27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Arguing with People Online Allows Them to Burn Your Time
But while some amount of bullshit is inevitably forced on you, the bullshit that sneaks into your life by tricking you is no one's fault but your own. And yet the bullshit you choose may be harder to eliminate than the bullshit that's forced on you. Things that lure you into wasting your time on them have to be really good at tricking you. An example that will be familiar to a lot of people is arguing online. When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense attacking you. Sometimes pretty ove...Folksonomies: opportunity cost online debate
Folksonomies: opportunity cost online debate
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notes27 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
History of the Concept of Art
Nowadays when someone speaks of "art" you probably think first of "fine arts" such as painting and sculpture, but before the twentieth century the word was generally used in quite a different sense. Since this older meaning of "art" still survives in many idioms, especially when we are contrasting art with science, I would like to spend the next few minutes talking about art in its classical sense.
In medieval times, the first universities were established to teach the seven so-called "liber... 1 notes
notes16 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
If Everyone is Altruistic
The day will come, says Spencer, when altruistic inclination will be so well embodied in our organism itself that people will compete for opportunities of self-sacrifice and immolation. When altruistic inclinations are implanted in everyone, how will opportunities arise to apply them? Either such a state presupposes the existence of persecutors, tormentors and tyrants, or else the general urge to sacrifice oneself will engender benefactors who will turn into tormentors and persecutors merel...
1 22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Private Property Does Not Drive Human Aggression
I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communistic system; I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is advantageous and expedient. But I am able to recognize that psychologically it is founded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one of its instruments. This instinct did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in primitive times when possessions were still extremely sc... 1 notes
notesFreud argues that aggression existed before the concept of personal possessions.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Nominal Fallacy
The nominal fallacy is the error of believing that the label carries explanatory information.
An instance of the nominal fallacy is most easily seen when the meaning or importance of a term or concept shrinks with knowledge. One example of this would be the word “instinct.” “Instinct” refers to a set of behaviors whose actual cause we don’t know, or simply don’t understand or have access to, and therefore we call them instinctual, inborn, innate. Often this is the end of the expl...
1 Stuart Firestein explains why naming is not explaining.
19 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Hand Axes as an Extended Phenotype
Two and a half million years ago, our small-brained ancestors
evolved the ability to knock flakes from rocks to use as cutting edges. By doing so, they could also make the rocks themselves useful as choppers. This basic tool kit of flakes and choppers served the needs of hunting and gathering for a million years. Then, around 1.6 million years ago, a medium-brained African hominid (Homo erectus) evolved the ability to produce an extraordinary object that archeologists call a handaxe. A handax... 1 notes
notesIf, as the author assumes, handaxes were genetically-informed because they did not change for hundreds of thousands of years, then why do we not still have the instinct for hand axes?
30 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Past and Who Has Access to It
What we know about the past—and who has access to such knowledge—has changed dramatically with each such change. The changes run far deeper than the mere proliferation of data points. As written records of large estates held in monasteries in France achieved legal and social dominance, the role of women as the tellers of the past fell into decline (Geary, 1994): The technological and the social were deeply intertwined. The outcome was that different kinds of records were kept. With the in... 1 notes
notesThe past was once only available through memory, then only available to those who had access to records, and now available to everyone.
06 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Check Your Privilege
Learn to Listen Rather Than Speak
This one is a lot harder than it sounds, and I say this as someone who loves speaking and voicing her opinion on things. One of the greatest things we, as privileged people, can bring to a discussion being held by non-privileged groups is our closed mouths and open ears/minds. When you enter a minority space, you need to realize that this is their soapbox, not yours. Your privilege gives you many other soapboxes that you can take advantage of, so when p... 1 notes
notesFrom the article that inspired the use of this term in debate.
09 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
The Life of a Horticulturist
I have always liked horticulturists, people who make their living from orchards and gardens, whose hands are familiar with the feel of the bark, whose eyes are trained to distinguish the different varieties, who have a form memory. Their brains are not forever dealing with vague abstractions; they are satisfied with the romance which the seasons bring with them, and have the patience and fortitude to gamble their lives and fortunes in an industry which requires infinite patience, which raise ...Folksonomies: botany horticulture
Folksonomies: botany horticulture
A wonderful quote from David Fairchild. Reference unknown.
14 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Denuciation of the Paleodiet
One of the commonest dietary superstitions of the day is a belief in instinct as a guide to dietary excellence ... with a corollary that the diets of primitive people are superior to diets approved by science ... [and even] that light might be thrown on the problems of human nutrition by study of what chimpanzees eat in their native forests. ... Such notions are derivative of the eighteenth-century fiction of the happy and noble savage. 1 notes
notesWallace Ruddell (W.R.) Aykroyd compares it to the idea of the noble savage in this 1835 quote.
