Sunlight? I don't know where you live, but I'd love to have a little sunlight.
Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
Yeah, I'm really sorry if this is insulting some of our members, but the "metaphysical" "stuff" is best described by me as abusively obtuse. It's almost as if it's purposefully written in language that is incredibly hard to understand, and after taking the time to actually understand it, you find it really isn't all that impressive. So these days I just skip them.The screening process here means that there are very few opportunities to pwn (well, since Suntan Luigi stopped coming around ), and the topics are often way too high-brow for me, with too little dissenting opinion on the topics I can really bite down on. Like, on Straight Dope or The Escapist I can name, off the top of my head, 2-5 people on each which disagree with me on just about every issue this side of "should kittens be slaughtered", and post (occasionally truly inane) threads on the subject. I guess you could take this as an admission of surrender; I'm not metaphysical enough for this forum.
I agree wholeheartedly that the concept is probably incredibly important, but let me put it this way. If I, who has taken quite a few philosophy classes in college myself, who has just graduated last year from spending all those years in academia, who cares so much about having a justified belief system, feels this way about it, what hope does the average person have?Metaphysics is like formal logic, you can only appreciate it once you can understand it properly.
They're probably the two most important things if you want a justifiable belief system, in that any belief is technically subject to metaphysical and logical scrutiny.
That's probably why the only people who appreciate them are academics, because it's really only they who set out to have intricately justified belief systems.
I'm curious as to whether you think this supports your point? Would you be able to justify this line of reasoning? Would this line of reasoning be valid for fields other than "mp"?Dre. said:You don't really see many people who have studies mp at depth turning around saying it's pointless. The people who say that tend to be uneducated in it.
Climate change is a real problem, the only thing that's being debated on are how bad are the effects going to be. There's an almost universal consensus that it's happening and is being effected by humans. The question is what's going to happen if we allow it to take it's course.So I haven't been the only one... alright I don't feel so bad now.
As for climate change becoming part of the culture war in America, I personally think it's ridiculous (along with a bunch of other things but eh). I basically see it as "Let's take a natural cycle that's been altered due to current trends and blow it to sky high proportions." Now every single change in nature is being marked as some horrendous effect of climate change. In my opinion it's being used as a crux in policy, in domestic establishment, among other things that I can't seem to think of right now. Not to say that climate change is some trivial phenomenon, but it's nothing new and the fact it's gotten to the point where people are desensitized to hearing so much "back-and-forth" about it in our mindset is disappointing to me.
What/how would it contribute?As I said before, we could debate whether Conway's Game of life contributes anything to the discussion on evolution.
Rv- It'd probably work for things like science and maths too.
That's nothing compared to what happened in the UK.http://www.alternet.org/newsandview...with_students_to_trick_them_into_selling_pot/ pretty shady police force we got here Americans. =(
I would definitely argue against that.A history topic I am sure people can debate on:
Was the United States justified in dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan at the end of World War 2? There are actually two (in my opinion not quite) equally valid points to be made here.
-blazed
Yes, that's what we mean. If that's the case I'll start the thread. I'll try to present it openly.That'd be an interesting topic. And to be clear, when you guys say "against" you mean the bombings were not justified, correct? In that case, I would argue for (though that's based on the last time I very cursorily researched the topic, about a bajillion and a half years ago; maybe if I reevaluated it now, I'd find myself leaning the other direction).
This is also a very interesting idea. But, this article written in 2011 links to a study and states the following:I also had another thought recently, the idea of this overwhelming obsession with cleanliness in first world countries, and by that I mean cleanliness in regard to germs and microbes. There's so much clamoring for thoroughly washing your hands before each meal, and air filters that remove germs from your home's air, and antibacterial soaps and disinfecting wipes, and throwing out food that's more than a few days old, and unrepentant recommendations against eating undercooked eggs or meat, etc. Is all that really harming us by preventing our immune systems from coming in contact with bugs that our ancestors were regularly exposed to? And I would argue that yes, we are "too clean," "too sterile." Anybody else have thoughts on this?
So I don't know if we're quite at the extreme level of cleanliness you claim we are...Compliance rates for hand washing in American hospitals are only around 40 percent
You would try him in a court of law and since you have 'solid' intelligence, he will be convicted which will prevent the plot from occurring. However, if said evidence is not convincing, then our intelligence was lacking in some way to begin with so he should not be a target. It is often said that we have 'solid' evidence to justify certain actions. If that is the case, then they can demonstrate it in a court of law; we don't need to take their word for it. This also allows us to defend our self against mistaken allegations. This is why we have due process in the first place.Hypothetical situation, our government as real solid intelligence that a high ranking politician in X country is planning an attack against the United States. We'll call X Qumar (lol if anyone gets the reference). Anyway the idea is, there is some rather convincing evidence that he's planning this attack. What should we do? assassinate said leader? which would halt the plot? or try him with international law with the possibility of him getting off?
I like you.Yeah, I'm really sorry if this is insulting some of our members, but the "metaphysical" "stuff" is best described by me as abusively obtuse. It's almost as if it's purposefully written in language that is incredibly hard to understand, and after taking the time to actually understand it, you find it really isn't all that impressive. So these days I just skip them.
As for a list of topics, unfortunately it's hard these days for me to think of topics to debate. I have tons of topics that interest me and I would love to discuss, like this TED talk I just watched about how the internet is filtering everything we see, which stops us from learning anything new and different. There's so many interesting implications/ideas that spawn from that, like how it's leading us to be an even more polarized and biased society where we can't understand each other because I never even see the information you're presented with and you never see mine. I could see myself talking about that topic for hours, but I don't see much of a debate. And even if I did, I think my thread would be moved to the archive section within a few weeks, so what's the point?
I hope I don't sound like I'm whining, I'm just trying to explain why I see myself contributing here less and less.
-blazed
The "culture war" is between those who believe in science and those who don't. If it was an actual war, rather than a culture war, we'd have sticks and rocks vs. thermonuclear weapons. Just sayin'.So what's everyones view about climate change becoming part of the culture war in america?
Yeah, its the 'we want X, but we don't want Y that helps us achieve X' mentality that is incredibly frustrating. It's like the pro-life crowd wants to decrease the number of abortions and then in the next breath advocate policies that increase the number of abortions. When you are counterproductive to even your own agenda, everyone is better off when you don't participate in the discussion. It happens on all levels too; people want more services, but lower taxes. When people propose such plans, it just causes problems."Anti-science" people bother me because they enjoy all the benefits that science brings them (medicine, technology, travel) but actively disparage anything that conflicts their simplistic world view (evolution, climate change, vaccinations).
It's all based on the same scientific method.
(Curse me for late responses)Climate change is a real problem, the only thing that's being debated on are how bad are the effects going to be. There's an almost universal consensus that it's happening and is being effected by humans. The question is what's going to happen if we allow it to take it's course.
So you have an opinion, but don't have enough knowledge to have an opinion? Am I understanding you right?(Curse me for late responses)
I'm not saying that climate change isn't happening, I'm not even saying that it isn't a problem though I am saying that it's effects are being blown out of proportion and are being used as a social crux(e.g. Everything happening in nature is by fault of global warming etc). The earth has warmed and cooled for ages as demonstrated in a few ways (one such looking at the Earth's geologic record)*. I just believe that the human involvement in climate change will just accelerate the process. Of course... that still may end up bad for us heh heh.
But eh, with school and such I really haven't looked as much into climate change that would suffice to base a position on. (SWF really needs a shrug smilie).