Boyi

This is a wonderful post, and it is a personal problem I strongly sympathize with. Here are my thoughts; I hope they are of some use.

But it’s not my true rejection. My true rejection is that them being wrong is too annoying for me to want to cooperate. Why? I haven’t changed my mind, really, about how much damage versus good I think churches do for the world.

You see physics and rationalism as right, but at the same time you value community (which is also right seeing as humans are social creatures who demand healthy relationships). This is an ethical ... (read more)

I do not say it means adding content. It means to remove offensive content. Offensive content that is morally base is considered vulgar.

Really great post! You are completely right on all accounts. Except I really am not a post-modernist, I just agree with some of their ideas, especially conceptions of power as you have pointed out.

I am particularly impressed with Bullet point # 2, because not only does it show an understanding of the basis of my ideas, but it also accurately points out irrationality in my actions given the theories I assert.

I would then ask you if understand this aspect of communities including your own, would you call this rational? It is no excuse, but I think coming... (read more)

??? Um no read sentence # 2.

Sorry I was again assuming a common basis of knowledge. Carbon emissions would be environmental damage (damaging to the biosphere as a whole). Ecological damages more commonly refers to damages to ecosystems (smaller communities within the biosphere). When people talk about ecological damages they are primarily talking about invasive species. Invasive species are plants, animal, bacteria, and fungi that have been artificially transported from one ecosystem to another and have no natural predator within it. Huge portions of American forest are being eradica... (read more)

I felt the major point of this article, "How to lose an argument," was that accepting that your beliefs, identity, and personal chocies are wrong is pyschologically damaging, and that most people will opt to deny wrongness to the bitter end rather than accept it. the author suggest that if you truly want to change people's opinions and not just boost yoru own ego, then it is more cost-effective to provide the oppostion with an exit that does not result with the individual having to bear the pyschological trauma of being wrong.

If you except the a... (read more)

My example wasn't meant to be a strawman, but simply an illustration of my point that human thoughts and behaviors are predictable.

I did not say your example was a strawman, my point was that it was reductionist. Determining the general color of the sky or whether or not things will fall is predicting human thoughts and behaviors many degrees simpler than what I am talking about. That is like if I were to say that multiplication is easy, so math must be easy.

I am fairly certain I personally can predict what an average American believes regarding th