Simon Paynton

Simon Paynton wrote:
Also, news flash – cancel culture is toxic.

@kristinaf – sorry, I shouldn’t have laid this at your door.  It wasn’t you who brought it up or advocated it.

Kristina, I could listen to you all day long.  I appreciate that you’re attacked from all sides – one of those being the toxic bitch-fest currently known as the Left.  So it must be hard to keep your head or know a way to respond where you’re allowed to win or keep your dignity etc.

It’s not for me to tell you how to conduct your activism.  Al…[Read more]

Well, I’ve been put off woke ideas in the past by people screaming in people’s faces.  If they’re trying to change the world, they can’t act like big babies.

I didn’t used to believe a word about white privilege, intersectionality etc., because of the ways they were presented (obnoxiously).  And I’m an open minded person.

I agree broadly with woke ideas, but witch-burning is never a good thing.  In other words, nobody does themselves any favours by being aggressively self-righteous.

Woke people are the new witch-burners – unfortunately.  They make their own good ideas look bad.

Steven Pinker says that the reduction in religious moral rules has contributed to a reduction in religious moral anger, and therefore, a reduction in religious moral violence, like torture and witch burning.

I think morality has two sides: promoting norms, and punishing offenders.  A lot of religious people seem to really love punishing offenders, to the point where it destroys normal human empathic concern.  In fact, this shows up how fragile empathic concern can be.

choosing the right thing to do.

This is interesting.  I didn’t realise that established philosophy divides moral normativity (“should-ness”) into three categories: me, you, and objective self-other equivalence.  It maps on neatly to Michael Tomasello’s classification: “me-concerns”, “you-concerns”, “equality concerns”, and “we-concerns” or r…[Read more]

I know that specific abilities or talents run in families.  Raw intelligence is one of those.

If people have less to eat, less good housing, less good health care etc., it wouldn’t be surprising if they turned out less intelligent on average.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Knipperdolling of the week: Can you spot any flaws in this letter?

It’s pretty scary when people say that it’s sinful and evil not to be religious.