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From: Jasper
Date: 8/28/03
Time: 5:35:01 PM
Remote Name: 68.73.59.71
When I was studying astronomy as s kid I had a hard time understanding how anyone could figure out things like the obit of planets and the size of stars millions of miles away. The flat earth theory seemed perfectly reasonable and it was evident that the sun and moon came up in one place and went down in another.
I needed more evidence.
Then I got a handle on gravity and geography. When I looked at the globe in my elementary school Science class it suddenly made sense to me how Columbus’ discovery of the new world PROVED that the Earth was a sphere (or close to it). Now I could understand how astronomers knew that all of the planets and their moons in our solar system revolved around the sun.
Contrary to what our limited perspective often tells us is true in any attempt to answer big questions, proof can seldom be found in one big leap. You need lots of little things – a pattern of evidence – that lead to only one rational conclusion. In model making you do this all the time. If you are right, the model fits together perfectly. If you are wrong, it doesn’t.
There is no model you can make for O.J. Simpson’s guilt because too many essential pieces don’t fit. You can do a lot better with Kato, Shipp or Fuhrman. Where you don’t have facts you have to speculate and see if future evidence matches your speculation. If it matches enough times and in all of the right times and places you have proof.
Obviously I think that the best model of reality can be made with the collaboration of Mark Fuhrman Brad Roberts, Faye Resnick, Ron Shipp and Denise Brown. That’s what I think I have.
I included The Science of Reason chapter in Iago to show that you can use the same methodology astronomers use to prove some things that can’t be demonstrated by a single item of evidence. If you have enough facts to work with, you can demonstrate that one answer to a question is more likely to be true than another. If you have ALL of the relevant facts you can prove it as surely as you can prove who the Truth-tellers and the Lairs are in the “Supposition Indiana” exercise.
The hard part is getting the facts right. I think we have done a good job and I am glad to see so many fellow seekers of truth to help us do better. What do you think? –Jasper