The Incomplete Cynic

I'm usually a pessimist, but sometimes I just can't not believe.

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pianycist:

holeycynicism:

fuckyeahemergence:

pianycist:

(via queersecrets)
If you truly didn’t care, listening to people talking about their self-descriptions shouldn’t bother you.


I’m pretty sure it’s not listening to people’s self-descriptions, it’s their obsession with them. Too many people find their identity in their sexuality, and have no way of relating to anyone without it. Instead of talking to a waiter who is gay, I’m talking to a gay man who is a waiter. There’s a massive difference.

Even if there is a difference, it’s not my place to have a problem with it. I don’t have a problem interacting with waiter who is gay or with a gay man who is a water. It’s not my place to police others’ self-expression.

It’s not your place to have a problem with it? Do you mean “it’s not my place to limit another person’s expression to suit my preferences” or “it’s not my place to have a preference”? The first is fine, the second is ridiculous. No one’s policing self-expression, but I have a right say, “You’re annoying me, so talk about something else. If you want to keep talking about this, talk to someone else.”

pianycist:

holeycynicism:

fuckyeahemergence:

pianycist:

(via queersecrets)

If you truly didn’t care, listening to people talking about their self-descriptions shouldn’t bother you.

I’m pretty sure it’s not listening to people’s self-descriptions, it’s their obsession with them. Too many people find their identity in their sexuality, and have no way of relating to anyone without it. Instead of talking to a waiter who is gay, I’m talking to a gay man who is a waiter. There’s a massive difference.

Even if there is a difference, it’s not my place to have a problem with it. I don’t have a problem interacting with waiter who is gay or with a gay man who is a water. It’s not my place to police others’ self-expression.

It’s not your place to have a problem with it? Do you mean “it’s not my place to limit another person’s expression to suit my preferences” or “it’s not my place to have a preference”? The first is fine, the second is ridiculous. No one’s policing self-expression, but I have a right say, “You’re annoying me, so talk about something else. If you want to keep talking about this, talk to someone else.”

photo

fuckyeahemergence:

pianycist:

(via queersecrets)
If you truly didn’t care, listening to people talking about their self-descriptions shouldn’t bother you.


I’m pretty sure it’s not listening to people’s self-descriptions, it’s their obsession with them. Too many people find their identity in their sexuality, and have no way of relating to anyone without it. Instead of talking to a waiter who is gay, I’m talking to a gay man who is a waiter. There’s a massive difference.

fuckyeahemergence:

pianycist:

(via queersecrets)

If you truly didn’t care, listening to people talking about their self-descriptions shouldn’t bother you.

I’m pretty sure it’s not listening to people’s self-descriptions, it’s their obsession with them. Too many people find their identity in their sexuality, and have no way of relating to anyone without it. Instead of talking to a waiter who is gay, I’m talking to a gay man who is a waiter. There’s a massive difference.

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The fact that black Democrats are much closer to Republicans’ than to nonblack Democrats’ position on this issue is noteworthy given that blacks overwhelmingly identify themselves as Democrats (to be discussed in detail below). The issue of black views on family-related moral issues is also noteworthy given the recent vote in California to approve Proposition 8, which effectively amended the state constitution to define legal marriage as only between a man and a woman. Exit-poll results after that vote on Nov. 4 suggested that black California voters had overwhelmingly voted in favor of the amendment, while overall, Democrats in California overwhelmingly voted against it — essentially confirming the national attitude structure apparent from Gallup’s analysis.

(via Blacks as Conservative as Republicans on Some Moral Issues)

The fact that black Democrats are much closer to Republicans’ than to nonblack Democrats’ position on this issue is noteworthy given that blacks overwhelmingly identify themselves as Democrats (to be discussed in detail below). The issue of black views on family-related moral issues is also noteworthy given the recent vote in California to approve Proposition 8, which effectively amended the state constitution to define legal marriage as only between a man and a woman. Exit-poll results after that vote on Nov. 4 suggested that black California voters had overwhelmingly voted in favor of the amendment, while overall, Democrats in California overwhelmingly voted against it — essentially confirming the national attitude structure apparent from Gallup’s analysis.

(via Blacks as Conservative as Republicans on Some Moral Issues)

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Education Reform: “That, Detective, is the right question.”

In I, Robot, Alfred Lanning’s hologram has information for Detective Spooner, and is prepared to give it. The only catch: “My responses are limited. You must ask the right question.”

If you’re not asking the right question, you’re not going to get the right answer. You’ll get an answer, sure, but it’s not likely to be helpful. Neil Postman discusses political polling in Technopoly, pointing out that the responses are only as reliable as the questions that produced them.

We’re all aware of the fallacy in questions like, “When did you stop beating your wife?” But what we’re not aware of is the fallacies in the questions we ask every day. Like the standards about education: “How can we get make college more available?”; and “How can we make college more affordable?”

These, I think, are the wrong questions. The right question is this: “Is college a necessity?” If the answer is yes, the next question should be, “Why?”

The reflex answer is that the world is getting more complicated, technology is more complex, and people need more school to prepare for the workforce. But I don’t think that’s true.

Plenty of research has shown that, even as students are spending more hours and more years in school, they’re coming out less technically capable, less socially prepared, and less able to immediately perform on the job than previous (less-educated) generations.

What’s true is that college is long, expensive, and something which, for many people, is nothing more than an obstacle in their path to adulthood.

I think we should jettison the assumption that a four-year, liberal arts education is a necessity for future success, and start to ask questions about what training is necessary for those who want to enter the workforce quickly, what training is beneficial for those willing to make the financial and temporal commitments, and whether it is productive to maintain the idea that a B.A. represents the most basic requirements for a white collar worker.

In the end, we have to ask, “How can we make college less necessary.

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Rambling about religion, atheism, objectivity

whakahekeheke:

gadgetry asked:

Apologies if you’ve addressed the subject before, but what are your religious views (if any)? What is your opinion of supernatural faith in general?

Don’t have any religious views by most definitions (institutions of organized religion, belief in canonical doctrine, etc.). I currently identify myself as agnostic, irreligious, and a Jesusist.

After doing labwork in cell bio and studying scientific methodology (specifically Popper) and epistemology (Wittgenstein, Feynman, etc.), I tempered my position and became an agnostic. I realized that “supernatural” was a non-concept: we have no empirical understanding that limits “natural” to anything. We don’t know all the laws of nature and are probably enormously ignorant of them.

The real issue is not what you believe regarding metaphysical speculations about “God” or or anything else, but rather what you believe is appropriate to do to other human beings. Here is where I think Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. are wrong. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Islamism or the Inquisition or the state atheism of Soviet Russia - the problem was not their position on “the supernatural,” but their ideological position on other human beings.

Well said.

I like most of the things the Q document Jesus is reported to have said (hence I’m a Jesusist)…

Why do you choose Q, rather than the Gospels themselves? I’m interested because as far as I know (I’m a seminarian with interests in historical theology and criticism) Q remains a hypothesis, contingent on other hypotheses: the priority of Mark, that Matthew and Luke didn’t know one another, and - most important - that external guidance (i.e. the Spirit) could not account for the similarities. It seems odd to refer to a document that has not even been confirmed to exist, when the documents that led to the hypothesis are known and accessible.

Theological debates bore me.

This isn’t a theological question, just a practical one.

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Book Giveaway: The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society | Writing Down the Jones

This book is an in-depth discussion of the development of Western culture, and how we have come to what Neil Postman describes as “technopoly”, a society that is so dominated by the influence of technology that ethics and morality change to accommodate technological advancement. Heady stuff, and very enlightening.

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In other news it has come to my attention that Fox News personality and former magazine editor Greg Guttfeld is seriously planning on building a gay bar next door to the “Ground Zero Mosque” that will cater to both Western and Muslim homosexuals. This strikes me as the perfect non-governmental response to this issue. I have, on a few occasions gone to gay bars with some of my better dressed friends (where I stuck out like … well, like a straight guy at a gay bar) and so if I ever find myself in NYC I will have to stop in for a drink or two. No doubt Bill Schlutz will practically LIVE there.

Keynes was Drunk: Uncle Ted Is Dead and Ground Zero May Get A Little Fabulous

 

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Writing Down the Jones: Free Books! ($3.99 shipping)

Shameless self-promotion…

There are plenty of online book swaps, but they all differ from the one at GoodReads in a significant way. The costs at Paperback Swap, SwapTree, and Book Mooch all come from the supply side: when you send a book to someone, you pay shipping. In exchange you get points, and someone else sends a book to you. The problem is that I’m a leech on the system. Books that enter my domain rarely leave, and I just want to acquire new ones. In these models, that’s not really possible, because they require you to contribute in order to participate.

But I don’t want to contribute, and I don’t think there’s any moral problem with that. With GoodReads’ bookswap, there’s no logistical problem, either. The solution is to move the cost burden to the demand side. When you buy a book, you pay shipping, which means there’s no need for you to “put some skin in the game” before you can request a book. It’s perfect for system parasites like me, and there’s an incentive to start contributing (a free book for every ten shipped).

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Everyday disciplinary practices do not rest on a foundation of philosophy or theory; they rest on a foundation of themselves; no theory or philosophy can either prop them up or topple them. As long as the practice is ongoing and flourishing its conventions will command respect and allegiance and flouting them will have negative consequences.

Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

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Justin Taylor

Professor Franck notes that Judge Walker’s argument commits the “fallacy of composition—taking something true of a part and concluding that it is also true of the whole of which it is a part.”

If it is true that “gender” no longer matters as it once did in the relation of husband and wife, he reasons, therefore it no longer matters whether the relation is one of husband and wife; it may as well be a relation of husband and husband or of wife and wife, since we now know that marriage is not, at its “core,” a “gendered institution.”

But that means that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises:

To say that the status of men and women in marriage is one of equal partners is not to say that men and women are the same, such that it does not matter what sex their partners are. The equalization of status is not the obliteration of difference, as much as Judge Walker would like to pretend it is.

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