1- In a hypothetical world where God actually existed, it would be an OBJECTIVE belief and thus it would be worth saving people. (Just as with people killing themselves with harmful drugs under almost all real circumstances)
2- Why are you quoting Inception as a film rather than giving an argument?
3- From what I’ve read of history, people only change “en masse” when a minority causes them too either by propaganda or imposing their beliefs from above.
4- Given that almost no ideas are explicitly labelled masculine or feminine in modern (English-speaking) culture, you are presumably either ignoring English-speaking culture or contending it is subconscious.
4- Given that almost no ideas are explicitly labelled masculine or feminine in modern (English-speaking) culture, you are presumably either ignoring English-speaking culture or contending it is subconscious.
While I hope it will be true at some point in the future, saying this now would be wishful thinking when people get abused and assaulted daily for not conforming to so-called gender norms.
And people are often verbally abused for conforming to them. (I know that super-normal stimulus is a standard idea. Would it make sense to say that a male chauvinist pig is engaged in super-normal conformity?)
Some ideas are clearly associated with specific genders. To use one obvious example, ask people if they think of “war” as masculine or feminine. I’m pretty sure that most will answer masculine. I suspect that some form of Stroop interference test could quantify this more narrowly. Also, some words in English simply sound close to masculine names while other sound similar to feminine names, and I suspect that you’d get similar associations due to spreading activation.
Given that almost no ideas are explicitly labelled masculine or feminine in modern (English-speaking) culture, you are presumably either ignoring English-speaking culture or contending it is subconscious.
You’re not up on the current state of the cutting edge of postmodernist academia. It’s a scary place for those who think reality exists.
(Postmodernism is not inherently rubbish—it is indeed a fantastically useful tool in criticism and understanding of human culture, and other human activities that might as well be culture. As Lucidfox points out, rather more is relative than most people assume, and postmodernism is useful in working out what that is. Any writer should IMO have a working familiarity with its tools. However, some proponents really don’t realise that reality exists, and they end up slightly embarrassed.)
If you’re knowledgeable about postmodernism, it could be worthwhile to write a little “postmodernism for rationalists” intro. (in fact, hey, aren’t you the guy from … oh)
On the subject of saving lives—while this is off topic, I feel it would be an interesting debate what to do with Heaven and Hell in a world where they demonstrably existed, and we had objective evidence for what would land people in either. I’m tempted to say that it would make sense for it to be left to personal choice to knowingly do things that would result in you going to Hell, but I haven’t really given that issue much thought before you mentioned it. Hmm.
1- In a hypothetical world where God actually existed, it would be an OBJECTIVE belief and thus it would be worth saving people. (Just as with people killing themselves with harmful drugs under almost all real circumstances)
2- Why are you quoting Inception as a film rather than giving an argument?
3- From what I’ve read of history, people only change “en masse” when a minority causes them too either by propaganda or imposing their beliefs from above.
4- Given that almost no ideas are explicitly labelled masculine or feminine in modern (English-speaking) culture, you are presumably either ignoring English-speaking culture or contending it is subconscious.
While I hope it will be true at some point in the future, saying this now would be wishful thinking when people get abused and assaulted daily for not conforming to so-called gender norms.
1- Any actual examples in the Western world?
2- It is different to call everything masculine or feminine and to have gender norms- a culture can have one without the other.
And people are often verbally abused for conforming to them. (I know that super-normal stimulus is a standard idea. Would it make sense to say that a male chauvinist pig is engaged in super-normal conformity?)
Some ideas are clearly associated with specific genders. To use one obvious example, ask people if they think of “war” as masculine or feminine. I’m pretty sure that most will answer masculine. I suspect that some form of Stroop interference test could quantify this more narrowly. Also, some words in English simply sound close to masculine names while other sound similar to feminine names, and I suspect that you’d get similar associations due to spreading activation.
Most people only think of war as masculine or feminine when asked, with the exception of traditionalists who might see it as “manly”.
You’re not up on the current state of the cutting edge of postmodernist academia. It’s a scary place for those who think reality exists.
(Postmodernism is not inherently rubbish—it is indeed a fantastically useful tool in criticism and understanding of human culture, and other human activities that might as well be culture. As Lucidfox points out, rather more is relative than most people assume, and postmodernism is useful in working out what that is. Any writer should IMO have a working familiarity with its tools. However, some proponents really don’t realise that reality exists, and they end up slightly embarrassed.)
If you’re knowledgeable about postmodernism, it could be worthwhile to write a little “postmodernism for rationalists” intro. (in fact, hey, aren’t you the guy from … oh)
I didn’t write that article, but I did write the last paragraph of the intro :-)
I am tempted to rewrite it for RW, but I really am not expert enough on pomo to write it to the robustness it would require to survive on LW.
I’d like to read it, if only to clear the confusion about the myriad contradicting definitions of that term.
On the subject of saving lives—while this is off topic, I feel it would be an interesting debate what to do with Heaven and Hell in a world where they demonstrably existed, and we had objective evidence for what would land people in either. I’m tempted to say that it would make sense for it to be left to personal choice to knowingly do things that would result in you going to Hell, but I haven’t really given that issue much thought before you mentioned it. Hmm.
The new Iain M. Banks “Culture” novel Surface Detail is a fictional exploration of real Hells that some societies send people to.