The Nature Of Man - The UT Instinct - Appendix 3

Appendix 4 - Acquisition of Knowledge >>

The Nature Of Man - The UT Instinct

Appendix 3

The Red Marbles Scenario

If this is your first visit to this site please read the Glossary
Introduction
Marbles are small round glassy objects which children use to roll on the ground in a game. If you do not understand what marbles they are just replace the object red marble with red shoes, red balloons, or red elephants!
Start
In both the UT Instinct documentation, and the separate Articles, on this site, I use examples to explain the practicle side of my theories but realise that I could have included a lot more, and varied, examples. I chose not to do so because I realise that for those who will not change their opinions no amount of examples will ever suffice to make them reconsider their blindly held beliefs. This site is not for those people. Elsewhere I have given the example of the 'Rain Is Dry Scenario' which partly explains how most people think.
It just occurred to me today (17th November 2006) that there is a much simpler scenario to explain the blind stubborn attitude which most people have, and dearly hold, as regards their beliefs - not just religion but that man is rational etc.
The Red Marble Scenario
Imagine a twelve year old child standing in front of a huge black plastic bin full of marbles. The bin holds one million marbles. There is a lid on the bin so no one can see into the bin. There is also a small hole in the lid so that a person can put their hand in to take out a single marble.
The child is unquestionably certain that all the marbles in the bin are red. There is no evidence that all the marbles are red and yet that is what the child stubbornly believes.
I, being a philosopher and seeker of truth, decide to check whether all the marbles are red or not. I put my hand in to the hole in the lid and take out a marble. The marble is Blue! I point out to the child that the marble I took out is not red but is blue. The truth about ALL the marbles being red is demonstrated to be incorrect. End of story? . . . Yes?
No! No! No! No! . . . . . . did I say No!
The child then says - ok this marble, the ONE marble which I happened to take out of the bin, is blue but all the other marbles in the bin are red! I haven't put any doubt in the mind of the child. So I put my hand into the bin and take out another marble - it is Yellow! What does the child say then? Does the child begin to question the previous certainty? - No! The child still believes that All the other marbles in the bin are red!
It so happens that the next marble I take out IS red and the child then sees this as vindicating its belief that the rest of the marbles are red. And so on it goes. Every marble which is not red is seen as a single incident totally separate from all the other non-red marbles, and yet it will see the few times when the marble happens to be red as being a collective indication of the validity of its belief that all the marbles are red.
Reality
The truth of the matter is that no matter how many marbles I take out of the bin the child will say that the REST of the marbles are red. The only way to persuade the child that not 'all the rest of the marbles are red' would be to take out EVERY marble from the bin.
Truly, this is HOW humans think. They want to believe that humans are rational. So if I take an example and demonstrate that in that example humans were behaving irrationally they will just say that in that particular case they may have been acting irrationally but that overall humans are rational. The fact is that they do NOT want to know that their previously held beliefs may not be correct.
The fact is that there are many out in 'human land' who will never be able to accept simple truth even if I gave one million examples, or one hundred million, or even one hundred million billion examples.
I hope there are a few of you out there who aren't afraid of truth. To you I say hello! and welcome. Hopefully you will find this site very interesting.

If you want to contact me to discuss, or to get me to clarify, a specific point, please only do so AFTER reading the whole section about the UT Instinct. Thank you.

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Last Update : 3rd October 2009

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