/lit/ - Literature

>>14782524
>Mark Manson
Skip that so.i garbage. Tomassi and Glover are good. As the other anon said, read more. Quality over quantity.

>>4644778

> Should we stop studying history because it's good enough?

That's not what I said. I was just saying that disciplined academics, for all its pretenses, makes about as much change-per-decade as glorified self help books.

Mainly because of natural circumstances, like readability and popularity, not because academics are "better" or "worse" than anyone else.

I didn't say anyone should stop what they're doing, I'm saying they should do it because they enjoy it, but take care to realize that it's a bit futile in terms of their own lifetime.

You walked away from my previous post with a misunderstanding of my point.

That doesn't make you shitty or stupid, but it kind of backs up what I was saying about highly rhetorical intellectuals and their trading-card-game of huge volumes of thoughts that go largely unnoticed by the public at large. Even they, in analyzing each other's works, fail to understand each other and engage in years-long arguments which go unresolved.

>>4612940

It's not a nonsensical question actually.

There are multiple hypotheses, including the collapse of a previous universe, the existence of multiple universes spawning offshoot universes, and of course creationism.

The question isn't nonsensical because it is essentially the same gripping mystery we started with, even before knowing about red shift, blue shift, and the expansion of the universe.

(not trying to defend biblical literealists/other creationists).

>>4607242

You know what, you're right.

I have to give you a point there. False dichotomies are awful, and they divide people into camps unnecessarily, and erode middle grounds.

I'm fully willing to admit I was being sloppy.

My point stands, though, not all people who choose to have a "gnostic" interpretation of the bible are necessarily elitist/pretentious/whatever.

I hate it when someone decides to be something different, and everyone else tries to conjure up images of a person holding their pinky out and their nose to the sky. Not a gnostic, btw.

>>4448457

No.

> I don't have time to do ALL THOSE THINGS

That's me.

Don't be a cunt and take my words out of context.

There are many people on /sci/ who would come here and demand that you all drop your love for humanity and immediately learn physics, biology, chemistry, neurochemistry, etc.

But the (economic and social) truth is the world divides into professions precisely because no one has time for everything.

Now stop responding to me so I can go learn Russian. Just so I can read through W&P AGAIN, at the pace of a toddler.

>>4369768

>All of Berkeley's arguments are essentially of the form that you make:

Really? Interesting. We'll see.

>that matter on the metaphysical conception doesn't do any practical work. All you need to refer to are objects of various sorts and the mathematical relationships those objects have to each other.

>objects

Isn't that just a synonym for matter? Material? Stuff? Objects? Junk? Crap? A bunch of shit that effects? Not trying to be rude, but "objects and their mathematical relationships" is exactly what "matter" is to scientists. Whether we're studying large objects, or their itty bitty components. From the subatomic to the intergalactic, matter is just "objects and their mathematical relationships."

>Positing some further mind-independence substance or substratum of these objects does no practical work at all, whether in science of in daily life.

Ah. This is where I think I differ from Berkeley (who I still haven't read btw, I'm going on what you're presenting). I'd argue that posting matter to be "mind dependent" or Mind indepenet" are both impractical matters in daily life. You're placing an arbitrary emphasis on mind dependence. You speak as though positing mind independence of matter is going out of one's way to divert from a default. But why is mind-dependence the default paradigm? Both are arbitrary paradigms until evidence regarding the behavior of the universe (the largest matter there is) shows that matter is independent of observation.

What was I arguing about again? I'm hungry. Independent of this conversation.

There's food in the fridge. Independent of this room.

My girlfriend can eat some when she gets home, even if I suddenly die for some reason.
Unless I'm making the universe with my mind, every minute, but I'll assume I'm not.
So either what you're saying has nothing to do with the 'matter' Berkeley was interested in denying or your pragmatic approach is, by Berkeley's argument, going to undermine the posit of matter.

Listened to War and Peace as audiobook read by Alexander Scourby for last two months, at work. Data entry jobs. Yay.

War and Peace is a series of peace-like war scenes in which young men talk merrily with each other before dying senselessly, and a series of war-like peace scenes in which aristocrats scheme incessantly for incremental gains in "control" of the crumbling world around them.

The two "main characters" (though it's truly an ensemble cast) I like to think are Pierre and Prince Andrew.

The latter is a soldier and a father.

The former is a bachelor and a scholar.

Both are naive, but in opposite ways.

Tolstoy breaks the fourth wall occasionally to talk philosophically on the impossibility of knowing things. It can get annoying and repetitive, but he does occasionally have good points.

It's worth at least one read, I think, if you have the patience.

Also, it's hilarious (SPOILER) seeing an 1800s version of a tinfoil-hatter conspiracy theorist in the character of Pierre.

W&P cycles rapidly between being poignant, depressing, and hilarious, depending on your patience.