There are so many misconceptions about the Gnostic gospels whether it be that of Thomas, Mary, Judas, Phillip - whichever. Because this material is tendentious, scholars are often inaccurate and contradictory on this material too, so you need to be very careful about what you assume from these texts. Why are you attracted to this material? — Tom Storm
For everyone thinking how cool it has been making a quick buck out of bitcoin, bitcoin is now using more electricity than the entire Netherlands combined.
Some more perspective: you can power 100,000 visa transactions with the energy used for one bitcoin transaction. — Benkei
Humanity, as it is currently structured - in thought, philosophy, technology, etc... - will never create an interstellar civilization. Many despise the vastness of space, but its name truly names what it is:
- Space!
This empty greatness, where, until now, we are the only gifted ones capable of experiencing existence, seems to me an ambition of negative egos; of minds out of balance and degeneracy.
We have already glimpsed the external too much. It's time to turn our gaze inwards again.. — Gus Lamarch
I beg to differ.. Within a short amount of time from when the Model T came out, I am pretty sure most people had a vehicle. What a crazy change from a literally horse-drawn society. Think about how much infrastructure related to horses was completely taken out from this shift. I get your point that things take longer to get to rural populations, and you can make an argument that it wasn't until post-WWII that truly the older system of horses was displaced (especially in places like Russian, etc) but still pretty dramatic shift in geography, time, place, etc. And of course, as you mentioned the Wright Brothers and the companies that followed for air technology. — schopenhauer1
My parents were born in 1905 and 1906 (died in 2007 and 1993, respectively) and witnessed or experienced several transitions and major innovations: from horse power to motor power; the innovation of planes, radio, movies/talkies, refrigerators (vs. ice boxes), dial phones, television, computers, space flight, antibiotics, small pox, polio, mumps, measles, and chickenpox, scarlet fever; economic collapse and economic boom, 2 world wars, kitchen microwave ovens, cake mixes--and more!
They seem to have taken all these changes in stride. Now that I am an old man I wish I could talk with them again about what they thought of all these changes. I came of age in the 1960s (sort of; it took decades). Yes, the 60s were great. We were young, in college, healthy, reasonably happy, in and out of love, full of youthful arrogance, and all that. For gays living in backwater midwestern towns, the 1960s sexual revolution didn't begin until 1970. Yes, it was wonderful.
Before the Internet there was the very very big computer and in time the scrawny little personal computer. I was much taken with the idea of the HAL9000 computer in 2001 (the movie, not the year), then with the 1980s Macintosh computer--which of course had less computing power than my washing machine has (figuratively speaking). My old Mac Plus resides in its own chapel. Still an itsy-bitsy computer helped make the 1969 moon landing (Apollo 11). The Apollo 11 computer was novel in that it ran on silicon instead of vacuum tubes. I was 15 when Kennedy proposed landing a crew on the moon (and bringing them back, alive); I was 23 when it happened. Yes, it was as stirring as you might think it was.
My take on the Internet is that it actually is a great resource for information, while also being a big sewer pipe. I've never gotten into FaceBook, Twitter, TikTok, or most other social media. Too much of it Is drivel, or worse--a shit show.
BTW, the landing of the Perseverance ranks up there as an amazing feat. Lots of missions to mars ended in failure, but arriving in orbit, detaching the lander rocket from the space ship, then that rocket slowing down to a pause, hovering above the surface and lowering the rover to the surface, then detaching and getting the hell out of the way--hey, you witnessed a very very big deal. — Bitter Crank
I think philosophy is weird in a way fishing isn't, in that fishing doesn't have a professed aim it manifestly fails at, and has for thousands of years. This is maybe the most salient feature of philosophy, and periodically gets noticed and lamented even by philosophers themselves (who have professional and cognitive incentives not to notice).
It's also clear why one would think that fishing catches you fish. It's not clear why one would think that the methods of philosophy can unlock general features of the universe – on reflection the idea seems somewhat insane. That's why it's interesting to think about why people might have been led to believe in the methods. — Snakes Alive
I have said this in another post about "ought", but any force of "normativity" does not come from OLP's claims to descriptions of our ordinary criteria for apologizing; it comes from apologizing itself. — Antony Nickles
I wouldn't think it was that weird, if he just did it once in a while, and maybe to try to get someone to stop fishing. I don't really discuss philosophy anymore except in threads like this about this very topic (and even then, I think I haven't commented here in like half a year), and I don't really read it anymore or talk about it anywhere else. — Snakes Alive
Of course. But I think being good at fishing is a real and useful skill, whereas being 'good at philosophy' doesn't really entail being good at anything, unless you're on the job market in philosophy. — Snakes Alive
I actually do think philosophy is losing its popular prestige — Snakes Alive
It depends on the social context. One reason I don't have to be nudged away from, say, flat-earth theory, is because I grew up in a context in which the reasons it was inadequate were obvious enough that trying to adopt it would be a huge affront to my ability to make it through the day (I would need to make sense of how my plane trips worked). You could imagine a world in which we just know enough about the way our own language and cognitive faculties work, and this was such an ambient part of an ordinary person's knowledge, that the idea of adopting philosophy would look as silly as adopting flat-earthism or bird augury. — Snakes Alive
Hmm, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying that philosophy comes from the 'landed' esoteric tradition, and it's not possible to shake it off? — Snakes Alive
I won't quibble here, as I think the gist of what you are trying to point out is relevant. It is hard to avoid the dismissive nature of OLP (Moore, Austin to an extent) when it does not take the effort to account for the legitimate concerns of traditional skeptical philosophy (Cavell does a better job of this). And I agree with looking past philosophical theories to connect them to a motivation. That it is doing more than making a claim; it is a person taking a stance, and it reflects on that person. Cavell will discuss this as "living your skepticism". I would also point out (as I did above regarding a kayak) that when we are making claims about the criteria of our expressions (and actions), we are at the same time making claims about the ways we live in the world--not just discussing language, nor just speculating without any of the value of truth. — Antony Nickles
I would advocate looking at it a bit more dispassionately – people trying confusedly to express themselves is fine, but we also want things that are actually real, work, and so on. — Snakes Alive
I just watched part1, and I'm reminded of ideas about control and stability being inversely related. The more control humans have the more unstable humanity becomes, and this is just the way the world is. — unenlightened
Yeah, that's right. But I think his mono-causal model is a bit oversimple. It's more just that we lack certain metacognitive abilities having to do with how language and inquiry work, and by dint of having extremely specific intellectual concerns and a certain personality and cognitive disposition, you can sort of start to notice this by accident. Trying to express your fantasies and desires, and maintain the omnipotence of the intelligence, can be part of that, but sometimes it's something more banal – simple confusion, and so on. — Snakes Alive
No, because I don't think philosophy has a good track record as therapy either. My position, and I've expressed it here before, is that philosophy ought to be exited, and viewed from the outside anthropologically. We should look at philosophy as a practice that we are no longer 'natives' of, and that we do not engage in, but that we do seek to try to understand, much like an anthropologist might for a foreign culture.
Philosophy, in other words, is something certain human beings in certain cultural situations do – and it isn't what it claims to be, and doesn't work, and so there isn't that much good reason to actually practice it, not even for therapeutic reasons. But looking at it and understanding why people do it, and what cognitive factors drive it, is interesting in understanding how human inquiry works. — Snakes Alive
Yeah, I didn't want to suggest it was just a matter of emotion. I think the pull toward 'discovery' is also part of the same nebula of things I'm talking about with values, modes of awareness and so forth. But I take your point - you're focusing more on the 'how' than the 'why.' — csalisbury
I don't think there's any one reason people make these sorts of claims – emotional issues is probably a big one, but not the only one. Other people probably really think they're 'discovering' things while doing it. The point is just that philosophy takes place in a confused register where the conversation goes back and forth, but as far as inquiry goes, nothing is really happening. It's like watching a cat try to catch a laser light, or something.
So it's not just that people are too emotionally invested, and don't want to admit they're just trying to use words in nonstandard ways. It's more that language is the medium in which philosophy takes place, and there's some lack of meta-cognitive awareness of what goes on when we use it, in general. But sadly, I think philosophy itself is also not a great medium for giving people these meta-cognitive skills. Any understanding of the destructive portion of OLP has to start with the recognition that philosophy, objectively, doesn't work. That is, it is not what it claims to be – a form of effective inquiry. — Snakes Alive
I don't think there's much point in trying to convince people. While OLP is good, it relies on a certain psychological leap that it never figured out how to instill in other people. Lazerowitz said it was a matter of 'clicking,' or like seeing through a magic-eye painting. Much of OLP was, and I think should still be seen, as destructive to philosophy, and is a matter of 'seeing through' it. People who are invested in philosophy as part of their identity have a predisposition not to listen, and even someone who wants to listen has no guarantee it will 'click.' That's the major shortcoming of the method – no one figured out how to make someone see that initial insight. Philosophy is, in some sense, stupid or defective, but we're cognitively disposed to fall into its traps.
The thing that did it for me was Malcolm's 'Moore and Ordinary Language,' which contains something like the OLP 'master argument' in the allegory of the animal, and the argument over whether it's a fox or a wolf.
Suppose we're going through the forest and we hear rustling, so we go to investigate. We look beyond and in a clearing there's an animal. We are close enough to see it perfectly clearly. You say it's a wolf, and I say it's a fox. When you protest, I ask, how can that possibly be a wolf? It looks and acts like a fox – it has all the features typically associated with a fox. But you protest, and say 'I grant you that – it has all the characteristics of what we would normally call a fox. Nevertheless, it is a wolf.'
The idea is that here you're doing philosophy, in insisting that a fox is a wolf. The point is to consider – what sense is there in saying that a creature that has all the characteristics of what is normally called a fox, not a fox? Yet this is precisely what the philosopher spends the great majority of his time doing. — Snakes Alive
I think the worst thing the left could do would be cheerlead this, then drift away when the fallout happens. — csalisbury
Looking at the video you linked, the secret service agent clearly had his gun drawn and hanging out of the door for quite a while before he fired. We cannot see his mouth or hear properly through the noise, but it's likely that he was verbally warning them (But I mean, come on; if you break into a secure federal government compound and start climbing over barricades, you should know you're liable for getting shot, right?). — VagabondSpectre
And then you have gold very high also. Which isn't actually good sign for the economy. — ssu
The modelling element either reveals something kept from view or it does not. I don't know how to approach that side of things. It is easy to become what one opposes. — Valentinus