GENIUS FORUMS

The "publish or perish" mentality is silly when applied to the humanities, but this is not at all to say that humanities teachers are worthless. Good art and philosophy can be hard to grasp at first, and it can make all the difference if you have somebody there to guide you and to refer yo...

I've never read The Blank Slate, but I did read How the Mind Works, one of his earlier books, and found it very interesting. It brings in neurology, AI, and cognitive science, not just a bunch of "soft" concepts, so maybe Pinker's thinking has grown duller with age or something. Another ev...

vicdan wrote:Square root of negative phallus, I imagine.

Very postmodern of you!

But I think he was asking what you thought Marxism was.

“Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value." [At the end of Section 1 of Chapter 1.] He actually recognizes that not all labor creates value...

Yeah, I love Labor Theory of Value. We can use it to determine the appropriate pay for an underwater basket weaver, a rather labor-intensive work i hear. :D The funny thing is that Marx himself admits (in Capital ) that some work is worthless. He says more or less that this labor simply "doesn...

Maybe this guy had mastered the reinterpretation of pain. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly.... As he burned he never moved ...

Evolution Genetics Model of the atom / atomic decay Theories of electricity (and magnetism) generation / transmission / storage Germ theory of disease Newton's laws of motion Theory of relativity Quantum mechanics The idea that studying the brain will help us understand the mind Human physiology (re...

I would replace "Masculine / feminine analysis" with "theories relating to the generation and transmission of electricity."

Microscopy needs to be up there, too, and the germ theory of disease...

There's a whole lot more of pretentious sophomoric verbal wankery yet to come, but I see no indications of anything constructive coming out of it. It seems to be just all gratuitous idiocy, all the time. If something useful were to come out of the PoMo paradigm, at least in terms of philosophy and ...

ZenMuadDib wrote:There are many. Bauman, Foucault, and Derrida. What is this verbal wankery you're talking about?

Verbal wankery is what Derrida does. Heck, even some of his supporters admit that (in different words). See Rorty on Derrida...

vicdan wrote:It would be a hoot. I call shotgun on your getaway bicycle!

Catch him if you can!

Kant was a Christian, if that is what you were asking.

vicdan wrote:The First noble Truth cannot be taken to be simply a definition of 'suffering', you know.

Redefining terms is the only possible way to argue, dontcha know?

[And yes, that, too, is true by definition. LOL.]

Neil thinks that moving beyond Christian morality means simple-minded rebellion against every precept of it, in the manner of a teenager who rebels against the Christianity of his parents by becoming a "Satanist."

You believe knowledge is a good thing because it raises the standard of living, brings about technology, reduces suffering, etc. Are these good things though? I view them as bad things. Don't get me wrong, knowledge is definitely something I pursue, but I don't want everyone else to have it. Why? F...

What actually bothers me isn't your "showing off", or the insults, but the fact that if you reflect for one moment, you would realize that your comments imply that any sign of intelligence must be for "self justification". In other words, if Einstein himself made the first post,...

Boyan wrote:Tooting horns comes in different magnitudes. Tell me how was I tooting my horn that it seemed as if I was an inventor of life changing things?

I wasn't talking about you in particular. It was a general comment on what goes on at GF.

Boyan wrote:Have you invented some world changing thing?

Nope.

But I don't generally go around tooting my own horn, either.

Any old idiot can not do stuff and not like stuff. But in the end, do you have anything more to show for yourself beyond your record of abstinence from popular activities and disdain for popular beliefs? Anything positive you have created? Anything interesting you have discovered or invented? Anythi...

"I hate mixing with 'normal people.' That must mean I'm intelligent." "I don't want to reproduce. That must mean I'm intelligent, too." "I don't like women. I must be a genius." "I don't do [x], and I don't do [y], and I don't do [z]..." Okay, there are lots o...

Self-justification, served up piping hot each day on Genius Forum!

Hehe, Sheldrake...

V., remember the New Agers (LouMajors, robfromdetroit, et. al.) back at TPG blabbering about the "morphogenetic field?" LOL.

Faust13 wrote:...with sneering and leering Jews in the background poking them to do it.

Complete with hooked noses and dark, shifty eyes.

Oh noez! The Jews are out to get the white man!

vicdan wrote:It's like talking to a wall...

Do you enjoy arguing with architecture? :-P

You say that if we dig deep enough into the physical factors that a dice roll is determined. However, if there are truly random inputs into the physical system on a low level shouldn't this result in our not being able to determine the outcome of a dice roll accurately? The bits of quantum randomne...