In response to The Fallacy of Gray
Comment author: Dan_Burfoot 07 January 2008 09:56:30AM 11 points [-]

That which I cannot eliminate may be well worth reducing.

I wish this basically obvious point was more widely appreciated. I've participated in dozens of conversations which go like this:

Me: "Government is based on the principle of coercive violence. Coercive violence is bad. Therefore government is bad." Person: "Yeah, but we can't get rid of government, because we need it for roads, police, etc." Me: " $%&*@#!! Of course we can't get rid of it entirely, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth reducing!"

Great post. I encourage you to expand on the idea of the Quantitative Way as applied to areas such as self improvement and everyday life.

Comment author: Dan_Burfoot 19 December 2007 07:50:25AM 3 points [-]

If you want to object to Objectivism (hah) you should do so by discussing the ideas themselves, perhaps by citing passages that highlight basic ideas of the theory. Details of Rand's personal life are irrelevant. Hug the query.

There is an interesting kernel of an idea here: how can one establish a self-renewing philosophy? How can an intellectual leader construct a set of principles which specifically allow for their own revision? Of course, this is very similar to the question of how one can construct a Friendly AI, and the question of how one can construct a Friendly government.

Comment author: Dan_Burfoot 03 December 2007 03:25:03PM 1 point [-]

Persons interested in the concept of super-stimuli should note the work of music scientist Phillip Dorrell, who argues that music is a super-stimulus for language:

http://whatismusic.info/

He also speculates that software developers will soon be able to construct algorithms to produce "strong" music, that is, music which is better than any thusfar created by humans. This will bring about obvious addiction problems similar to those mentioned above relating to video games.

In response to Lost Purposes
Comment author: Dan_Burfoot 25 November 2007 04:13:41PM 8 points [-]

If you think about this for a while, you'll begin to realize how much of our civilization is based on lost purposes.

Why do men wear ties? Why do we build houses out of the one substance that rots and burns? Why do we type with QWERTY keyboards? Why isn't the department of defense also responsible for homeland security (what does defense mean, if not homeland security)?

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