Follow-up to a scintillating dinner debate over whether or not irish cream coffee is minty:

To: patrick

From: Kristin

Subject: minty

The example of nazi germany is a flawed argument- to truly test a universally representative sample, one would have proportional numbers of survey subjects from all over the world. Thus, despite the fact that the german population seemed to be in agreement with the actions of the Nazis, I have my doubts that a truly representative sample would come to the same conclusion. The same, of course, is true with the irish cream conundrum. To take an accurate survey, we'd have to introduce the tastes 'irish cream' and 'mint' to a representative world sample and ask them whether the tastes overlapped.

While both our perceptual filters tell us different things about irish cream, i believe my perceptions are closer to the '3rd person stream of truth' for two reasons: 1) the chemical makeup of irish cream doesn't actually contain mint, and 2) i'd be willing to hypothesize that, given a universally representative sample, more people would have perceptions similar to mine than to yours.

-k

Coming soon: a new website devoted the honorable debate.

3rd person stream of truth

A theory:

Absolute truth exists as a stream that changes from moment to moment. No being can experience it accurately (rather similarly to the old fable about the blind men and the elephant), we can only observe it through narrow, filtered straws. Our actions, on the other hand, can have a direct effect on the stream, as if we stick our hand in and stir it around, or add something to the mix.

Thus, neither patrick or I will ever conclusively win the great irish cream/mint debate, but the debate itself, as an event, has changed the stream of truth.

I still think I'm right, though.

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Playing: Billy Joel's Greatest Hits (vol. III). As evidenced by the fact that the only Billy Joel CD I have is a greatest hits collection, I'm not a 'real' fan, but every once in a while, I go on a "mid-eighties mainstream rock" jag and become compelled to listen to the piano man.

Digression: When "We Didn't Start the Fire" first came out, I can recall my older sister spending hours hunched over her boombox with a notebook, rewinding and replaying every bit of the single about 40 times in order to capture the lyrics. I still can't for the life of me figure out exactly why.