06 Mar 2009, 2:43 pm
Ive been reading reviews for the book The Dumbest generation: How the digital age stupefies young americans and threatens our future and I first heard of this trashy tome on talk radio. It was the Dennis Prager show to be exact(he is a center-right neocon). Prager often spoke about the virtues of wisdom and experience and how they're ultimately more valuable than knowledge and reason...much to my ire 
. I have to wonder if there is something about the social conservative mindset that is anti-rational and actively doesnt want people to think critically. This isnt so true among "fiscal conservatives"or even libertarians but among those who advocate "traditional values" and think that experience and intuition trump knowledge; very disconcerting..... 
Last edited by Haliphron on 07 Mar 2009, 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
06 Mar 2009, 2:50 pm
Haliphron wrote:
Ive been reading reviews for the book The Dumbest generation: How the digital age stupefies young americans and threatens our future and I first heard of this trashy tome on talk radio. It was the Dennis Prager show to be exact(he is a center-right neocon). Prager often spoke about the virtues of wisdom and experience and how they're ultimately more valuable than knowledge and reason...much to my ire . I have to wonder if there is something about the social conservative mindset that is anti-rational and actively doesnt want people to think critically. This isnt so true among "fiscal conservatives"or even libertarians but among those who advocate "traditional values" and think that experience and intuition trump knowledge; very disconcerting.....
. I have to wonder if there is something about the social conservative mindset that is anti-rational and actively doesnt want people to think critically. This isnt so true among "fiscal conservatives"or even libertarians but among those who advocate "traditional values" and think that experience and intuition trump knowledge; very disconcerting..... It's not disconcerting, it's characteristic of a huge percentage of humanity that dotes on authority and ignorance. It's merely humanity.
06 Mar 2009, 2:52 pm
Sand wrote:
Haliphron wrote:
Ive been reading reviews for the book The Dumbest generation: How the digital age stupefies young americans and threatens our future and I first heard of this trashy tome on talk radio. It was the Dennis Prager show to be exact(he is a center-right neocon). Prager often spoke about the virtues of wisdom and experience and how they're ultimately more valuable than knowledge and reason...much to my ire . I have to wonder if there is something about the social conservative mindset that is anti-rational and actively doesnt want people to think critically. This isnt so true among "fiscal conservatives"or even libertarians but among those who advocate "traditional values" and think that experience and intuition trump knowledge; very disconcerting.....
. I have to wonder if there is something about the social conservative mindset that is anti-rational and actively doesnt want people to think critically. This isnt so true among "fiscal conservatives"or even libertarians but among those who advocate "traditional values" and think that experience and intuition trump knowledge; very disconcerting..... It's not disconcerting, it's characteristic of a huge percentage of humanity that dotes on authority and ignorance. It's merely humanity.
I realize that, and Im disgusted by it!
06 Mar 2009, 4:20 pm
Haliphron wrote:
Sand wrote:
Haliphron wrote:
Ive been reading reviews for the book The Dumbest generation: How the digital age stupefies young americans and threatens our future and I first heard of this trashy tome on talk radio. It was the Dennis Prager show to be exact(he is a center-right neocon). Prager often spoke about the virtues of wisdom and experience and how they're ultimately more valuable than knowledge and reason...much to my ire . I have to wonder if there is something about the social conservative mindset that is anti-rational and actively doesnt want people to think critically. This isnt so true among "fiscal conservatives"or even libertarians but among those who advocate "traditional values" and think that experience and intuition trump knowledge; very disconcerting.....
. I have to wonder if there is something about the social conservative mindset that is anti-rational and actively doesnt want people to think critically. This isnt so true among "fiscal conservatives"or even libertarians but among those who advocate "traditional values" and think that experience and intuition trump knowledge; very disconcerting..... It's not disconcerting, it's characteristic of a huge percentage of humanity that dotes on authority and ignorance. It's merely humanity.
I realize that, and Im disgusted by it!
Humans are some sick bastards, isn't that so?
DentArthurDent
Veteran
Joined: 26 Jul 2008
Age: 61
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,884
Location: Victoria, Australia
07 Mar 2009, 3:28 am
07 Mar 2009, 7:31 am
07 Mar 2009, 8:07 am
07 Mar 2009, 8:28 am
07 Mar 2009, 12:56 pm
07 Mar 2009, 1:20 pm
07 Mar 2009, 1:27 pm
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
I think that the traditionalist position is actually that human existence cannot just be rationally reordered because people are too complex to quantify in such a manner. Because of that, they stick to tradition because they think it carries knowledge about how society works, knowledge that we might not be able to perfectly quantify to alter, and that it may be undesirable to try to alter using most existing tools.
This probably promotes anti-rationalism, simply because it rejects the ability to know about society in a sense to reorganize it, as I imagine that some fellows in this group might be anti-scientistic in regards to the social sciences, and think that those studies will at best provide cursory knowledge.
I dunno, I am drawing more off of economist Friedrich Hayek, a libertarian who is an influence for some conservatives, than off of anyone in the conservative movement. That's mostly because Hayek has written in defense of tradition before based upon his notions of embodied knowledge.
This probably promotes anti-rationalism, simply because it rejects the ability to know about society in a sense to reorganize it, as I imagine that some fellows in this group might be anti-scientistic in regards to the social sciences, and think that those studies will at best provide cursory knowledge.
I dunno, I am drawing more off of economist Friedrich Hayek, a libertarian who is an influence for some conservatives, than off of anyone in the conservative movement. That's mostly because Hayek has written in defense of tradition before based upon his notions of embodied knowledge.
I would imagine that anti-rationalism would be heavily endorsed and promoted by the elites in order to preserve the social order and maintain the status quo.
But I find myself feeling very irritated at both traditionalists and left-wing postmodernists in their foolish belief that "people are complex" and the world is too complicated to yield to reductionism. Neither of these factions can stand the idea that people are basically mechanical and their behaviour is highly predictable. In fact, when people are in groups their behaviour is predictable with >= 90% certainty. But I frequently hear idealistic post-modernists whine about how certain worldviews "portray people as objects", etc....
07 Mar 2009, 2:15 pm
07 Mar 2009, 3:09 pm
They need to redo that movie by today's graphic standards. It would be so much better 
Wisdom is intelligence applied practically and correctly to reality(problem solving). Since the digital age increases mean intelligence while at the same time decreasing mean life experience, mean wisdom also decreases. This is simply the result of the world we live in today. Nothing more. Oh well. If you want to have more wisdom, then get out in the world and get you some experience. Otherwise, well.. Q.Q more.
07 Mar 2009, 3:22 pm
Haliphron wrote:
But I find myself feeling very irritated at both traditionalists and left-wing postmodernists in their foolish belief that "people are complex" and the world is too complicated to yield to reductionism. Neither of these factions can stand the idea that people are basically mechanical and their behaviour is highly predictable. In fact, when people are in groups their behaviour is predictable with >= 90% certainty. But I frequently hear idealistic post-modernists whine about how certain worldviews "portray people as objects", etc....
Well, they do have a position, and I actually agree with elements of their position. Human beings are hard to just endlessly, rationalistically manipulate and social realities do carry information that is hard to analyze scientifically.
07 Mar 2009, 3:56 pm
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Haliphron wrote:
But I find myself feeling very irritated at both traditionalists and left-wing postmodernists in their foolish belief that "people are complex" and the world is too complicated to yield to reductionism. Neither of these factions can stand the idea that people are basically mechanical and their behaviour is highly predictable. In fact, when people are in groups their behaviour is predictable with >= 90% certainty. But I frequently hear idealistic post-modernists whine about how certain worldviews "portray people as objects", etc....
Well, they do have a position, and I actually agree with elements of their position. Human beings are hard to just endlessly, rationalistically manipulate and social realities do carry information that is hard to analyze scientifically.
Although here have been occasional revolutions in general the thugs who have run the world for thousands of years and are doing so very successfully today know quite well how to manipulate people.
07 Mar 2009, 4:44 pm
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Haliphron wrote:
But I find myself feeling very irritated at both traditionalists and left-wing postmodernists in their foolish belief that "people are complex" and the world is too complicated to yield to reductionism. Neither of these factions can stand the idea that people are basically mechanical and their behaviour is highly predictable. In fact, when people are in groups their behaviour is predictable with >= 90% certainty. But I frequently hear idealistic post-modernists whine about how certain worldviews "portray people as objects", etc....
Well, they do have a position, and I actually agree with elements of their position. Human beings are hard to just endlessly, rationalistically manipulate and social realities do carry information that is hard to analyze scientifically.
Actually, there are people in this world who are EXTREMELY GOOD at manipulating people. But the best way to do that is to play to their emotions than to try to reason with them; and that fact in itself suggest people really arent as complex as they like to think they are. Social realities are often understood intuitively, but intuition is really just subconscious pattern recognition. Ive met people who intuitively understand people and are able to mentally translate that information into rational explanations for peoples motives. Social realities are examples of complex patterns generated by a set of fairly simply rules[apparently they behave as scale-free networks].
