infinite empiricism vs one assumption

Andre, if someone comes to you for a hair cut, you put them in the chair, say close your eyes, make noise with your scissors but never cut a strand of hair and then say: look beautiful YES! most elegant haircut you have ever had. then you are an alchemist. (successful if they pay and come back for more!).

if you cut hair people will like the result or not. sure you should advertise. you have every right to do so.

is there a universal law for good haircuts though?

don't think so. beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

this is my point. i can not tell you what is beautiful to you. that is your belief. i can though encourage you to understand your process of believing itself and potentially from your greater understanding of the process you might change your beliefs.

maybe not though. because belief is ultimately an intangible and ultimately self recursive right back to the moment that you first began to believe what the word 'me' or 'I' or 'it' means.....this is how complicated that process actually is. everything in our head (stored in language) is an assumption at some level.

everything needs to be questioned. and questioning does not mean rejecting full stop. questioning means shifting perspective to see from another angle. just as you do when you walk around a head of hair and what you see directly is never what your client sees in the mirror. and how often do they agree with you on some assessment of two different things?

there is a reason that someone came up with the very idea of Burqua to begin with this is what needs to be questioned to produce real change. i.e. the reason for the very idea. i.e. something at a much deeper level. not the Burqua itself or the system to put it to use.

Once the Burqua is eliminated (if so) something else will take its place if the process of belief is not more closely understood.

This is where Harris says he wants to make a difference but not where his efforts are directing attention.

when Bruce says that he is questioning whether science is more than empiricism. i would say that this is what science is: infinite empiricism questioning every answer and every assumption that led to any answer.

and the practice that replaces infinite empiricism with an end no matter where that end/assumption lies in the explanation is called religion/dogmatism.