From: Randall Parker 

In , the sagacious bobcomer{at}mindspring.com
Robert Comer perspicated:
>  Or, to put it another way, who are these people who are going around
> > with such certainty proclaiming the nonexistence or the impotence of the
> > rational mind?
> Me for one. 

So the green revolution, the development of the car, mass manufacturing,
airplanes, transistors, antibiotic, and all the rest aren't a demonstration
of the efficacy of at least some human minds?

> >What exactly are they using to come to that conclusion?
>
> Simple -- humanities ability to get beyond absolute certainties in the past
> and extrapolating that ability into the future.

But that is itself using a belief that one _knows_ facts about the past.
You see my point? The people who argue that there is evidence to
demonstrate how unsure everything is have to be sure about their evidence
in order to even bother to make the argument (or they can be totally nuts).

In other words, in order to reject some model or view previously held there
have to be some new facts that you use as part of the disproof.

> I 'spose you would tell me that there is absolutely no way to faster than
> the speed of light.

I take relativity and such as a subset of the real set of physical laws. So
I'm unwilling to state that.

>Relativity, being an approximation (which may be an
> incorrect approximation) like you suggest above, says that that is indeed
> "impossible" in normal space/time.

But if some of the string theories about other dimensions are true maybe it
would be possible to somewhere else in the galaxy in a big hurry. Or at
least get to a new universe or something equally strange.

>However, even given that approximation,
> there's no "rule" against changing space/time itself to
achieve an apparent
> speed faster than light. (The key is gravity -- once we can truly manipulate
> that, relativity goes by the wayside when determining how fast we can go.)

Is the key gravity? How can you be certain of that? 

>
> > Well, who's going to tell me I'm wrong and be certain about it?
>
> I can say your wrong with just as much certainty as you can muster thinking
> you're right. 

How can you be certain that you can muster as much certainty about that
position as I can about mine?

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