Delusions appear to be necessary for happiness.

The rule: No man should be without delusions since they appear necessary to our happiness as realities.

Humanity’s struggle is invisible. A greater number of people believe in a magic universe. Man is unable to make fundamental corrections. The masses continue to believe that anything is possible. It allows them to defer to authority and opt for idealized solutions. Delusion and ignorance are inextricable, the former insuring the latter, both incompatible with integrity and effective human function. Myth and fantasy span the spectrum across religious, political, economic, social, and scientific fields. When we begin to recognize the fundamental nature of beliefs, maybe the unfounded ideas and rules will become aware of nature's principles that are being ignored and violated.

One  insidious aspect of a cultural myth is that, once accepted, there is a desperate, inborn drive to protect and maintain them. They cause people to avoid and reject the very information necessary for insight, resulting in abysmal ignorance in the area of the belief. A fantasy is a thought about a scenario an individual knows is untrue, at least on a deeper level, but likes the personal gratification it brings.Within our own society, a large percentage of the population realizes that most of our cherished ideas and premises are untrue, but support them, never the less. The acceptance of our cultural fantasies range from grudged and marginal tolerance to blind, fanatic and evangelistic faith. For a large segment of the world's human population, cultural myths and fantasies constitute psychosis, a predominant immersion in belief, where reality is denied and the ability to distinguish the real from the fantasy is lost. Systems are so corrupt that one is required to lie in order to live within them, blunting individual integrity and seriously compromising the ability of systems to even be useful. Governmental coercion results in our obeying laws that are counter to human effectiveness and forces our complicity in the dissemination of propaganda and in the perpetuation of diverse disorder.

In every society, there are cultural imperatives to lie. You are strongly pressured to accept and believe false information. You are strongly dissuaded from questioning the beliefs of others or the system.You are pressured to lie to your children, to the authorities, to your associates and, worst of all, to yourself. You are lied to by your parents, your peers, your authorities, your institutions and, of course, the media. You are constantly bombarded and live your life immersed in lies. It is a testament to man that living in a quagmire, he still has the capacity to see the realities which lie all but hidden among the weeds of cultural delusion.

An unspoken code mandates that you support the delusions of others, at least to the degree that you do not pose a serious threat to them. Supporting one another's delusions is socially gracious or considerate.You are discouraged from talking about anything that will illuminate a flaw in another's belief. Punishment of your transgression is swift from the person whose cherished belief is threatened and whom you gain their attention.

People believe that society's fantasies are harmless, if not actually helpful. Such thinking creates a safe haven for many seemingly innocuous myths and fantasy systems, lessening the pressure to discard them. Many of our most cherished fantasies have not only wide-spread acceptance on this basis but attract a large percentage of the population as active supporters. Popular support tends to discourage open questioning and criticism of delusional material and the production of factual material to the contrary. Few buck the rushing and angry waters of popular opinion, especially when it is whipped to a maelstrom by unseen but powerful and virulent forces within the a society. 

The powerful come to the conclusion that mankind should be allowed to live in an unstated context of conventional thought that obscures or avoids acknowledging one’s true world, one's relations in the world, and one's choices. The choice of self-deception allows one to avoid the truth of oneself to the world as it would lead to feelings of dread, guilt and anxiety. Without any delusion, man becomes depressed. It is a catch 22 where the depressed ones may give the clearest observation to fairness but since life is not fair, seeking fairness may ultimately end in depression.

From alchemists to chemical science

There was a German who tried to distill gold from urine in 1675. He converted urine into paste and then into a translucent waxy substance. No gold... but the substance glowed! When exposed to air, it burst into flame. And that is the just of it on how man came to distinguish chemical science (phosphorus) from alchemists (no gold).

No herd of humans would consider themselves inferior to another herd

There exists no herd or nation of humans so unfortunate as to think itself inferior to the rest of humans and few are even willing to put up with the claim to equality. Their excellent is first in their own opinion, and give others consideration only when they approach their own condition. Any herd or nation is vain of the personal character, or of the learning, of a few of its members; another, of its policy, its wealth, its tradesmen, its gardens, and its buildings; and they who have nothing to boast, are vain, because they are ignorant. The Russians, before the reign of Peter the Great, thought themselves possessed of every national honor, and held the dumb nations, (bestowed on their western neighbors of Europe), in a proportional degree of contempt. China's map of the world was a square plate, the greater part of which was occupied by the provinces of this great empire, leaving on its skirts a few obscure corners, into which the wretched remainder of humans were supposed to be driven. 'If you have not the use of our letters, nor the knowledge of our books,' said the learned Chinese to the European missionary, 'what literature, or what science, can you have?

Feynman's Cargo Cult Science perspective

Feyman said, "In the South Seas, there is a cargo cult of people. During the war, they saw airplanes land and many good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas-he's the controller-and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they are missing something essential, because the planes don't land. It would be difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science." Feynman was a Nobel Peace Prize winner based on how spin of atoms may exist in any path that met 'the Feynman rules', which led to a Bell Curve rating of where all electron paths can exist. Over my lifetime it has become my humble opinion that Feynman's true genius is in the fact that he realized just how difficult it would be to explain the necessary changes to these Islanders. Considering every decision they previously made before they attempted this effort was a result of human emotion and every desire from human envy, any opposing view to enlighten any group of people after giving so much... is an opposition to their cause that will merely strengthen and harden their resolve to stay the course.

Claude Shannon and Information Theory

Claude Shannon was merely trying to figure out how much information could transfer over a phone line, it lead to the world we live in today. Shannon's measure of randomness is the same function as Boltzmann entropy! His error-correction codes allow computers to operate! His entropy is a thermodynamic entropy as well as information entropy. This led to understanding the relationship among entropy, energy and information, which led to understanding how computer and humans think. The entropic arrow of time of an irreversible process applies whether informational or physical! It killed Maxwell's demon of perpetual motion when it consumed thermodynamics! Everything, even us, all matter and energy is subject to the law of information! Schrodinger's cat is out of the bag! The essential function of living beings is the consumption, processing, preservation and duplication of information! Information is responsible for all life on Earth! It led to understanding the mysterious molecule DNA, whose sole purpose is to store information, protect it from dissipation and duplicate it when necessary! Being alive is simply flouting entropy over a short period by preserving information. You can make a computer out of DNA, it's all linked! Communications is tied to chance where true information is unpredicatble, random events. The essence of a message is it's improbability, where entropy increases just as it does within the physics of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Information theory consumed thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is a special case of information theory.

Life is like poker, poker is like war in free will and determisism

5000 years of history: http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf Life is like poker. The cards dealt to you represents determinism but the way you play your hand is free will. Waterloo had a good poker lesson: During the battle of Waterloo, the French secured Napoleon's favored position between Wellington's Allied army (north-west) and Blucher's Prussian (north-east). Napoleon considered the Prussians the greater threat and attacked their outposts. He sent the French army's left wing, commanded by Marshal Ney, to secure the crossroads before Wellington could gather his army. Once secured, Ney would swing east and reinforce Napoleon. Although Coalition members were well informed of Napoleon's movements, Wellington failed to react to the news of the outbreak of hostilities in a timely manner. Marshal Ney encountered a small number of Allied troops but had previously experienced Wellington's skill at concealing his strength. Ney overestimated the forces opposing him, fought cautiously, and failed to capture the crossroads. By the middle afternoon Wellington took personal command of the Allied forces. Allied troops continued to converge on the crossroads and reinforce its position throughout the day. At that time, Wellington's Allied forces were able to advance and drive the French back.

Doctors and probability

If a cancer test is 95% accurate and 1,0000 people are administered the test, then per the accuracy there are 50 false positives. However, ask your doctor the probability of his patient who tested positive having cancer and he will more than likely confuse the accuracy of the test with the probability and tell you there is a 95% chance. However, mathematically you have 1 positive and 50 false positives. Therefore, in fact, the probability of any given person that tests positive in that sample of actually having cancer is 1/51. Then again, I guess scaring the hell out of 50 people for every one the doctor needs to treat can be more profitable! Kevin's Rebutal: Actually you do have two flaws in your numbers there isn’t a number representing the actual number true positives (you assumed 1000:1, I think) and the 5% includes both false positives and false negatives. The probability of someone testing positive equals the probability of the person actually having cancer and the probability of a person receiving a false positive. If the probability of a person in 1,000 people is 1000:1 and all inaccurate tests come back as false positives then your statement below is correct that there is only 1 true positive for every 51 positives. Total Positive Results = TP/1000 + FP/50 Another thing to think about is the probability that the true positive could fall in the in accurate group and result in a false negative. The 95% accuracy is a reflection of some sample size. If you consider 95 false positives out of 100 tested you have 5 or 950 of 1000 you have 50 to reflect the accuracy. There are no false negatives in the sample size, as doctors would not call people up who passed the test, merely the ones that failed or showed positive results to cancer. So, with 50 out of 1000 people testing a false positive being called in with the one person that actually has it, you have 51 people being informed that they tested positive. Of the 51, 50 are known to have shown positive incorrectly, which is why the test is rated 95% accurate. In any case, you and John make my point, human nature is to not understand probability. Even with simple math and an understandable description, John found 17 of 19 and 1 of 19, and you consider the fact that the doctor should somehow consider calling 50 people at random from the 950 people who showed no cancer to let them know the test may not have worked on them. Popper would have questioned such a theory. As per you last sentence, from the accuracy of the test, you use one of a sample population to find the accuracy. The total positive results are a default in the math, not an unknown. It makes sense that you can simply count the results. You are more correct than the doctors normally are… Tranquility grows in the absence of praise or blame but remains indirectly proportional to the need. --Nick Gilliland