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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • There’s a philosopher/history of philos on the bowling team I’ve just joined. I’m philospically inclined so I asked him if Descartes was ripping off Socrates’ “I only know that I know nothing” which could be interpreted as “I doubt everything except my existence”. It’s a topic that came up the other day on Lemmy. He said no, Socrates was just saying he was wiser than everyone else because he wasn’t deluded about his abilities.

    I asked him about Descartes’ relationship to solipsism reply: Descartes wasn’t a solipsist because his god wouldn’t deceive him like that, Descartes’ god is real because of the ontological argument. Which one’s that again?..

    I kinda just felt like I was making him do his job…








  • Everyone likes to believe they’re thinking independently.

    Can you elaborate on that claim?

    I exercise some critical analysis, but for the most part I just have trust in human ambition. For example: the reason I believe human CO2 emissions are driving climate change is not because I’ve looked at the evidence and evaluated it for myself.

    The reason I believe that human CO2 emissions are driving climate change is: that seems to be the consensus of people that have worked hard to impartially develop expertise and gather data to understand climate science.

    There are two important systems at play

    1: Scientific research, which harnesses human ambition by rewarding impartial research and discoveries which overturn old assumptions/paradigms.

    2: Journalism, which harnesses human ambition by rewarding impartial reporting on various fields of human interest. (Reporting is why it seems to be the consensus of the scientific community)

    The impartiality of these systems is (has always been) under assault by capitalism (which also derives its power by harnessing human ambition) and so one must, to an increasing degree, evaluate the appropriate level of personal mental effort to allocate to identifying biases in the reporting.