<p>"which i should preface by saying i'm not a cross dresser"</p>
<p>Oh, I beg to differ. I beg to differ.</p>
<p>hahaha if i didn't know you i'd say you were following me around on the forums trying to your best to destroy my self esteem. too bad we're too cool for that kinda childish behavior :-P</p>
<p>I'd've assumed that GuitarMan was simply begging to differ in cross-dressing habits :-P</p>
<p>Well, if I didn't know you, I wouldn't be following you around on the forums trying my best to destroy your self-esteem anyway :p</p>
<p>LOTR rocks</p>
<p>Was this your box essay or are you just telling us? lol</p>
<p>Hey lizzardfire, were you diagnosed with such a learning disability? And which one do you suspect that you have? I can't visualize 3-D objects in my head either (a great frustration), but paradoxically, most students with the learning disability I was diagnosed with have a superior ability to visualize in 3-D. Sucks for me. I know. =(</p>
<p>And wow to all of you, Caltech students aren't as left-brained as I previously thought.</p>
<p>I responded in PM</p>
<p>How can you not visualize 3D objects in your mind? That sounds weird...</p>
<p>I don't know, it doesn't seem weird to me. Basically I can't close my eyes and picture things in my head that I have seen. I can't picture my mother's face if I'm not looking at her or a picture or something. I can kinda get around it for simple objects because I can remember how they are constructed and "build" them in my mind. The closest I ever get to actually picturing things is when I read books. I guess it goes hand in hand with my learning style, I am a very heavily audio learner. I think stuff out not by picturing it but by talking about it in my head... it's kinda weird but kinda cool too.</p>
<p>Oh, and what happens when you dream? What has always fascinated me at least, is the superior ability to visualize when I'm dreaming.</p>
<p>Lizzard--Why exactly would one need faith to be happy, out of curiosity?</p>
<p>About half of all people actually see things when their eyes are shut. The other half see black. I wonder if it's genetic?</p>
<p>Guitarman- faith is basically true belief in something. I think it essential to have faith in life-- belief in a cause, a religion, a person, yourself, etc. The reason I think this is because if you never have faith in anyone or anything else it makes life much harder--for example, if you are working on a project and you don't have faith in your coworkers to do their jobs, you end up doing them. If you don't have faith in your friends you can't rely on them to do things when asked. If you don't have faith in yourself, you constantly second guess everything you do.</p>
<p>EllenF: Does "black" include "weird randomly colored shapes," or do you mean some people can just close their eyes and see unicorns and poppy fields with crystal clarity?</p>
<p>I think being comfortable with uncertainty requires more strength and sophistication than accepting a lot of important things on faith, but that doesn't make faith necessary, and it certainly doesn't make the beliefs that people defend through faith true. At most, it makes them convenient.</p>
<p>"I think being comfortable with uncertainty requires more strength and sophistication than accepting a lot of important things on faith, but that doesn't make faith necessary, and it certainly doesn't make the beliefs that people defend through faith true. At most, it makes them convenient."</p>
<p>I agree completely with the first part of your statement. Being comfortable with uncertainty is important. That being said, I don't think you have the same idea of faith that I have. I'm not saying that it's okay to disregard fact and accept things out of convenience, which is what you seem to think I am saying. I also definitely did not say that "beliefs people defend through faith are true".</p>
<p>Here's what I did say: Faith is essential for happiness. I am guessing from your comments that you are not religious and that's fine... I am not referencing specifically religion when I say faith.</p>
<p>Faith is the base point of your life. At the very least, you need to have faith in yourself. Someone who has no faith in him/herself is going to have a very hard time finding happiness... lack of faith in self leads to second guessing which can lead to failure which in turn leads back to lack of faith in self... a horrible cycle. It's also very good to have faith in someone or something other than yourself--a significant other, for example. I know that I want to have faith in my wife (if/when I get married in the future) to love me and take care of me. </p>
<p>Cliff notes: Faith does not equal religion. Faith = belief, confidence, trust. In fact, the number 1 definition of faith according to dictionary.com is</p>
<p>"Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing." </p>
<p>I think that the large majority of happy people do have faith according to the above defintion.</p>
<p>A good, cogent post, lizzardfire.</p>
<p>I guess slightly more ontologically tentative minds would refer to the faith whose importance you emphasize as a set of important working assumptions without which it is hard to find fulfillment. In this sense, we are all in a "faithful" frame most of the time. My only point is that it is important to be capable of going into a doubting frame sometimes to remind us that the constructs on which we rely need not be universally sound, and might in fact turn harmful now and then. It takes some subtlety to be able to benefit from the positive support that faith provides without falling prey to a much more harmful kind of dogmatism.</p>
<p>My only point is that it is important to be capable of going into a doubting frame sometimes to remind us that the constructs on which we rely need not be universally sound, and might in fact turn harmful now and then. It takes some subtlety to be able to benefit from the positive support that faith provides without falling prey to a much more harmful kind of dogmatism."</p>
<p>Firstly, thanks for the compliment. Secondly...</p>
<p>"I guess slightly more ontologically tentative minds would refer to the faith whose importance you emphasize as a set of important working assumptions without which it is hard to find fulfillment. In this sense, we are all in a "faithful" frame most of the time."</p>
<p>Yep, I agree. I think most people are well-adjusted and reasonably happy, and this is one of the reasons why. It is painfully obvious when someone lacks this essential faith, and the few people I know who do are miserable.</p>
<p>"My only point is that it is important to be capable of going into a doubting frame sometimes..."</p>
<p>I also agree here. To take the example of faith in yourself, you generally want to have faith in only some of the aspects of your abilities. To use an extreme example, I have faith in my ability to spell the word "the" correctly but I don't have faith in my "ability" to perform open heart surgery. </p>
<p>Most of the things I have faith in are very personal. Confidence, love, loyalty, etc. Scientific ideas and such don't generally fall under my defintion of faith because in my opinion there is no such thing as a "scientific fact". Our ideas about science are changing every day... </p>
<p>In conclusion, I guess the easiest way to say what I attempted to say in the previous two paragraphs is that the faith I am talking about is more important emotionally than intellectually. Of course this is because we are talking about happiness, an emotion. We can discuss all day long the effects of faith on truth and intelligence, but at the end of the day there are many dumb happy people and few happy intelligent people.</p>
<p>"Ignorance is bliss" and "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know". Hemingway said the latter... I've never actually looked up a source for the former, heh.</p>