Matthew_Pianalto

• Matthew_Pianalto 15 Apr 2007 20:38 UTC

  9 points

  0

  on: Your Ra­tion­al­ity is My Business

  W.K. Clifford gave a short, sweet argument for your position in his “The Ethics of Belief”:

  1. Our beliefs inform how we act.

  2. Our actions affect other people.

  3. Therefore. our beliefs affect other people. (And to the extent that how you treat me IS something I have a right to make judgments about, it IS my business what you believe or prefer...)

• Matthew_Pianalto 3 Apr 2007 3:54 UTC

  4 points

  on: The Ma­jor­ity Is Always Wrong

  Example: Cognitive therapy (vs. SSRIs like Prozac) - studies show that good cognitive therapy can bring about similar changes in brain patterns, and relapse is lower once treatment (or medication) is terminated. I don’t know how expensive good therapy is (so the user-end costs might be the same), but Pfizer sure isn’t making its buck on cognitive therapy. (You can google stats on SSRI use and comparative studies.)

• Matthew_Pianalto 24 Mar 2007 15:55 UTC

  3 points

  on: Archimedes’s Chronophone

  “Archimedes, don’t listen to what Aristotle said about Empedocles!” (Empedocles proposed a rough version of natural selection, and Aristotle rejected Empedocles’ view as absurd in his Physics.) I suppose that might be “too anachronistic,” depending upon just how much authority was given to Aristotle’s teleological view of the world. I don’t know that saying this would be forcing our own preferred conclusions on him.