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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Good one!!! ;-)
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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The only real ism is preceded with a J.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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You and John are on!
Most entertaining it's been here for a while.
Often the wind blows, but no rain...
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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jGill does nail an (in retrospect) obvious logical inconsistency in "thinking" vs. "truth".
IMO, we should always ruthlessly interrogate our own beliefs. A good rule of thumb, it seems to me, is to assume that, if your own belief on a subject is at odds with a much bigger population of subject matter experts, then you better be bringing something special to the table. Otherwise you're just a schmuck. Climate change is a good example subject.
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WBraun
climber
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All ultimately clueless mental speculators ......^^^^^
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Byran
climber
Half Dome Village
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A country where the Big Ten has eleven schools, and a fifth is four fifths of a quart.
"A fifth" gets its name because it's one-fifth of a gallon (which yes, is the same as four-fifths of a quart). Although typically they only contains 750ml. Just felt like pointing that out...
Also I think the Big Ten is up to 15 schools now.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3aLioDNAYg
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https://www.nature.com/news/reboot-for-the-ai-revolution-1.22826
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Not that anyone asked... but highly recommend Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain as a supplement to Wright's Why Buddhism is True.
"And so it goes with thoughts. What exactly is a thought? It doesn't seem to weigh anything. It feels ephemeral and ineffable [like our voice through the air]. You wouldn't think that a thought has a shape or smell or any sort of physical instantiation. Thoughts seem to be a kind of 'tremendous magic' [like a recorded voice to a 19th century west african native]." - Eagleman
Incognito. Well written. Keeps the reader positively grounded in science and helps keep him inoculated against America's (supertopo's) rampant, high-volume religious cling and woo-fest.
"So although it's easy to intuit that thoughts don't have a physical basis, that they are something like feathers on the wind, they in fact depend directly on the integrity of the enigmatic, three-pound mission control center."
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"Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the center of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind - for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic - religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of."
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Science facilitates lifelong learning...
"From the natural laboratory of evolution comes a related phenomenon in humans. At least 15 per cent of human females possess a genetic mutation that gives them an extra (fourth) type of color photoreceptor—and this allows them to discriminate between colors that look identical to the majority of us with a mere three types of color photoreceptors. Two color swatches that look identical to the majority of people would be clearly distinguishable to these ladies. (No one has yet determined what percentage of fashion arguments is caused by this mutation.)"
David Eagleman,
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
"The brain is properly thought of as a mostly closed system that runs on its own internally generated activity. We already have many examples of this sort of activity: for example, breathing, digestion, and walking are controlled by autonomously running activity generators in your brain stem and spinal cord."
"Throughout the brain there is as much feedback as feedforward—a feature of brain wiring that is technically called recurrence and colloquially called loopiness."
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"When as a girl she complained that the black clothing engulfing her body was too hot, her mother told her that hell was hotter."
http://quillette.com/2017/10/16/sarah-haider-normalizing-dissent-conversation/
"What we wanted to do with this tour was bring as much nuance to the conversation about Islam as we can." -Sarah Haider
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Tim Minchin - “9 Life Lessons” UWA address.
For Tim, that is.
Every life appears to be different. Lessons that can be derived for them or from them might be considered to be unique.
Ditto for most scholarship. Always be aware of the sample and its size. No one (to my knowledge) has ever measured an entire population of anything that is considered its own. Garbage in, garbage out.
One could justifiably be wary of any generalization.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2017 - 08:21am PT
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One could justifiably be wary of any generalization.
I love this ironic comment, MikeL... bravo!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2017 - 08:28am PT
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In conversation at least, it IS astonishing how we brush over our evolution, our history, our evolutionary psychology.
what, exactly, are you implying here, HFCS? replacing the excuse "the Devil made me do it" with "the DNA made me do it"?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 14, 2017 - 10:19am PT
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Well, there is some basis for our behavior. Including the behavior of older males around young pubescent and post-pubescent girls. If not DNA, what?
As you know, the Devil doesn't exist. He never did. However DNA is "alive and well."
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"Man is a plant which bears thoughts, just as a rose-tree bears roses and an apple-tree bears apples" -Antoine Fabre D'Olivet
No word on what Antoine said of woman. ;)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 16, 2017 - 11:38am PT
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One could justifiably be wary of any generalization
And . . . 'This sentence is not true'.
;>)
As you know, the Devil doesn't exist
Well, I beg to differ. He's alive and well on Fox TV's Lucifer, and pretty damned attractive at that!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 16, 2017 - 06:02pm PT
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Hey, I said "could." "Could" was my weasel word.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 19, 2017 - 04:25pm PT
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Malemute = clueless brainwashed idiot
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