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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/04/24 in all areas

  1. If your intent is not merely to stir the pot as so many thousands of good little Chinese and Russian trolls are doing right now across the internet in a directed attempt to sow division and discord during a US presidential election, then you should clarify what discussion you wish to have here around this.
    3 points
  2. The first law of holes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_holes
    1 point
  3. I know what biologists mean when they say "proofreading". I was referring to people who take these metaphors for what they're not and argue that it somehow implies there's an intention at work there. Same goes, I think, for terms such as "ant doctors". "Ant doctors" is shorter to say than carbohydrate-driven release of metapleural secretion" or something like that. That's what makes these particular ants (all of them) "doctors". There's nothing more going on there.
    1 point
  4. It has nothing to do with having a different point of view. It has to do with giving a well-argued point of view. This is a science discussion site. Only when people exchange good arguments, interesting discussions can arise. Science is about a reality that we share, so discussing about this reality, a consensus should theoretically be possible. Having said that, what happens here is more like (bad) philosophy. Philosophy is methodologically a bit more complicated case than science, because this shared reality is not a given. Philosophy's 'material' is how we actually think, and as it is clear that everybody thinks differently. Still, humans share a lot in how they think, and philosophy can help to flesh this thinking out, making it explicit. And then we can also see our differences better, and argue about them. So having not a shared reality, as in science, presses an even heavier load on formulating clear and argumentatively correct arguments. There is no final arbiter in philosophy. What you are doing is spawning ideas that pop up in your mind. See one of the lines in my disclaimer: "At its best, philosophy is intellectual reverse engineering, methodically dismantling bad habits of thought that sustain intellectual pandemics and replacing them with better thinking tools."
    1 point
  5. You didn’t say “I don’t know, yet” You said god did it. If your view is that the mind/intentions of god are unknowable, then it’s game over - no further investigation will reveal anything. Which is the antithesis of science.
    1 point
  6. Four years ago, I saw clearly that this trend in jokes was coming. It was 2020. You really can't compare Canadians and Americans. In two centuries, it's only been possible to draw one parallel between them. Canadians have more freedoms than Americans do. It's because we gave them more latitude. Things were simpler 1923 years ago. That's why we start with History 101.
    1 point
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