> What if my belief has always defaulted on silence, no thought?
Well, if you haven't thought about something, you presumably don't believe it? (Not to be confused with believing the negation, which you presumably also wouldn't believe in that case.)
> This conversation has become too overgeneralized to say anything useful aside from the ways the mind simplifies, reduces, and applies pattern derived from observation.
Well, feel free to be more specific?
> I don't understand the strong reaction in 'knowing'. I always feel like I have to know everything all at once, in order to truly suggest that I know anything, and since I can not know everything, I only have a very vague guess of knowing some things, which are continually subject to the same analytic deconstruction and reconstruction.
I think I would agree. That's why I consider the question of knowledge (in the sense of being ultimately sure about the truth of something) ultimately uninteresting. What actually matters is what you believe (that is, what you act on) because you cannot avoid interacting with the world, and you will do so based on you beliefs, whether they reflect ultimate truth or not.
> Ideas are broken down and rebuilt over and over and not a single one of them is a complete picture. That's what I observe in my mind and in dialogue outside of my mind. I don't have to believe anything about it because it's a direct observation.
Well, I think that that's questionable. On the one hand, semantically, considering something you observed directly to be true still is a belief, even if a well-founded one. One can believe things by blind faith or due to direct observation, or for many other reasons, some good, some bad. On the other hand, I would be cautious with the term "direct observation": There is a ton of indirection between your brain thinking a thought and the "reality" outside the brain causing the thought, and conceptually there isn't really all that much difference between observing another brain by means of that brain causing the body it's in to create sound waves, causing your eardrum to vibrate, causing nerve signals in your brain, and the same with an MRI machine observing the same brain and feeding its images through your eyes into your brain, both are ultimately pretty indirect, even if one of the scenarios uses only natural machinery to achieve the result, so artificial machinery is not necessarily any worse at producing a reliable perception of the world than natural bodies, and you have to believe quite a few things in both cases, be it about larynxes, air, sound waves, and ears, or about MRI machines, light, and retinas.
> It just comes down to how angry, 'strong', assertive, or authoritative people sound, and I find that ridiculous.
I am not quite sure what you are trying to say with that, but I guess that science is the best way we know that avoids just that as far as possible by making it as easy as possible for anyone to reproduce an observation (at least that's the ideal ...).
> It's like being human is a stupid joke.
Well, from some perspective, maybe? I guess the solution is to adopt a different perspective? Like: Well, yes, ultimate knowledge seems to be unattainable--but why does that matter? It's a philosophical curiosity, interesting to think about, but ultimately it doesn't prevent you from improving your model of the world and interacting with the world. Your model predicts that the chair you sit on will hold you up, and it does, you don't get hurt and can sit comfortably--does it matter whether the existence of the chair is some ultimate truth or maybe "just" an illusion?
I already agree with you and I have from the start. I have no interest in talking, because it is obvious that I can not communicate effectively and fluidly, on the internet. Thank you for the conversation, but this is the same circle of thought as it has always been, and it never seems to change.
Well, if you haven't thought about something, you presumably don't believe it? (Not to be confused with believing the negation, which you presumably also wouldn't believe in that case.)
> This conversation has become too overgeneralized to say anything useful aside from the ways the mind simplifies, reduces, and applies pattern derived from observation.
Well, feel free to be more specific?
> I don't understand the strong reaction in 'knowing'. I always feel like I have to know everything all at once, in order to truly suggest that I know anything, and since I can not know everything, I only have a very vague guess of knowing some things, which are continually subject to the same analytic deconstruction and reconstruction.
I think I would agree. That's why I consider the question of knowledge (in the sense of being ultimately sure about the truth of something) ultimately uninteresting. What actually matters is what you believe (that is, what you act on) because you cannot avoid interacting with the world, and you will do so based on you beliefs, whether they reflect ultimate truth or not.
> Ideas are broken down and rebuilt over and over and not a single one of them is a complete picture. That's what I observe in my mind and in dialogue outside of my mind. I don't have to believe anything about it because it's a direct observation.
Well, I think that that's questionable. On the one hand, semantically, considering something you observed directly to be true still is a belief, even if a well-founded one. One can believe things by blind faith or due to direct observation, or for many other reasons, some good, some bad. On the other hand, I would be cautious with the term "direct observation": There is a ton of indirection between your brain thinking a thought and the "reality" outside the brain causing the thought, and conceptually there isn't really all that much difference between observing another brain by means of that brain causing the body it's in to create sound waves, causing your eardrum to vibrate, causing nerve signals in your brain, and the same with an MRI machine observing the same brain and feeding its images through your eyes into your brain, both are ultimately pretty indirect, even if one of the scenarios uses only natural machinery to achieve the result, so artificial machinery is not necessarily any worse at producing a reliable perception of the world than natural bodies, and you have to believe quite a few things in both cases, be it about larynxes, air, sound waves, and ears, or about MRI machines, light, and retinas.
> It just comes down to how angry, 'strong', assertive, or authoritative people sound, and I find that ridiculous.
I am not quite sure what you are trying to say with that, but I guess that science is the best way we know that avoids just that as far as possible by making it as easy as possible for anyone to reproduce an observation (at least that's the ideal ...).
> It's like being human is a stupid joke.
Well, from some perspective, maybe? I guess the solution is to adopt a different perspective? Like: Well, yes, ultimate knowledge seems to be unattainable--but why does that matter? It's a philosophical curiosity, interesting to think about, but ultimately it doesn't prevent you from improving your model of the world and interacting with the world. Your model predicts that the chair you sit on will hold you up, and it does, you don't get hurt and can sit comfortably--does it matter whether the existence of the chair is some ultimate truth or maybe "just" an illusion?