/lit/ - Literature

>>2620653
So much the worse for politics. No surprise that politicians are dishonest, dumb morons. For a more efficient government, one shud use evidence-based policies instead of this ideological crap.

>>2620652
>Strictly, speaking, the answer is self-contradictory.

I meant:
Strictly, speaking, the question is self-contradictory.

The question i'm referring to is: What reason is there to be rational? (from a perspective of someone who wants to decide whether to be rational or not)

>>2620466
Strictly, speaking, the answer is self-contradictory. The mere (sincerely) asking for reasons for something, is to engage in rational behavior in some sense.

However, there is good reason to be rational, both egoistic reasons and moral reasons. Egoistic reasons is that it makes it easier for one to reach one's goals and avoiding unwanted consequences. For instance, if one has the goal of getting more healthy and one then follows advice from quacks and consequently gets more unhealthy, then one's own lack of rationality has had negative consequences for oneself.

Etc. etc.

Being rational is more than just knowing logic, tho. One wud also need to learn how to discuss properly, how to keep a cool mind and avoid emotional biases. Etc.

Being more 'logical' makes u better at good decisions. When people make bad decisions, this sometimes (often) harm themselves and sometimes harm others.

This is why people have a moral obligation to follow the evidence.

http://ajburger.homestead.com/files/book.htm

Random examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy
http://www.thelocal.se/40250/20120413/

I cud go on and on with examples. Believing without evidence is morally wrong.

Remove all the mandatory nonfiction from the reading list. Remove all pomo, psychoanalysist, marxist nonsense. Then, i'd wud begin to look much better.

Pomo feminist marxist psychoanalysist nonsense.

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed

>>2618333
I dislike fysical books. Not worth the money. Too bothersome to quote from. Etc.

No. There are far too many interesting things to read that are freely available.

So, religions are all false. Well, duh! Now what? Superstition is harmful, yes. Is it possible to change people's views? Yes, but difficult. OK, go do it then.

ABBYY finereader is the best program around right now for scanning books.

I have begin cutting up my books and scanning them. Or, if someone has already done it for me, i just give my books away. I have given most of my library away by now.

>>2618262
Size hardly matters in the age of computers. A 2TB external HDD can store more reading material than u can read in 50 years.

> Ok /lit/ i have realised that it is impossible to think or even speak without using metaphors of any kind. And if you try it will only lead to your frustration.

No metafor in that passage. What shud one conclude from that?

For the reasons given, i almost exclusively read ebooks in pdf format. Sometimes when i can only find it in some other format, i either read something else or convert to text to pdf and reformat it myself.

All kinds of instrumental music, and also music where the vocals are not very clear. The less clear they are, the less they distract me.

Jamendo.com has loads of instrumental music.

>>2617677
Read this:
http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/questions-answered-invented-languages/

then read her book. I looked for it some time ago in the internet but cudn't find a decent version. I found a scanned version that failed to include all the special characters used thruout the book.

>>2616458
IMO that's the coolest of those films.

>>2616332
Except for substituting PH with F, i suppose. I probably shud not include that in the proposal. I do it for my own benefit as of know. One stroke instead of two on the keyboard, and there can be no doubt about the sound as F only has one value i.e. /f/.

>>2616311
>So you think "fysics" works better than "fizics" or "fizicks"? You're not reforming that usage of "y"?

Not in the minimalist project. I'm basically just picking among the variety of spellings for the same word and choosing the one i like the best.

>>2616154
I swear that i cudn't make up such stupid shit. I must be too honest.

>>2616147
Such examples of language are rather common in the works of the persons mentioned. The authors of the book that Dawkins reviews also notes this. They just chose to deal only with the passages involving terms from their fields of study (fysics and math).

>>2616143
>Genuinely don't know whether to laugh or rage.

First laugh becus some people take it seriously.
Then rage becus u realize that people take it seriously, and get funding for it. Money that cud and shud have been used on something more... meaningful.

>>2616035
>So you didn't understand it. Why is this a cause for questioning of legitimacy? Would you have the same response if you picked up a scholarly text on quantum theory and didn't understand it?

One can get people to explain QM to me and i understand it fine. No one has ever been able to explain what people that write like the people Dawkins quotes do. They don't seem to mean anything. They fail the test and this makes me very suspicious.

The same point was made by Chomsky who also hates the intellectual imposters, typically french 'intellectuals'.

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

>>2616022
>the problem is that I recognise all the words but somehow they fail to come together and make a coherent text. Is he making some sort of statement? Asking a question? I don't know.

Yes, that is a known fenomenon to linguistics. Chomsky did the same with his famous example: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

It's called semantic-selection (s-selection). Some words require that the other words they are used with are of a specific type, otherwise the result will be nonsensical altho grammatical.

>>2616173
Jews are rather pretty as well.

Actually i don't know how beauty works cross-population. Are there really different averages of beauty between populations, or is it just an observer effect? I dunno.

One hypothesis is that it is a matter of intelligence. Intelligence and attractiveness correlate non-trivially, and we know that there are genetic differences in intelligence between populations. If this hypothesis is correct, then on average ashkenazi jews, east asians, whites, etc. shud be the rankings for beauty, in falling order.

>>2616033
>I only see a handful. There are hundreds. You have a pitiful minority of the worst of them on your webpage.

No, those i have posted there are all the rebuttals from the relevant issue of the journal. Look for urself if u doubt my word. I also posted them in chronological order.

Jensen and Rushton are spot on in their last article. More data, less moralizing is what is needed.