The clip below shows you what can happen when reason/reasoning (plus logic) is not anchored in empiricism - "people get hung up on the detail" (says Miller, speaking of empirical evidence) and they "miss the big picture" (ideal, internally consistent logical theory of reality). Of course Miller's theory is as valid as any other theory deduced by pure reason, and it may well be true. But he has no evidence so it would be unwise to act upon it. Of course empiricism has the corresponding problem which Miller defines - a series of meaningless series of unconnected events. The point at which the world of reason collides with the wold of empiricism is the whole problem really. Please add comments suggesting any other YouTube clips worth looking at, or any other links. Jason posted The Power of Nightmares on his blog, and thatI think explores all of this. The worrying thing is the tendency of badly educated people to believe conspiracy theories. If you give badly educated people a corrupt and low standards media (eg in many third world countries, but increasingly on underfunded, news-lite UK and especially US media) you can end up with psychopathological conspiracy politics and you can see this problem growing from Iowa to Ipswich to Iran.
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