PopeBeanie

Words and thoughts we invent. Words and thoughts of the president. Is he real? Can we know? Just a robot, Joe Blow?

Tea with thee is glee. Tea for free without me. Tee off. Check your balls. Cough! Cough! Easy mister that hurts. He squirts and ejaculates as the bot conflates concepts, confuses dates, misstates facts sprays unhealthy snacks. Even…[Read more]

Thanks Jake, I was mostly thinking about Ireland when I wrote that :-).

Really well said Reg in a departure from lots of other really well said.

The Enlightenment was about freeing thought from authority, be that authority religious, royal, or dogmatic. Now the new authorities are hashtags and outrage algorithms. The problem is not just ideological, it’s epistemic. Both the ‘Lunatic Left and Rancid Right’ have abandoned Enlightenment principles like reason, evidence, and open debate in fa…[Read more]

Garden of Earthly Delights.

You might think the ideals of America would be sacrosanct with the young and educated. Alas a smack what they aint got they lack. Globalize the intifada! Free Palestine.

But hey Dems did ok and Trump’s support was not a hamburger helper. So maybe the train will stay on the tracks.

The idea of America; self-determination, free inquiry, equality before the law, is extraordinary. The execution of it has always been messy, compromised, and full of contradictions. Please don’t see my criticism as anti-American. I hope it is seen as pro-Enlightenment. I have no tribal attachment, and I can separate the myth from the machinery. T…[Read more]

@Jakelafort – I agree with the sentiment, but I am more optimistic (or naïve!) about the future. The pace of scientific and technological progress has far outstripped the average person’s ability or willingness to keep up intellectually with these advances. It is not so much that there is a growth in ignorance and stupidity but rather that it now…[Read more]

When i skim science headlines (and yea read some of the articles) and think back just 4 or 5 yrs. today’s headlines feel like sci fi. The richness of the prospect for improving our lives is staggering. At same time it feels like the norms and beliefs and stupidity are overflowing their toilet and depositing turds everywhere you look.

@Enco – It could be that Tucker Carlson made a balls of his testosterone booster with too much testicle tanning?

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Simon, the problem with JD Vance isn’t that he “respects” his wife’s atheism — it’s that he doesn’t respect her Hinduism. He’s implying she’s an atheist simply because she isn’t a Christian, which is a rather offensive way to erase a faith practiced by hundreds of millions in India. It’s disingenuous.

[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
What you’re describing isn’t moral realism but moral function: why we act morally, not whether morality exists as some external reality.

Thanks @Reg, that’s it in a nutshell.  Talking about morality is like talking about the middle east – the answer is always complicated.  The remit was to figure out morality so th…[Read more]

Good Website here.

Simon – I moved your update here so it does not disappear down the list.

I have been studying morality for about 16 years, and now I feel I have it all figured out. I can give a full and comprehensive answer for what justifies our moral beliefs: the question that is on every moral philosopher’s lips, and is the reason for the mistaken belief in m…[Read more]

@Simon –

Simon, the problem with JD Vance isn’t that he “respects” his wife’s atheism — it’s that he doesn’t respect her Hinduism. He’s implying she’s an atheist simply because she isn’t a Christian, which is a rather offensive way to erase a faith practiced by hundreds of millions in India. It’s disingenuous. What he’s really doing is getting…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
People on social media are very vexed indeed.

JD Vance respects his wife’s atheism.  That’s good.  But they bring up their kids as Christians.  Surely the kids should be allowed to make their own minds up.

Thanks Reg!

Toppings and droppings.

Those chimps can of course do that. It would be surprising were it not so. I knew when i was a kid how stupid the so called scientists’ approach to other animal intelligence. But that is not same as beliefs humans hold in Trump and lefty beliefs et. al.

If chimps are capable of that sort of ideological belief formation…[Read more]

Have a great week!