The "What Are You Doing This Moment" Thread

[Zephyrus]

All deductive logic is ultimately reducible to induction, which breaks down into semantics. Words gain their meaning through consensus, which is an arbitrary interpretation of reality that boxes it into linguistic categories facilitated by projecting a mental grammar onto sensible reality. Institutions work by that same process, and ultimately deals with the meanings of words and assigns those words to pieces of reality as sanctioned by those institutions.

This is what studying classical languages and civilizations has taught me, that the fluidity of concepts is only frozen and enforced by institutions credited enough to propagate that illusion of permanence of concepts. Plato's shadow looms large, and as we are in a phase of history that is a continual repudiation of Plato, so our ability to credit information based on the values it reflects is ever more suspect.

That was a very incoherent rant that reflects the recent breakdown of my own mind. It's a linguistic and moral chaos I live every day.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

You intrigue and confuse me. Just like Hegel does. This is probability because I'm not smart enough to understand either of you. Or maybe you're both really intelligent yet slightly wacky, idk.

Time for Ein or Dak to come in and break this down in crazy detail so I can get completely lost.

or maybe the obscure Dodens can chime in with a short yet clever, witty remark.

 

[Dak]

It's that uncertainty that keeps legitimate information out of serious regard. The point of institutions, intellectual, ecclesiastical, political, is at the bottom for the control of information so that it remains authoritative. What the internet has done is release a deluge of information that is erasing these institutional boundaries.

It's now very difficult to take anything seriously, and if there are some powers that be who are running things behind the shadows, they see this phenomenon I described as the best possible thing for them. Divide et impera.

The veracity of information is only as strong as the faith a society has in the institutions that control information. Yes, we now have the scientific, logical, and mathematical tools to think for ourselves, but reasoning can only go so far when what's needed are the empirical facts. We reason only with the facts presented, and thus we are slaves to who controls the information. If those institutions have no authority, then we have nothing.

I don't think you see the problem/conflict between these diverse statements. Your institutional bias is causing a level of cognitive dissonance.

 

[Vimana]

I think logical fallacy is a more complicated mental behavior that more often leads to incorrect conclusions, and at some point, the high, rampant interchange of information will give way to rationality simply because it's simpler and other things will die.

Lots of religions are dying already in places with high internet use. People have a lot more religious debate now because of the internet and can see opposing opinions through other windows than biased religion classes or misrepresentations from pastors. I don't think it's any coincidence that the new atheist movement is pretty lined-up with the internet age.

@ zabu,vimana & zeph - So essentially were all biased, misinformed and prone to fallacies aka screwed, huh?

Yes, but not screwed, I think.

 

[Zephyrus]

I don't think you see the problem/conflict between these diverse statements. Your institutional bias is causing a level of cognitive dissonance.

I do see the conflict, and that's my point. I have identified the purpose of institutions and then demonstrated that their basis of authority is itself smoke and mirrors, but it's unreasonable to think we can have a world entirely of independent free thinkers yet at the same time be able to have any social/political cohesion without consensus on things that cannot be logically/mathematically "proven." Ultimately, it is reduced to faith, and that faith has to be in an institution's authority to safeguard the integrity of those values.

 

[Dak]

How can something safeguard what doesn't exist?

 

[King Richard]

 

[Zephyrus]

Faith in the authority of those who propagate the illusion, the puppeteers before the fire of the Cave.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Y U NO SPEAK NORMAL?

 

[Zephyrus]

 

[monoxide_child]

waiting for tmrw
tmrw i will (in this order) re-aquire my phone, (that's been in Irving for the last 2 weeks) my recently fired friend will collect his last paycheck, i will get back the money for the apt that i "put on hold" by teling the complex that i no longer wish to live there, spend my re-aquired money renting a room at the Carousel for 1 week, then, after getting December's money, move into a cheeply-priced apt prolly in the "gayborhood" http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&...c8868a73da6ee0e&bpcl=38897761&biw=792&bih=425

 

[Zephyrus]

Y U NO SPEAK NORMAL?

I got a paper returned to me from a professor the other day. It got an A+ but next to the grade was a comment criticizing my "purple prose" and its tendency "to go off into hyperspace." In other words, the bullshit I write here is typical of my writing in general, yet so far it's gotten me gold stars left and right.

 

[monoxide_child]

the bullshit I write here is typical of my writing in general

i actually realized this a long time ago

 

[Zephyrus]

Yet you haven't seen any of my academic writing (though you may have read my blog, which is still informal for the most part).

 

[Dak]

Faith in the authority of those who propagate the illusion, the puppeteers before the fire of the Cave.

I understand, but how can you think that is useful? It's a crutch and a restriction.

 

[Vimana]

I got a paper returned to me from a professor the other day. It got an A+ but next to the grade was a comment criticizing my "purple prose" and its tendency "to go off into hyperspace." In other words, the bullshit I write here is typical of my writing in general, yet so far it's gotten me gold stars left and right.

It sounds like the hallmark of an ordinary intellectual to me. The tendency to take something and turn it into a contemplation about a greater matter out loud.

 

[Dak]

It sounds like the hallmark of an ordinary intellectual to me. The tendency to take something and turn it into a contemplation about a greater matter out loud.

Concerning the abstract, nothing is simply itself, but dependent and attached to many other things.

 

[Vimana]

A big part of intelligence is imagination. Recombining what we know in ways that we can test to figure out things about the world is how we make machines. When the imagination of someone flows out when they speak, I think it's pretty cool.

That's why I'll never get anti-intellectualism. Besides any personal feelings I attach to an idea, I find contemplating and imagining far too exhilarating an experience to deprive anyone of. I think that's why children are always so jubilant. They're constantly learning and it's awesome.

 

[Onder]

Drinking beer. Listening to the Battle Hymn of US and about to cook goulash. I also asked that cutie out tonight.

 

[Zephyrus]

That's why I'll never get anti-intellectualism. Besides any personal feelings I attach to an idea, I find contemplating and imagining far too exhilarating an experience to deprive anyone of. I think that's why children are always so jubilant. They're constantly learning and it's awesome.

Read Plato's Apology if you want to understand anti-intellectualism.