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> Aristotle believed that women have fewer teeth So you haven't read Aristotle, you've read about Aristotle. Many such cases. I didn't recommend Aristotle wi

> Aristotle believed that women have fewer teeth So you haven't read Aristotle, you've read about Aristotle. Many such cases. I didn't recommend Aristotle without qualifications. I recommended Rhetoric. It's a stack of hundred dollar bills just sitting on the sidewalk, which you can pick up any time you want. If you'd rather feel superior to someone from the ancient world, because you were taught things he didn't know (and own none of that insight yourself), rather than gittin gud, that's up to you. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

kerkeslager 2y ago
> So you haven't read Aristotle, you've read about Aristotle. Incorrect. It's just easier to explain why the teeth thing is wrong than to explain why, for example, Aristotelian ethics is an ex-post-facto justification for slavery. > It's a stack of hundred dollar bills just sitting on the sidewalk, which you can pick up any time you want. If we're exchanging rhetorical blows instead of any sort of logic, then I'll note that when you pick the bills up they have Jesus' face on them instead of Benjamin Franklin's, and the back is religious proselytizing. It's a good idea to pick it up, but only so that you can dispose of the litter properly. > If you'd rather feel superior to someone from the ancient world, because you were taught things he didn't know (and own none of that insight yourself), rather than gittin gud, that's up to you. Nice ad hominem, but I don't feel superior to him. In his situation I likely would have made many of the same mistakes, in addition to a few mistakes all my own. That doesn't mean we need to pretend they weren't mistakes. I'm less concerned with the ownership of ideas and more concerned with whether those ideas are true and/or useful. The fact that Aristotle was given very little foundational knowledge on which to build his ideas is all the more reason to ignore his foundation-less ideas. > You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. How confident are you that you aren't the horse in this metaphor?

kerkeslager 2y ago

> So you haven't read Aristotle, you've read about Aristotle. Incorrect. It's just easier to explain why the teeth thing is wrong than to explain why, for example, Aristotelian ethics is an ex-post-facto justification for slavery. > It's a stack of hundred dollar bills just sitting on the sidewalk, which you can pick up any time you want. If we're exchanging rhetorical blows instead of any sort of logic, then I'll note that when you pick the bills up they have Jesus' face on them instead of Benjamin Franklin's, and the back is religious proselytizing. It's a good idea to pick it up, but only so that you can dispose of the litter properly. > If you'd rather feel superior to someone from the ancient world, because you were taught things he didn't know (and own none of that insight yourself), rather than gittin gud, that's up to you. Nice ad hominem, but I don't feel superior to him. In his situation I likely would have made many of the same mistakes, in addition to a few mistakes all my own. That doesn't mean we need to pretend they weren't mistakes. I'm less concerned with the ownership of ideas and more concerned with whether those ideas are true and/or useful. The fact that Aristotle was given very little foundational knowledge on which to build his ideas is all the more reason to ignore his foundation-less ideas. > You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. How confident are you that you aren't the horse in this metaphor?