🚀 go-pugleaf

Pentcho Valev wrote:
> http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17.html#seventeen
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."

This text is particularly relevant: "The Party intellectual knows in
which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that
he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink
he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process
has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient
precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with
it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt":

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/Reciprocity/index.html
John Norton: "Is Special Relativity Paradoxical?....Now this is a
serious problem. Either the car can or cannot be trapped fully within
the garage, but not both. (Or so it would seem.)
The garage attendant says:
There are two events:
"Left door shut": I closed the left door before the car struck it.
"Right door shut": I closed the right door after the car passed.
And these events happened at the same time.
Therefore the car was fully enclosed.
The car driver says:
"There are two events.
"Left door shut": You closed the left door before the car struck it.
"Right door shut": You closed the right door after the car passed.
But these events did not happened at the same time.
You closed the left door first.
Then--later--you closed the right door AFTER THE FRONT OF THE CAR HAD
ALREADY BURST THROUGH THE CLOSED LEFT DOOR.
Therefore the car was never fully enclosed......
Therefore there is no observer independent fact as to whether the car
was ever fully enclosed in the garage."

Note that John Norton introduces BURSTING THROUGH THE CLOSED LEFT DOOR
(what if the door is strong enough?) which is only valid for the car
driver, not for the garage attendant. Note also that Philosopher John
Norton is the cleverest Einsteinian:

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17.html#seventeen
George Orwell: "It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners
of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is
a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the
best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest
from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the
understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more intelligent, the
less sane."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com