Socially productive tomfoolery

If only someone out there could produce a series of essays that exemplify the position(s) of a certain group of 'backwards' thinking individuals in such a way as to 'trick' those individuals into endorsing the fraudulent dissertations. Then, when the moment is ripe, the wool is pulled from over their eyes so they may see clearly the misdirection of their thinking. No, those essays are nowhere to be found on this blog, even though I must concede that my mortal fallibility has led me to think backwards at times, even when I feel as though my thoughts point in the right direction. Besides, why would I trick y'all? It is a certain more politically influential group I have in mind...

Yahoo! News - Physicist Rethinks Theory on Black Holes

Fine, we'll just have to find other ways to travel to other universes (free will anyone?).

Yahoo! News - Physicist Rethinks Theory on Black Holes

Epistemology

It has come to my attention not-so-recently that there are many different intellectual pursuits all claiming to come under the heading of epistemology.  Below is a list of these pursuits.  I bet you can't guess which one I endorse...

1.   Epistemology is the study of how we make proper choices when it comes time to commit the act of belief. We could call epistemology in this sense the 'ethics of belief':  it attends to the 'should believes' and 'should rejects' of the world of ideas or propositions considered from some ethical ground. 
2.   Epistemology is the study of the limits of our knowledge or when we can say that we legitimately know something.  While loosely related to (1),  here we are more concerned with objectively valid criterions for determining the knowledge status of some bit of proposed knowledge as well as criterions for the original sources of legitimate knowledge. 
3. Epistemology is the study of knowledge considered as a real physical phenomenon, and understood in terms of the isomorphic relationship between the knowledge structure itself and the 'world' a part of which it represents.  Here we do not have a pre-occupation with certainty, justification, or legitimate sources, as it is conceded that they inspire only illusory confidence in our use of knowledge.  This account of epistemology is  concerned with the formation and selection of better (or more verisilimar) knowledge structures: it is an entirely progressive affair that does not even maintain that we 'know what we are doing' or that we 'know what we are talking about', nor that we ever could  know these things.

Pointless post

I told you...