Religionists of that level don't have anything useful to say about science nor are they worth trying to convince because their group identity is more important to them than being right. This has been studied extensively (see some of the podcasts I've linked to recently which give a good overview of the research ) and the results are as bleak as that. The best thing to do is to just leave them to their ignorance. Yes, speciation obviously happens otherwise there wouldn't be any different... species. And how it happens has been studied and described by scientists. It's not a mystery.

Good question. Long photography walks and writing, including here. Nothing that makes me any money that's for sure.

:up:

He's really losing it.

This concept is Karl Popper's most famous contribution to the philosophy of science.

Who is Martin Buber?

OK, we agree then.

Apropros my last couple of posts, this is worth a read/listen.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2018/02/26/yanss-122-how-our-unchecked-tribal-psychology-pollutes-politics-science-and-just-about-everything-else/#more-5803

I believe we call this process "democratization." — Pneumenon

So? If the result is the degradation of politics, polarization, and conflict, all the worse for democratization. It would be naive to think that feeding the masses' baser instincts in an uncontrolled manner is somehow going to lead to progress just because it's democratic.

I find it interesting that you think that Peterson, of all people, is zany — Pneumenon

Zanier. He's one of the milder ones, but lately he's been getting more stridently anti-left/progressive. Of course, some of his opposition is significantly zanier than him. I'm not exempting the left from criticism.

I was surprised to find that Norm Crosby is still alive. — T Clark

Funny name for a lobster.

Even Johnny Rotten was a fan.

"God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves"

Brings tears to the eye...

You're welcome.

...a pod of unleashed hell-hounds — Pneumenon

I'd go more for "a murder of mad crows".

There are plenty of sensible folks on the right out there, but sensible doesn't sell. It's not sexy enough, so the zanier voices tend to get amplified and the more sensible muted. I mean who even knows who George Will is? And who needs him when you've got David Duke, Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson fighting for your attention. And with new media much more so than the past. Then old media needs to compete with new media and before you know it Milo Yabbadickulous is on CNN and Trump is President. So, politics in general is moving further and further away from a special space for (somewhat) reasoned debate into a free for all for emotional venting that the most thoughtless can and do plug into at will to get their jollies before switching over to the ball game or the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Cue increased polarization, increased conflict and a slow but steady inversion of the natural political bell curve.

Haven't had a lot of time this weekend for this, but I did read a decent amount of the article, which is a fairly comprehensive critique of the aspect of the theory it deals with, which I hadn't been aware of. And I read a few other bits and pieces too. So, looks like they took philosophy, tried to make it science and ended up with—largely—pseudoscience. There's political wish fulfilment written all over the quality/quantity notion, for example. Oh, "leaps!". How convenient. Just what we need. And Stalin's diamat seems to mix in some self-serving political elements with quantity and quality relations becoming a metaphor and justification for (although maybe I'm reading too much into it) the fierce social stratification he imposed (the nomanklatura represent a leap in quality, so it's only natural they should get all the good stuff, and so on—came across a quote for that, but can't find it at the minute). Anyway, as a theory, it falls down on testability, precision, logical consistency, and parsimony at least. I don't know though from what I've read if Debord was mostly just paying lip service to it.

Correct. :up:

:up: Didn't know that one.

Perambulation.

1: travelling over or through especially on foot : traverse
2 : making an official inspection of (a boundary) on foot

This postmodern philosopher once said, "Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland."

(No Googling!)

What is Frege?

Yes, the lack of convenient access to historical comments is a major weakness of the set-up here.

Cheers. I'll motor over there.

You're doing plenty of work already. :) It's me who should be throwing more words at the discussion. I'm just not grasping 39 and your critique thereof. Any further explanation of that would be appreciated.

To the extent I can, I'll try to translate things out of diamat categories. — fdrake

Yes, it would be helpful if you could rephrase this criticism.

I was going to raise that at some point actually, but I think it's worthwhile to continue to explicate the issue (and critique at that level) before moving on to solutions or lack thereof. Anyway, I personally think the picture is bleak almost beyond hope and the problem is accelerating. The spectacle involves commodification right down to the level of identity itself. We're communicably ourselves only insofar as we're social selves, and we're connected socially only insofar as we integrate ourselves into the process of the spectacle, which delimits the logic of personal exchange. Worse, the isolation caused by this process of self-commodification and self-abstraction throws us into further need of the salve the spectacle offers us. Of course, it's not a hole we can dig ourselves out of. "Success" then becomes the exclusive domain of the spectacle, and self-development, except in its terms, the mark of failure, isolation and ridicule.

There's no automatic notification system for alerting posters of these changes. That's a software issue. And we don't require such notification of mods, or at least it's discretionary, as it could be considered an unreasonable addition to the workload, and might even discourage moderation, which is the last thing we want.

Anyway, I don't see what opinions you've expressed that we would want to suppress. Part of the problem is that you've barely expressed anything. That's not an issue exclusive to you, and we don't catch all of these, but you've seen the guidelines now, so please make a bit more effort. I'm sure that single short paragraph is not the best you can do.

Try to set up the discussion more carefully. What is the issue you want to talk about? Why is it important? What's your angle on it? And so on. Give posters a good reason to get involved.

Tend to agree with @fdrake. Do you want to be that person or not? If you do, what anyone else thinks doesn't matter. If you don't, the same.

What @Pierre-Normand said, and the fact that if you're going to go after someone partly on the basis of their hyperbolic, inaccurate and uncharitable attacks on your side, the best strategy is to do the opposite. Seize the higher ground. Not doing so makes your opponent look bigger than they are. (Although in this case, JP's inability to control his inner child mitigated that negative.)

I don't like the hit-piece all that much. I don't like Peterson's reaction even more though. He lost that round far too easily.

quantum Kardashian. — TimeLine

My new female alias. Love it. :100:

I'll close it rather than delete it lest anyone fail to give credit to CuddlyHedgehog for the original (crap) version. :up:

(This sort of stuff should be in the Lounge by the way not the Learning Centre, which is for...learning. Both discussions moved there.)

The first one is part of a relatively new business district in Southern Ningbo (Actually, they have a building there that looks very like the Chrysler building in NY. It's funny how from nothing, these places spring up). Anyway, fairly typical new China and well-integrated into its own mini-neighbourhood. I just liked the lines from that angle. The second one is the back of a more traditional restaurant (as far as I remember). A bit more character to it, and I liked the colour. The last one is an art gallery or museum or something along those lines nearer the centre of the city. Certainly one of the better designed newer buildings and it caught my eye for that reason. There's nothing particularly special about any of them.

No.

Thus shall the universities be remade in your image and your clones shall inherit the earth. Praise be, we are saved.

Wouldn't it be better though to continue to argue for your point of view in a free marketplace of ideas rather than to try to forcefully suppress those you don't agree with?...Which suggests a lack of confidence in your own position. (Not that real Maoists the world over wouldn't in principle applaud your book-burning ways. Maybe y'all should get together.)

Seeing as you didn't ask, have a couple more from Ningbo, China.

Partial building front, Thailand. Took it the other day. Three people liked it on Instagram so it must be awesome. That aside, I find these types of structure both craptacular and fantabulous.

it's telling how Jones once jumped on the Trump train became the most purebred propagandist for Trump in the style of Goebbels and/or old-style Stalinist propaganda. — ssu

He's competing with Sean Hannity for that title. Wonder how altar boy Sean is spinning the porn-star-sex angle? I presume by ignoring it completely :halo: . What can you do but laugh at the clown show?

Great stuff. Incidentally, these podcasts, which I listened to recently, introduced me to Debord and might be a helpful for others too:

https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2017/08/14/ep170-1-debord/
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2017/08/21/ep170-2-debord/

I agree up to a point, and I'd rather see posters erring on the side of charity towards each other if there is a debate to be had, but there is always a line, and someone like Alex Jones is an entertainer who deliberately concocts conspiracies to make money. It's his business. Given that, no serious-minded person should pay attention to him except as a source of amusement.

:clap: :100:

As opposed to some people who see the word "conspiracy" and go straight into saying that whoever wrote it is an ignorant idiot who wears a tin foil hat, has a computer chip in their brain and has insurance against alien abduction.

As I have already said, I think the latter is against the guidelines of the forum which states that evangelicalism is not tolerated. — René Descartes

That would be more flaming than evangelism. Anyhow, not all conspiracy theories are equal, right? Some deserve pretty harsh treatment and instant dismissal and some merit argument.

It's obviously not irrational to think even democratic governments are capable of reprehensible actions, including against their own citizens (e.g. COINTELPRO). It is irrational though to think they act against or take massive risks concerning their own interests for relatively minor payoffs. The damage to the UK government and specifically the Tory Party, both collectively and individually, nationally and internationally, if found to be involved in murdering someone on its own soil using a banned nerve agent would be huge and lasting. And the idea that May would not only want to want to take the risk of destroying her own party and position and doing enormous damage to Britain's reputation globally, but also of personally spending the rest of her life in prison, just so she could discredit Russia at a time when she's not even facing a leadership challenge and has three years to prepare to recover her standing for the next election (not to mention when Russia is constantly discrediting itself without her help) is barely worth commenting on. Even in the most desperate of plausible circumstances, the likelihood of the UK government getting involved in something this risky is close to zero.

Russia, on the other hand, and Putin in particular, have a known history of imprisoning and killing opponents at home and abroad, and have suffered little in the way of consequences for it. Putin is already considered to be a brutal dictator in the West and has almost absolute control of the media at home. Plus, without democratic checks and balances, the likelihood of finding proof he was personally involved is far lower. The relative payoff-to-risk ration for him then is considerably higher than that for May (although not so high that it couldn't backfire).

So, I don't think this is about whether we have an open mind* or not, it's more about basic political analysis. Even presuming all governments, democratic or otherwise, are capable of extremely immoral acts (which I personally don't think is an unfair presumption even if it is very unlikely to apply to all individuals in those governments), most governments, particularly those in advanced democracies, must also be presumed to have enough collective intelligence to avoid not only metaphorically shooting themselves in the foot, but in cases like this, sitting on live grenades. And again, I emphasize the collective element; while Putin can essentially do what he wants with little consultation and likely has direct lines to the kinds of people or groups who could organize this crime, May, in order to carry it out, would have to go through processes at multiple levels of government involving very intelligent political players. The idea that they would all suffer the kind of simultaneous, calamitous lapse in judgment required to allow the operation to progress, and then suddenly recover the almost superhuman abilities necessary to cover it all up just isn't credible.

Pretty much the same principles apply to 9/11. Trump can't even manage to hush up a minor affair with a porn actress; Clinton, though apparently much smarter, got caught fiddling with an intern; Reagan, Iran-contra etc. Of course, all of these were orders of magnitude less damaging than being caught organizing 9/11 would have been, which explains why the risk was taken in those cases. So, bad judgment and venality, often in concert, isn't rare in government, but there are limits. Conspiracy theories continue to thrive though on the basic principle that governments are nasty and bad, while failing to adequately take account of the collective and individual consequences of the context in which politics is cultivated, i.e. power and self-interest. Once those pieces are added to the puzzle, the resulting picture, though often more boring, at least makes sense.

*(A Richard Dawkins' quote comes to mind— I paraphrase—it's good to have an open mind as long as it's not so open your brain falls out).