Good Morning Digital Neighbors! A little later posting for the Padre today, the cool weather made a warm bed a bit too cozy to leave. More excuses! More excuses than Carter's Little Liver Pills as Momma used to say. 😉 How about another quote or two for your Wednesday ruminations? I am not aware of who Alfred Binet is or was but he has some interesting quotes. Let's suit up and dive in!
The intelligence of an individual is not a fixed quantity. - Alfred Binet
One can grow and decrease in their personal possession and application of discernible intelligence. I think one of the real fallacies individuals embrace is the mistaken idea that intelligence in one area indicates an overall sense of brilliance and understanding in all topics. It gives rise to the cult of experts who might be knowledgeable and well spoken in one area of life but are unable to apply the same depth of understanding in other areas.
Expert is too often more of a shield than a designation of competency. Much like victims, experts are another class of people who the rest of us ought to defer to with the utmost respect and lack of question or criticism. Nothing is above question or criticism. Victims do not get a magic pass (though many expect one and often demand one) and experts do not get to be free of questions or criticism in their respected field. Contrary to the current gospel of compulsive compliance sold to us by the Enemedia and espoused by the Establishment, one need not be an expert to ask intelligent questions or raise doubts. Experts of haughty malice and victims of unquestionable experience are a blight on modern discourse. They shut down conversations and demand submission to their reality. Wrong think is punishable by exile or extermination.
I wish that one would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved [by large studies]; the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion.
An interesting quote since it just raises more questions rather than providing answers. A survey of 10,000 while being very board may not be any more useful or accurate that a survey sampling only a handful of people. I am not sure it is an illusion so much as not a given. Bigger studies do not yield bigger truths, just more questions and varied hypothesis. Humility before knowledge is always a good posture to adopt. It doesn't mean we have to be timid in looking at the data, just not presumptuous and erroneously assume it is conclusive. Today's established fact might be tomorrow's mistaken and discarded truth. We all act in the light of tentative certitude when it comes to the realm of "facts".
Happy Wednesday Digital Neighbors!
Autumn Texas barn
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
