drwhat posted:

it just seems like the most insane thing a person could say. i've heard it before even, from real life people, but i can't interpret it in any way that makes sense to me. isn't using a word in a human language a thought experiment, or referring to objects which are not directly in your cone of vision at the present moment, or considering that events happened in the past or may happen in the future, or conceiving of literally anything other than your current sensory input

i think thought experiments are a specific device used in philosophy etc. imaginings or whatever aren't necessarily thought experiments, i don't think. youre doing a thought experiment when you're trying to derive some general knowledge of the world (scientific, philosophical) from a contrived scenario that you think up. of course the usefulness or validity of thought experiments can be questionable (look at the nightmare melee in philosophy of mind surrounding the Twin Earth thought experiment for example).

tpaine posted:

i think most new atheists don't care about politics that much, and are just resisting the tendency of religious people to push their views on others (so they never even get to the truth of communism because of various reasons, such as other irrationalities). but i think what you wrote is pretty oversimplified and glosses over both the impact that these writers had (which was invaluable despite their weaknesses, unless you've forgotten the political climate of the early 2000s so thoroughly) and the strong connection between religion and capitalism, which is something this dingus forum never seems to want to discuss and i'm sure won't do it now

i dont think anyone on the rhizzone is opposed to criticisms of the material links between different religions and capitalism. the new atheists seem to largely rely on "they made a bad decision because of religious belief" - maybe that criticism vaguely works when we're talking about some podunk school boards position on "teach the controversy" or whatever but its slipshod when our focus shifts to US empire and War On Terror.

Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 (Oct. 3, 2016 03:03:49)

drwhat posted:

isn't using a word in a human language a thought experiment, or referring to objects which are not directly in your cone of vision at the present moment, or considering that events happened in the past or may happen in the future, or conceiving of literally anything other than your current sensory input

That's not the typical understanding of a thought experiment at all, it's so broad as to be meaningless. A thought experiment is specifically the examination of a hypothetical or counterfactual scenario that introduces no new empirical data, usually only referring to the empirical world through generalized knowledge and not specific points of actually existing data (Schrodinger's Cat relies on general knowledge of particle decay, quantum theory, boxes and cats, not experimental data about an actual cat in a box.) In other words, a constructed scenario.

They can be extremely useful for playing around with existing facts to shake out new hypotheses to test, or to better illustrate the ramifications of already known data. Your typical science thought experiment is perfectly fine.

It's when someone uses a thought experiment to dress up an untested hypothetical referring to vague or entirely fictitious data as evidence of a conclusive proof that things get shaky. This is the easiest way to shovel out a load of bullshit and sell it to the reader as delicious chocolate mousse. A rhetorical trick that presents pure fantasy as factual, evidence based analysis. In this thought experiment I invite you, the reader, into the artfully arranged fantasy garden of the World Where I Am Right, planting favorable circumstances, weeding out troublesome externalities and lovingly pruning counter-evidence into harmless forms. A science project blatantly composed of fraudulent evidence custom tailored to suit the hypothesis.

No wonder then that Sam Harris makes such gratuitous use of these. I nearly have a stroke every time I have to read that farcical bus bomber story in which he invites the reader to consider "the facts" conjured from his imagination and does a psychic hotline routine of guessing the conclusion he'd already primed them to visualize. Tadaah! The card inside this envelope held to my forehead reads "Bomb more brown children!"

So it's not so much that I hate thought experiments, I just hate the intellectual laziness and dishonesty that follows in their wake. I've read too much garbage philosophy and I've grown to hate my home discipline with a desperate passion.

shriekingviolet posted:

That's not the typical understanding of a thought experiment at all, it's so broad as to be meaningless.

that's why it made me mad! i didn't go to school really, so i don't know what the "typical understanding" of things are beyond what the words normally mean to me. thanks for explaining. my ex would get mad about hypothetical scenarios because she had issues so the topic set me off.

I've read too much garbage

it is all garbage all the way down

tpaine posted:

and the strong connection between religion and capitalism, which is something this dingus forum never seems to want to discuss and i'm sure won't do it now

didn't last thread on religion end up with chesterton av new evangelical guy getting burned alive by posts doing exactly that with zero opposition?? granted it was because NE "christianity" is a form of Satanism but still that's a W for you right?

Makeshift_Swahili posted:

ive always thought this would go good with the curb your enthusiasm treatment

Makeshift_Swahili posted:

"Modern schools that claim to train ninjutsu arose from the 1970s, including that of Masaaki Hatsumi (Bujinkan), Stephen K. Hayes (To-Shin Do), and Jinichi Kawakami (Banke Shinobinoden). The lineage and authenticity of these schools are a matter of controversy."

"The accuracy of many of Dux's personal claims has been disputed, including his martial arts background, fighting in the "Kumite", and prior military service. According to the Los Angeles Times, the organization that allegedly staged the Kumite had the same address as Dux's house, and the trophy he claims to have won was bought by him at a local trophy store. This was disputed by Dux, who claimed that the receipt was fabricated. He also claims that his critics are part of a conspiracy to discredit him, led by ninjutsu master Stephen K. Hayes, whom Dux claims views him as a threat"

and all of hayes' own mainstream press legitimacy stems from dumb reporters interviewing hayes during his slap fight with dux, because dux claims that he rescued asian babies using techniques that he says literally date back to the lost continent of Atlantis, while hayes merely claims that he is the 35th master of a medieval martial art completely unrecorded anywhere before the purported 33rd master taught it to hatsumi in the mid 20th century because the previous 32 were just so good at being ninjas apparently that their unbroken tradition was never recorded anywhere.

hayes became so successful at his con in the U.S. (pretty much everything you read on Wikipedia or see on cable about "ninja" was invented by hayes over the last 40 years) that hatsumi disowned him later and ripped his name off their fantasy dojo for not sharing profits from his books. if you ever interact with any of these guys it's like someone dropped a pallet of bricks on the heads of a bunch of scientologists, like that last claim in the paragraph above is actually what they tell people, forget absence of evidence not being evidence of absence, these guys argue that absence of evidence = proof, and because studying ninjas is a good way to sell history books to anyone ever outside of shitty university press there are decades' worth of academic scholars pretending like there's a "debate" about it.

tpaine posted:

wait how did we get on ninjas

Its helldump. We spent the last five years tearing down goon politics & ideology. Now onto ninjas and pirates.

tpaine posted:

wait i'm thinking of arnold schwarzanegger again, sorry