Milky Jade

When people think yester-yesteryyears' fashion is already fashionable again by rule of fashion cyclus. First of all, that's nonsense, second, it's a little longer than that Sir.

Requesting source on inborn pink hair colour

Deathly Hallows pt 2 Halfway through the pensieve (snape's memory) and harry's realization he has to die and then mee*ting up with Ron & Hermione, Harry says "there's a reason I can hear them. the horcruxes" "I think I have known for a while" "and I think you have, too" and then hermione sobs and I lose it completely

You just pluck it. Damaging the ground isn't a smart idea.

I redeemed the pringles action lids in Burger King, then I remembered Burger King is kind of bleh and I gave the burgers to a homeless woman Whenever I help out people that suddenly have "too little money for their tube ticket", I don't really feel like I did something good, afterwards, anymore. I think it comes with growing old. Yet, I somehow feel this inner "tug" when someone asks me for pocket change. I kind of hate it, and try to fight it. That one other time I encountered the same person twice, that first asked me for tissues, and then for money for a ticket. I said I recognized him, and didn't give him any money, "how likely is it you miscalculated twice?" He said nothing, got on the same tube as me and exited the next stop, immediately taking out his wallet and putting up that confused "i might have too little money" act again There's the kind beggars, and the rude beggars....

Turn over and continue dreaming

This is going to my last reply to you, so make of it what you will. You can make nonsense of it, too. First of all, I tried to cut as much of the irrelevant junk away, and I'm still left with a dozen-odd issues to tackle. So let's start. 1. I make mention of it in reference to nazi belt buckles. That's right, they all wore that. The majority of Nazis and the Nazi Party were christians. Hitler explicity stated that Nazism was founded on Christianity. 2. Nyet, I haven't been refering to Nazi doctors. I have been refering to christian and islamic practises, like circumcision and the rape of virgins in order to make* them* legally executable under shariah law. 3. I made a deduction of what you chose to state. You could've said this from the start, or you could've stated that subjective morality stands in contrast to wide cultural practise, but somehow still transcultural. You know, just saying. Confusion cleared, moving on. 4. Nowadays, moral relativism basically translates to "thought". What's the point of establishing a morality if everyone is equally valid in their actions? The truth is that they're not, according to moral relativism anyway, and no person that subscribes to it should be found saying that the Nazi's action were proper because they were proper to THEM. Truth time: The morality of ethnic cleansing cannot ever be rationally defended. Moral relativism "knows this". The entire time I'm getting vibes of "moral relativism gives you permission to function like an asshole, therefore moral absolutism must be valid". I'd disagree, if that's really your view. 5. Pretty much agreeable what Kant says, if only by accident. However, intrinsic worth is a ham-handed thing for philosophers to argue.. consider they should know best that the issue of values presupposes someone to which something could represent a value, and to value indiscriminately or by force means to destroy that precept: without a standard of value, there can be no values. Values are relative to the standard of value you choose. Caveat: This truth doesn't make a case for relativism. 6. I should think it is possible for people to be alive and still NOT value themselves, or their lives. Inherency, inherent values, inherently good, inherently evil, are all fallacies in one vein: To be morally good, or evil, presupposes a choice that would distinguish your actions from its corollaries in order to make a judgement. Where there is no choice (read: where there is no alternative), then what you possess is not within the province of morality. Consider a robot that has no choice to act but in the way it was programmed to act. You cannot apply 'good' and 'evil' to it: The robot cannot consider anything as 'for' or 'against' any given standard of value. Just as it would be absurd to blame the water if you drown, an undertaken action may only be moral if there exists the choice to be not. 7. It is not illegal to own Nazi artefacts in germany (unless it is illegal to own them anyway, like guns). Scores of elderly people have their attics filled with them, functioning as a goldmine for any chance cleanup service. "keep what you want", they'll say, and it makes me a bit jealous. I mean, admit it, lugers are sexy. 8. Hitler didn't really behave unbiblically.. isn't it the duty of the chosen people to get everyone out of their promised land, and all the chosen people inside of it? So they can be raptured? What of the "smite them with great slaughter" and "take their women, their asses, and their stocks" and "lay waste to the rest"? I don't think it's really proper to say "even as a christian/catholic": It is precisely immoral actions like that (though less severe in consequence) that people who consider themselves morally serious could and would justify on religious grounds. The genocide. The slavery. The fact that the church now approaches us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way, still leaves all their work and due apology ahead of them. Also, note that the church only officially admitted that slavery was uncool 20 YEARS after Hitler's death. 9. I don't follow If christianity's 'absolute morals' is equal to 'do whatever god says because we trust him not to lie to us', then how the bloody hell is that different from the totalitarian regime Hitler and Stalin edified? I made the case that their moral fundamentals are the same, and whether or not the moral extrapolations were purposely relative or absolute doesn't change the fact that the outcome is literally the same. 10. I don't think what Richard Dawkins has to say is in any way relevant enough to be brought up more than once. I don't want to accuse you of an appeal to authority. Anyway, it is widely known to anybody that knows Dawkins that he is not a social darwinist, "IN SPITE OF BEING A DARWINIAN". Like.. hurrrr... does it come as a surprise to anybody? Did it really surprise you? Really? Darwinism has no moral ramifications. Not even any serious repercussions. You can be a wanker and say "if you believe in darwinism, that means you believe in eating the less fit/fortune and where is the place for morals in your world view if you believe darwinism is true hurf de durf" - nevertheless, that is self-evidently beyond even a straw man. No, darwinism isn't a moral world view. This is why you TYPICALLY don't see darwinists encourage a dog-eat-dog society. Besides, "survival of the fittest" is often mistaken for "survival of the strongest", and this biological misconception is clearly why the moniker "social darwinism" is even a thing. 11. I'll stick to what I said. Atheism cannot be a motivation for the reasons I gave you. Think of a motivation as a vector pointing radially away from your center. To assume atheism can be a motivation is to assume that it exists as a negative.. but vectors may only have definite sums. I'm sorry, Sir - you may be motivated by 'something', but you may not claim to be motivated by your 'lack of motivation' for another thing. You're trying to set up a default with a clear alternative, formally known as a false dichotomy. 12. Militant atheism is motivated, which actually serves to beautifully confirm what I said. Atheism is aware of theism's and theocracy's worldwide depredations - fractionally increasing their dislike for the arrogations (occasional works of charity) and the false consolation parts of it, but mainly viewing it as a global force for evil. Thus, it is called "Anti-theism", which ought to be distinguished from the definition of Atheism, which is sterile and proper without the optional addendum. You *can* be anti-theistically motivated. You can be motivated to establish an opposition to theism. That is the basis of anti-theism, or militant atheism. However, to be an atheist does not mean that you are automatically (by default) trying to establish an opposition to theism, nor does it mean you are automatically motivated to do anything. Stalin's actions were clearly not undertaken to wipe religious fanaticism off the globe. Whatever his motivations may have properly been, they were not *based* in his supposed atheism. You cannot *base* anything in your lack of belief. However, your lack of belief can have corollary consequences in which you may in turn base yourself in (such as the proliferation of your view, which applies to any view). I think I missed the mother theresa quote somewhere along the lines, so I'll just deal with it at the end. If by Mother Theresa's humanitarian works, you mean the establishment of "hospitals" (read: transitional morgues, made from cots and bunks where medicine is scant, needles are being reused, hygiene is foreign and prayers would do more than the aid people receive from the nuns), the ingenious use of the fruits of her fund raising (above a million dollars from charles keiting!), and her very constructive ideas that serve as hallmarks of her moral splendour (abortion is the leading cause for the misery in this world)(contraception is the moral equivalent of murder)(AIDS might be bad, but not quite as bad as condoms are bad) etc. From a person that shady, that disgustingly abject, you could not expect any better than this: From a person that thinks diseases are jesus' (cold) hands embracing you and calling you to heaven, can you expect her hospitals to do any more than function as a dying site under the banner of humanitarian work? "Oh, I am so humble, I can hardly bother to feed myself". Now that's the moral maxime that humanity needs - to not work cooperatively to diminish suffering and hunger, but rather prohibit abortions to make life just so much more taxing for the starving populace. *Never once could I have imagined a moral paragon in the consensus of the world to be this abhorrently wicked and destructive. Just thinking about the deaths her preachings and actions have tallied is making me shudder with disgust and loathing.

Whoah, what a mess. Let's try to take it apart. 1. You seem to understand that a subjective morality means to not draw your morality from "outside authority", but from your own views. According to that distinction, the absolute morality you describe is, in fact, a subjective morality. What authority is issuing these morals does nothing to resolve whether they're absolute or not. Kant's categorical imperative is hardly an example for absolute morals, anyway. 2. Ironically, the only people that ever attempted to justify the mutilation of children, rape and torture of women, and so on, tried to do so on religious grounds, "with god on our side" ("Gott mit uns", for reference.). Generally, the good people will do the best they can, the bad the worst they can - but to make a good person behave wickedly, it needs religion. 3. See, that is where the things you say get confusing. Forgive me, but it sounds like you think that 'subjective morality' = 'pertaining to an individual or small group's interest' and 'absolute morality' = 'acting for the greater good'. Well, that's barking. I'm sorry, Sir. I don't think you studied philosophy as extensively as you purport to have done. 4. North Korea's head of state is de facto Kim Jong Il's father, Kim Il-sung. His son remains commander in chief of the army, but his grandfather retains his position beyond the grave. Hitchens actually described this wicked clutch of zealous yahoos as a "necrocracy" - and, "just one short of a trinity". Just take a look at the fanatical worshipping of these leaders. The parallels are horrifying. Just to make this clear: there is no such thing as an "atheistic motivation". Atheism is the rejection of theism. You can act upon it about as well as you can be motivated by the fact that you're not a dog. It gets people upset that atheists may chalk Hitler's mania up to religious motivation (as well as the church's silence and inactivity during the time of the final solution), but that you cannot apply it analog to Stalin (such in the following: "stalin's atheism was what killed 20 million people") or any other massmurderer. A nonreligious motivation is not an atheistic motivation. Is that now clear? 5. Nazis were socialists, and socialism is rooted in the same virtues that religions prescribe to: although, the Nazis were even more explicit than the christians in preaching self-sacrifice, sacrifice for the "Folk", the people. Bolt Italic Underlined: Re: socialism (communism lite) This is exactly what both Hitler and Stalin achieved by adhereing to the very morals you declare as "absolute" and "ethical", erroneously as I already pointed out in (1.). This is literally what communism achieves: A considerable life quality drop, compulsion to uphold a government of moral betters, a serf party by which everybody is enslaved to everybody, economic disaster and nationwide depredations. All based on altruistic principles, on the value of self-sacrifice and that we cannot be trusted to be morally good by ourselves. We should be able to agree that absolute morality is not an automatic solution to the failures of moral insanity. It generally is interchangeable, anyway.

'68, why? It's basically, like... do you know Mario Kart?

Also, while we're at it, Wacky Races! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESi7uGMNaMs

Wasn't there a thread like this already? Well, I'm gonna stick to Daria, again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdZsqZKT3oY

@@Cstriker, I don't think you want to be caught saying that the holocaust was the result of a subjective morality.

If you understood what I've ruminated times over, then there was no need to make this.. entire block. Philosophically, the subconscious has different connotations. But: I don't have to use the consciousness to prove it to you philosophically. Anyway, I've written rhapsodic about this topic in a different thread, about the neuroscience and information theory of consciousness.. anyway, I think you can find yourself able to trust me when I say that I think the subconscious is not a 'real' thing, as far as it's ascertained, but philosophically, it definitely is. Dunmatter, this discussion is as good as over. 1. And this is where it gets philosophical. My case starts in the following: To make a meaningful differentiation, you have to differentiate between your mind which is in current focal awareness, and your mind which is not. Percepts actually act to encapture more than just a single sense at a time, that is to say, we can perceive things as 'entities', rather than a sum of senses. However, our perceptual awareness is limited, in a way that we may not visualize a thousand grains or a distance of 100 light years. What your conscious awareness allows you to do, is exactly that. Whether people like it or not, the act of staying conscious is the act to stay focused. No, of course I don't bloody mean the difference between being asleep or knocked out and otherwise. I mean the differentiation between staying consciously aware, and unfocused. Think... GIGO. Scientists like to use it to declare that with any given tool (formula, computer..), if you feed it nonsense (Garbage In), it will give you appropriate returns of nonsense (Garbage Out). The philosophical "subconscious" can be best explained using a programmed computer as an example. Side note: It's not necessary that you agree there exists a subconscious. I don't really, either. But we don't need neuroscience and psychology to disprove it: the terms we use may as well be substituted with "frog" and "umbrella", and it would still hold. So.. GIGO. The output of your computer is determined by the quality of the input. Your conscious mind is the one that programs the computer that is your subconscious.. the code you write for it with your conscious awareness is like programming yourself to react in a specific way automatically, according to your values, and the output will be the corresponding emotion. If however you have an empty code, you're letting your subconscious default, a decision that takes less effort and a large contingent of humanity could be accused of having made and which leaves no mystery as to why everything is so severely fucked up. 2. To be unconscious means to not be in focal awareness, as I pointed out. This presupposes a choice. If your entire consciousness shuts down, that is a pity, but to wake up does not mean that you are conscious, aware, and focussed by default. People like to think that consciousness and awareness are something you cannot opt out of, unless of course they drift on clouds inside their heads without so much as a single mental utterance. Since three is golden: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/focus.html I really don't want to run circles with you, again. Sometimes you have to think "nah, she couldn't've been that stupid". Think the alternative, or something. No, I'm not saying that you have to focus in order to not instantly fall asleep or knock yourself out. I'm saying that to lose your focus, essentially, is to deactivate the part of consciousness that doesn't instantly boot up when you wake from your sleep... Also: we can continue to PM, if you'd rather have that.

1: I have been trying to tell you that 'perception' isn't just perception, but it's a specific, delineated means of gathering information. This is what properly defines your perception - so in order to make a statement about the validity of it, you must ask yourself " is our perception doing its job alright? " - not "does our perception make us aware of how reality >actually< looks like? If you want like, know all the quantum states and arrangements and Kant-punch Heisenberg, go ahead, because you're now literally God. The reason we have perception is because we aren't omniscient, so it is not proper to our perception to be called upon to be omniscient, and therefore its validity is not dependent on it. 2. Well I guess they're crying to get their lungs working, but I'd be willing to argue that you *can* know what fresh air tastes like, without having had a cigarette in your life. If you then smoke it, and yearn for fresh air, you now have a better reference point (if smoking is like, rock bottom), but your first taste of fresh air is therefore not less real than it is now.... 3. I think I've been bumping the issue somewhere before.. we are left to be with two choices - to be conscious, or to not be conscious. Our brains are forcing our hands on that decision. You can stay conscious by integrating the sense data around you with your consciousness and form it into concepts(ideas) in your "subconscious" (let's be very careful with this word). This is a willful act of cognition that requires effort (it actually burns calories, if you want proof). To choose the opposite - to not do it, is to act at chance whims, without following anything that would require to "leaf through" your values and act according to them: it would be the mental equivalent of being a zombie, to which knowledge has no use. This is to be unconscious.. but there's another alternative: the case in which you don't have to make an effort at all - being omniscient. To be omniscient means to be somehow, directly tied to knowledge, naturally. It comes to you unsolicitedly, to be omniscient means to have no choice in the matter. Maybe you've now started to develop a distaste for the idea of omniscience? I really hope I did something to at least get your suspicion activated. 4. Well, that's true, but knowledge presupposes other things. Generally, this is how it goes down: Senses perceive data -> perception retains multiple stimuli -> separation and abstraction of percepts -> cognition -> mental integration -> concepts -> higher concepts -> and even higher concepts... (-> concretes -> language -> knowledge -> sciences) "Let the witch doctor who does not choose to accept the validity of sensory perception, try to prove it without using the data he obtained by sensory perception." 5. Which is true. Does that mean we agree? 6. I think we should find no further points of contention. To be honest, we discussed this extensively. There is no way I'm going to continue writing these beasts, if the need exists, I'll keep it short... they say you can do things beyond necessity. Hanyway, I think we pretty much wrapped up. Give me a call whenever. I suggest leaving room for the other folks, too...

Well, actually, it is, because I'm arguing for the validity of our perceptions, and you chose to ignore that in favour of arguing besides, along the lines of "validity = omniscience". Look: Generally, there are two options. Either you attain knowledge with a willfull act of cognition, by integrating the information gathered by your senses into percepts, and those into concepts –– Or you find yourself to be the vessel of knowledge that takes no effort to attain - that it comes to you naturally - whether by divine inspiration or otherwise. Since we clearly are not the recipients of free knowledge, the only thing proper for us is to use our senses - and it would be improper to ask of these senses to, well, not exist - because our senses only exist on the basis that we are not omniscient and therefore need them. No, that is your straaaw maaan. I don't care about being omniscient - i.e., being able to see things without the 'middle man', our senses, which are tuned to use only the needed information; and are 'fallible'. Omniscience is the only way of "perceiving" objective reality. Do you see me arguing the entire time that omniscience is not pertinent to the validity of our senses? You do? Good. Just to get it straight - again - the validity of our senses is perpetually confirmed in daily life. Thinkable objections would be hallucinations (though we're constantly being drugged by our brains anyway, technically, perception is a drug trip), and ailments. If you punch someone, you see your fist connect with their face, you feel the pain in your hand and then in your face. It shouldn't come to you as a surprise, unless you actually saw yourself watering flowers or something. When I asked Discord, I was trying to get to a point where it would be obvious why his statement has no meaning in philosophy. Yes, we are contingent on our perceptions - while Kant (and Discord) think that this means that they are naught therefore, I think it proves the opposite. The evolution of the eyeball, whatever - just punch Kant in the face to prove him wrong. And we can't know the white without first knowing the black. That's brilliant - knowledge comes only in pairs? Don't children experience happiness, generally, before they experience suffering? There is no such requirement.. a 'knowledge barometer' doesn't exist. However, we *do* have some kind of barometer, which differentiates pleasure and pain. Bold Italic Underlined: Re: willful act of cognition I thought i'd be getting there eventually - you cannot make sense of the information you conclude in experiments, without perception. What you said is right, for the reasons I gave above: To escape the subjection of using your brain, and to be conscious, you can do easily - on the other hand, the alternative is to be unconscious or omniscient - so in order to acquire knowledge, you have to make a decision here. You cannot have both. The rest of what you said is perfectly agreeable. Precisely my point, actually. You wouldn't trust yourself to acquire knowledge if you assume that your perception is invalid. Experiments and testings and endless confirming requires your perception, too - this is where I've lost a number of people before, I think - validity does not imply instant, accurate information. It can be instant and inaccurate, cumbersome to acquire and accurate, neither or both - but the fact remains that in order to assume that we *can* have knowledge, the first step is to assume that you can form the prerequisite percepts to integrate the information at hand, into knowledge.

And that's the strawman - I've asked about the validity of your perception. I already stated that in order to make a countercase for camouflaged creatures, hallucinations and approximations, you've spun 540° and coast towards the misunderstanding I suspected to be at work. It can be boiled down to "perceptions are invalid because they are not perfect" (read: absurd). There is a reason people are not selling their eyes on ebay. I'm willing to ignore all of this nonsense to pose a different question: Are our perceptions the only means we have of gathering knowledge? And the corollary question: Do we have knowledge? Unless of course you disagree that we do... now that this has been finally resolved: See, colour is not a property of things per se. Colours are 'added' by our brain. The shape of things as we see them is appropriate to our sense of depth and distance. This is why we don't constantly walk into walls. Now, is what we see 'different' from how something is? Well... who can really say? What *is* the reality? If I see the camouflage of a creature, I still see that creature, but I'm not aware that it is a creature - because there's no actual difference between itself and the surrounding - hardly a case for invalid eyes... so what would an eye be able to see in order to be generally reliable? Down to the electrons and quarks? Our eyes use the information that is important. A lot of the information that you drown in, is being discarded right off the bat. You wouldn't be able to make sense of what you see, if it weren't like that. Approximation or not, eyes serve a specific end. I think they are valid for the reason that they developed and evolved to this point (from a tiny hole that is able to tell the difference between light and dark), because faulty eyes don't serve constructive ends. The onslaught on perception is not unlike the onslaught on knowledge - by saying that our perceptions are invalid, you are in effect saying that only absolute knowledge is proper, and since we do not have that, our 'intrinsically subjective' perceptions can never be a proper means of attaining knowledge. I shouldn't think I need to explain why I abhor these baleful ideas.

If you have trouble with my argument, maybe you can start by asking yourself just why exactly "reliability" has to be equivalent to "100% accurate", and how the fact that it's not is conducive to my argument. See you after the weekend, dearie.

I love you for 'om mani padme hum' brohoof'd and such bedtime

Since perception is a prerequisite to cognition, I think it cannot ever be seriously dismissed as unreliable. It is precisely as you said: it gives us a close approximation - which contains the implicit statement that it is reliable. What we first need to resolve: Do we require to see the entire spectrum of light? Well, unless you want to drown in a murky blur, no... but is it imperative to making a statement pertinent to your perception? Again, no - and this is why I'm a bit disappointed that people tend to be cute and immediately jump to electromagnetic radiation. Generally, it'd only work as a thinkable objection if it went down like this: "This lamp is green" "No, it's not, dumbass, it's pilmy" "What the fuck is pilmy?" "Oh, I just remembered that you don't have mantis shrimp eye implants" Since this kind of conversation never goes down - principally because we all share the same set of eyes, more or less - as well as the fact that even if we did see different colours, we'd still be unable to prove it because we've been calling the same colours the same names for all our lives - I really don't see the impact on the validity of perception. A perception is satisfied with what stimulates it. To ask it to be stimulated by more than it is, is to in turn ask it to be 'omniperceptive', because that'd be the prerequisite for 'omniscience'. The fact that it isn't, makes it invalid insofar you think that validity is equal to 'omniperception', which is in turn incompatible with our identity: that we're human beings, not omniscient beings. The entire colour argument is, more or less, a strawman.

I initially wanted to make a big detour around philosophy threads because I'm no good at making a proper case, half of the time. Essentially, what happens in these threads is that you are trying to prove somebody wrong, or yourself right, and that's where the "fun" only begins..... So, you've brought up "different views", "subjectivity" and "meaning". In order to resolve these, you first have to ask the questions that they presuppose: "what is the decisive factor in the validity of a view?" "of meaning to whom?" If you go ahead and assume that everyone's view is equally valid, in their own minds, then you are basically saying that no one's view is valid. This is where I'll need to explain 'identity'. You said: "It's possible for an object to be one thing and also another" This idea is incompatible with the philosophical idea of identity - namely, "A equals A" - the idea by which a delineated object with specific nature made of specific attributes is separated from the nothingness of nonexistence. In order to arrive here, you will have to start with existence, because identity is concerned with existence. Do things exist? Well, you should find evidence aplenty in your porn folder, so there's that. Do things have an identity? Generally speaking, can you have your cake and eat it, too? The idea of identity is concerned with things as they are - because in order to assert the state of something to be something, you have to assume that it cannot be another thing outside of its delineation - which is to say, you cannot be both in New York and Hong Kong, you cannot be a human and a crocodile, nor can you be right and wrong at the same time. The law of identity is similar to an axiom because it affects you in your most basic, inescapable assumptions. However, the thinkable objections are not pertinent to the kind of identities that we are discussing: Things as they are - and a thing is what it is. The attributes that constitute its identity is what a thing is. An existence apart from its attributes would be an existence apart from its identity, a nonexistence. It is said thus that your white view and my black view don't make an object grey. The next step from this is subjectivity, which stands in direct contradiction with knowledge yet again (surprise, surprise), and is famous for statements along the line of "true for me", "that's just, like, your opinion, man", and so on. If you want an object to maintain its identity, you have to grant it the possibility to be understood by people that care to understand it. Kant obviously doesn't, but we're better than that. You mentioned "meaning", and showing a book to a dog. A book is a book. It has a different meaning to us (comparing humans to dogs is kind of "silly", considering how they aren't rational beings) than it has to dogs - sure, but does that constitute a good example? "Meaning" is the direct consequence of a meaning-giver, the corollary of intent. Things that weren't intended, have no meaning - such as rocks, for example. Books, however.. are being printed to be sold, read, shelf'd, maybe even burned. That, and nothing else, is the proper definition of "meaning". The presupposed question of "meaning" is: "of meaning to whom? and for what reason?". This, however, is not to be united or confused with the law of identity. A rock's identity is a rock - being a bear's back-scratcher doesn't make it "not a rock". The bear's hypothetical subjective view cannot impede on the rock's identity, because it is not capable of altering its delineations or reality. A book will still be a book, no matter if it is intelligible to a dog. The identity of things does not require all sentient beings to parse it equally.

If there is a case proper to the "benefit of the doubt", then that's what I addressed. I like to "beat them to it", as it is said.. Because should anyone think of "scepticism" as the equivalent to "passion for science", then that is what I meant by "false dichotomy". The basal assumption of scepticism is wayward to that of science. You do not call yourself a scepticist for any reason aside from thinking that that is what it is to be a scientist. If you understood me, Discord, then you should find yourself in no place able to say that about yourself... unless you'd like me to accuse of you intellectual dishonesty? If you believe in consequential proof (as science clearly does), you're already a step-up from a scepticist. People love scepticism, it's their favourite toy. Because the easiest (and most evidently set to fail) way to appear smart and compelling is by questioning something well-established, because it suggests that you are privvy to information that could undermine it single-handedly. Ironically, you don't, but since you started it, people are jumping onto the uncertainty bandwagon - even those that established the thing in question in the first place... It is often said, that scientists are "humble", aware of the things that they don't know (which is a perfectly alright thing by the way), and so on. What you won't see them say, however, is that they don't know if that car's safety system actually works. Or that they don't know whether or not the rocket is going to achieve escape velocity. Or that they don't know whether or not that surgical laser has an appropriate intensity for human flesh. Like it, or not.. scepticism doesn't stand against random assertions. It is not science's corollary. It doesn't stand in a dichotomy with a chance hillbilly's claim to have seen bigfoot. It is trying to stand in a dichotomy with knowledge itself - and thus, it is a cult thing. It is pretentious. It is not constructive. I think we should be landed with some grounds of agreement, if only slim.

I think it should be fine. Youtube is allowed, news (and) articles are allowed.. i guess a podcast, too. You could spare your answer as to the other question, if you want - because I'm not going to stick around for the weekend. The thread'll be left to fester while I'm gone. Make the worst of it, my friends.

"That is very interesting, you are very interesting." That philosophy being? Wait - is linking things forbidden on mlpforums?