3 ms·

I spotted the type B person!

• pharrington 12y ago
  It seems so weird to me that so many people confuse someone saying a phenomena is a mental process for saying that phenomena doesn't exist.
  • TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I find they often miss the key fact - human brains are made of the same template; we do have universal values and thought processes. Things that are universal to humans are not arbitrary to us (even though they might be in the grander scale).
    • haberman 12y ago
      > we do have universal values and thought processes If there was universal agreement about what is meaningful, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I think you would be pretty hard-pressed to find very much that is absolutely universal to the human experience. But even if there are things which are highly prevalent in the human experience, that is not evidence that these feelings are "truth." We have direct evidence that our brains are pre-programmed with tons of cognitive biases and nonsensical beliefs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
  • romaniv 12y ago
    It's probably because there are many people who say "this is a mental process" when they really mean "this does not exist".
    • romaniv 12y ago
      Also, come to think of it, the proper term for this is "abstract concept" not "mental process".
• haberman 12y ago
  Classifying my position is not the same as answering it. Suppose an anti-vaxxer says "there are two types of people: type A who believe vaccination is a personal choice and type B who believe that everyone has a duty to vaccinate when they can." If you make a case for why people should vaccinate, and the anti-vaxxer says "oh look, I spotted a type B person," that isn't an actual response to the argument.
  • romaniv 12y ago
    Classifying my position is not the same as answering it. Classifying your position shows that there is no point in answering it. In other words, the important thing here is not whether you're being classified, but why and how. You analogy is invalid. And no, I am not going to directly address your original post either. What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway? From what I see, you're defending a rather boring dismissal of the original article. A long, though-out, well-written article with tons of interesting observations.
    • haberman 12y ago
      > What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway? I was curious whether anyone had compelling reasons for believing in the idea of objective or absolute meaningfulness. What I have learned is that the reasons people have offered are extremely weak, in my opinion.
      • romaniv 12y ago
        If you don't know how to count, you learn arithmetic from people who do. Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists". Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence. Such is the nature of abstract concepts.
        • lmm 12y ago
          Nonsense. You teach someone arithmetic by showing them concrete instances where it applies, counting apples or sticks or so on. You demonstrate that the abstract thing exists because there's something the same about putting two apples and two more apples together or putting two stones and two more stones together, and by observing one you can learn something about the other.