sofal

11 ms·

61.
by sofal 8y ago
I’m saying that teleology without a mind(s) to hold the purpose is not a coherent concept because purpose is not an intrinsic property of objects. Even if it was a coherent concept, you seem to have decided that it is unfalsifiable, and for
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by sofal 8y ago
Being rational is not about proving every fanciful idea false. It's about not believing in things without rational justification. You can't simply propose an unfalsifiable idea and declare that the fact that the idea is unfalsifia
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by sofal 8y ago
I agree with you, but I would also want to clarify that there is an important difference between being respectful to people and being respectful to strongly held beliefs. The former is important for a peaceful society, and the latter gives
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by sofal 8y ago
It's useless for figuring out what is true. You are right that not everyone cares about that, in which case logic has no real use for them.
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by sofal 8y ago
Your comment was in defense of the rationality of believing that a god, specifically the Christian god, planted fossil evidence in order to test our ability to discount it entirely. Now you're saying that this God character doesn'
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by sofal 8y ago
On the contrary, there are no additional assumptions that need to be made in order to reject the idea that the universe was created by a being. Physical laws are not assumed to be an authority that dictates how the universe works. They are
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by sofal 8y ago
It is dangerous when your set of beliefs are held as above reproach such that any criticism of them is considered insulting. These are defense mechanisms that act to insulate ideas from scrutiny, and they're used to keep people indoctr
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by sofal 9y ago
My disaffection has a lot of facets, but the unreliability of "personal revelation" is a pretty large one. To be honest, I would actually love to talk to you about it. I wish I could teleport to where you are and have a friendly d
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by sofal 9y ago
That sounds like Mormonism for sure. I also used to believe it. But I later realized how unreliable this "personal experiment" is.
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by sofal 9y ago
Yikes, that link sent me down a rabbit hole of white nationalism and Holocaust denial. No thanks.
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by sofal 9y ago
Do you really want the POTUS to have the same powers over the national government that a CEO has over their company? Because that would require a substantially different type of government than we have. I suppose the trains will be on time
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by sofal 9y ago
It's about circular logic, not moral philosophy.
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by sofal 9y ago
I like to listen to podcasts a lot, which is pretty common. Typically I'm going to consume a fair number of individual podcast episodes during a month, but they're all from a wide variety of podcast creators, many of whom I'd
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by sofal 9y ago
Why not? People invent all kinds of stories. That type of story doesn't even take much imagination. Telling people that they are deficient in some intangible way and that you have the only cure is a very common way to con people.
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by sofal 9y ago
It would be ironic to use tab characters as some kind of magnanimous concession to other developers' preferences while at the same time requiring them to drop their editor of choice.
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by sofal 9y ago
This is a downside of open office plans. If I'm working on something particularly tricky it is often better for me to work from home so that I can wander around talking myself through the problem like some kind of insane person.
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by sofal 9y ago
I think a big part of the reason why hubris is bad is because it causes you to make mistakes when determining truth from error. If someone goes around telling people a claim is false without sufficient justification, and they're doing
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by sofal 9y ago
Flat earthers are derided now, but that wasn't always so. You might have been in that camp 500 years ago and been just as adamant then as you are now. We knew this 500 years ago too, but even if we didn't it would not have been
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by sofal 9y ago
The fact that this entire comment could have been written by (for example) a flat-earther in response to criticism of their flat-earth beliefs makes it difficult to understand what kind of "facts" you are disappointed that people
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by sofal 9y ago
I'd like to first try to summarize the thesis of your comment so that you can understand my conception of what I’m arguing against and correct me if I misread you. I think you're saying that since humans have limited capacity for
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by sofal 9y ago
If the people are participating in social media forums where debate happens or can happen (without it being considered rude), then they have not yet fully enclosed themselves into a comfortable echo chamber. If they aren't just there t
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by sofal 9y ago
I used to be a very conservative religious person. I had a whole package of beliefs that were ingrained into me from birth, and I grew into them and claimed them as my own. I thought that homosexuality was very damaging to society. I though
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by sofal 9y ago
Academia is just as vulnerable to bias and groupthink as anything else. I don’t equate “academia” with the scientific method. In fact, the two are often opposed to each other. But since that is where you want to go with it, I would questi
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by sofal 9y ago
I think it is entirely possible for people on one side of a particular discussion to be on more epistemologically solid ground than people on another side of a discussion in a general sense. If I'm reading you right (which I may not be
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by sofal 9y ago
Exactly. I'm tired of self-proclaimed internet veterans witnessing people digging in on individual online conversations and then concluding that nobody ever changes their mind and all debate/discussion is pointless. I have done a
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by sofal 10y ago
Stories like this tend to come with a brigade of new accounts and posters filling the threads with as much nonsense as possible almost as if it were a mandate they're following from elsewhere.
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by sofal 10y ago
The point of democracy is that EVERY citizen has a say in their government, despite how insane their belief system may be. Presumably this is why the poster you responded to is questioning the democratic system, so you haven't really
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by sofal 10y ago
That sentence was in The Atlantic in September. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-ma...
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by sofal 10y ago
Smith doesn't say that missionary work is the sole reason he voted for the war, but I'm sure it was an important and desirable side effect for him, and he discusses that. Yes, which is why I find it disturbing. The LDS religion
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by sofal 10y ago
The Smith video doesn't show anything abnormal. I was concerned by a couple of things about it, like him sharing what might have been classified information with the church leaders, and also indicating that his support for the Iraq w

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