From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Apr 16 2003 - 20:31:00 MDT
Brian Booth wrote
> > As I see it, those who go against the majority because
> > they believe it is true
Well! I should HOPE that this would be the case! ;-)
> > in fact may be more America supportive than anti-American
> > because stimulus and criticism creates growth where continuous
> > agreement and acceptance results in stagnation and apathy.
It's a component of what is needed, to be sure. In fact, the
*potential* for criticism is a crucial factor in Pan Critical
Rationalism (see the Extropy site for pointers to the fundamental
epistemology Extropians usually endorse).
But, as Ron H. said, criticism is not *necessarily* productive;
we could not, for example, really bolster the heliocentric theory
by determinedly sitting down and making up a lot of fanciful
alternatives.
But besides that, and more importantly, actual learning could
be impaired by excessive rumination on unlikely hypotheses (not
that very many people, mind you, actually engage in this!).
We would do the language a disservice to confuse "pro-American"
(in the current sense of an adjective describing U.S. foreign
policy) and "anti-American". The remarkable and persistent
truth appears to be that many of us *predictably* come down
one way or the other on almost issues and in almost all instances.
Lee
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