Category: Philosophy


  • Memic Straw Men

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    Well, calling the current political, social, or even game discourses debates is probably too generous. That implies discussion which means an attempt at listening to the other if only to hear their point of view enough to counter it. At this point, much of what I see are the use of memes to perpetuate Straw…

  • Sally Kohn gets an unbelievable amount of hate mail for doing her job: being a liberal pundit on Fox News. Political persuasion begins with emotional correctness: the respect and compassion we show one another. Our challenge is to find the compassion for others that we want them to have for us. That is emotional correctness.…

  • A friend posted this article on Facebook, Everything wrong with this country happened this morning on my Facebook page, which showed an image with the original erroneous claim. The reactions to it were agreement with the bogus claim. Which was extremely sad because the originator of the claim now refutes it. The whole point of the article…

  • I have followed XKCD for years. His What If? blog (and book) is really good as well. He walks step-by step through the inputs and effects of the questions. The What If for the video below is Relativistic Baseball. If the video does not load, then try Randall Munroe: Comics That Ask What If?  

  • Nebulous

    Schrödinger’s Cat is one of my favorite thought experiments. I tend not to think of things and black-and-white or not even in shades of gray but as simultaneously both. Well, I used to call things as having shades of gray until I realized that was wrong. I sometimes still make that error. The better I understand…

  • Just some more collected quotes. See the quotes tag for more. This one seems particularly applicable during this presidential election year. “History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” ― Ian Fleming Miscellaneous others Introverts are collectors of thoughts, and solitude is where the collection is curated and…

  • Reading The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, it made me happier that I am probably more disease resistant than my peers due to having very different antigens due to my mixed heritage. One of my hopes was that more mixed kids would be born making society healthier. This helped me realize though that…

  • In discussion with coworkers, the idea came up of putting the PeopleMap type on one’s name badge. My contribution was to make it color coded: Red for Leader because people associate red with the Power Tie. Blue for Task because people associate that color with cool, collected, logical. Green for People because (RGB and green is…

  • I am a fan of Jonathan Haidt. In running across this, I think it helps me understand where social conservatives are coming from. He talks about three dimensions: Solidarity: how close we are to something. Family are close. Strangers are far. Hierarchy: who is above and below. Divinity: closeness to a deity. Disgust originated as a…