny to add to what Leo said, imagine you’ve got a perfect model of yourself that you can seamlessly contemplate in your mind, you can skip over a lot of experience that way allowing you to just move to those experiences that are more suited to you. This starts and ends with field testing of course, however you should remember to exhaust your capacities for simulation which comes after you’ve had an experience. That’s where the gems of wisdom come that no one else sees as they’re too busy repeating the same uncreative patterns they did yesterday.

   This is why visualization of different contexts, and working on experiences in detail and increasing the scope, is so important. I've found that doing both contemplation and visualization work very effective, before committing to a craft big time, you can trouble-shoot many times beforehand. Only contemplating  logically, for me, tends to put me more in boredom. Only visualizing, while it really works on imagination, can be too weird and random for me without knowing he context. Doing a bit of both helps a lot.

[Origins]

@benny Think of the mic as your brain, you can only field test what your mic is designed to pick up, secondly, you'll have to rely on the small pocket of reality that actually taps against you the mic. If you want to produce sound that is more than just a reflection of what's directly coming into the mic and out the speakers, something creative, you'll need an imagination. Testing, imagination and simulation go hand in hand. Testing is where we derive ground principles, imagination is where we abstract out and simulation is where we compare those abstractions with initial testing which may or may not be able to be produced.

Artist music production and non-fiction in general is a great example of the double edged sword of both testing and imagination. There are worlds that exist that don't exist which we first need an imagination for, there are worlds that exist which we don't need to test the implications for just have an imagination for, there are worlds that exist which exist which we can see but have not experienced nor derive merely through imagination that we require testing for.

The latter is purely the outcome of pattern recognition. How many rocks do you need to turn over to figure out that underneath is just dirt and no bugs? What bugs are likely there if there are some? Is it just going to be the same bugs underneath the previous rock if there were some? And if you've never experienced bugs or the potential living habitat of flying insects is it possible that you might misconstrue the living space of underneath a rock as that of a butterfly, a bee or a wasp? You could analyse the structural constituents of a bug to conclude that it would be far too unsafe for most flying insects, but what's this? You've found a queen of an ants nest underneath a rock. But that's merely because you haven't noticed that the rock itself was actually thrown on top of the ants nest a little earlier before. Be aware of assumptions, generalisations and a lack of differentiation. That's one of the pitfalls of simulation, a lack of imagination (aka simulation) for these things.

Field testing only gets us so far... Obviously. A monkey can field test. It can't interpret or extrapolate on results though. Field testers need imagination to know they're not being imaginative enough when examining life, its the same as being aware enough that you're not being aware enough to know that you should follow the ant trail of seeking conclusions that lead you to higher awareness.

Thanks @Danioover9000

Testing, testing, mic... Check... 1, 2... Feedback from reality please!

Edited February 6, 2021 by Origins

[Leo Gura]

54 minutes ago, benny said:

That's self-evident.

Nothing in self-evident!

And I mean that in two ways

[Preety_India]

The problem is not everything can be field tested.

How can you field test genocide? 

 

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Preety_India

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

How can you field test genocide? 

China's giving it a solid go

[Nahm]

3 hours ago, benny said:

Can't I just determine if something is true by going out and putting it into practice? The feedback I get from reality will tell me if it has legs.

Can you give a few examples? 

[benny]

27 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Nothing in self-evident!

And I mean that in two ways

@Leo Gura I call BS on that. Even an infant knows not to walk off the edge of steep cliff.

[Origins]

@benny See right now you're not differentiating the fact that perception, instinct, thinking and awareness are entirely different things.

Can you please elaborate on what you think an infants sense of knowing is?

Infants don't think "that's just obvious" nor do birds solely walk on the ground or purely land animals approach water and say "its self-evident I'm not meant for water (/ only meant to walk on the ground)" (aka the traditional domesticated cat). Field testing has multiple components, you have to test and then you have to infer. If you're inferring the wrong things from accurate measurements how useful are  the accurate measurements? If I correctly organise the right medication in the precise way but give it to the wrong patient, they'll die (depending on lethality relative to their makeup). The same too for scientific journals when there's accurate measurements but incorrect inferences. 

Sir, if our best scientists struggle with field testing and inferences together and you're struggling with your own inferences here I think you ought to take a step back and examine things a little more reflectively, minus the assumptions or a need to be right outside of trying to see things clearly (outside of the psychological structures of the mind that try to make a personal endeavour out of this thus having reality masked from them more than they otherwise would).

Edited February 6, 2021 by Origins