A mildly irritating statement

Why are they irritating?

Reply to Shamshir
Philosophers can make argument with anything. I figured it didn't matter what I said someone would take issue with it.

Reply to Sunnyside Indeed, most anything. Ironically, my question fits the bill.

Quoting Sunnyside

The study of people is the only true science.

This goes along with that

Quoting Sunnyside

Mathematics is an abstraction of reality.

I believe that these two sentiments taken together can be construed as saying that man is the measure of things. It has wafts of Kant. But it could also be about importance of understanding humans above all else. My most asked question is why people procreate more people, especially if there is suffering? Most people will throw out happiness or something like that. But it's the most important question- more important than suicide. Procreation is about why continue life in general whereas suicide is about why continue your life only.

Quoting Sunnyside

Aphorisms lie in the heart of philosophy.

I find some of the most informative philosophical statements to be aphorisms (pace Schopenhauer and E.M. Cioran).

If you haven't tasted rijstvlaai, you don't understand Belgium.

Reply to schopenhauer1 Quoting schopenhauer1

My most asked question is why people procreate more people, especially if there is suffering? Most people will throw out happiness or something like that. But it's the most important question- more important than suicide. Procreation is about why continue life in general whereas suicide is about why continue your life only.

You think what's most important is people not having children and thinking about suicide?

I wouldn't say man is the measure of things since I believe there are external realities--truths--that have some say in what's valuable, sort of like Godel's incompleteness theorem. Personally what I mean by the first statement is that human nature is critical to understand since what is practical must ultimately be based in what is real. Continuing on that thought what isn't is a pipedream.

Reply to Fine Doubter An astute observation.

Yours is an interesting approach. Aphorism is not like argument in that the expression of something problematic is not an argument for it.
Kafka's Reflections upon Sin, Hope, and the True Way is very different than the aphorisms written by Nietzsche but they share the use of ambiguity as a means to goad the reader.

I guess I'll just use this thread to post aphorisms/thoughts then.

Only you can make you happy.
Most people don't understand themselves.
All experience being subjective does not mean external reality is imaginary.

Life is a process---there is no intrinsic meaning.
Examine thyself!
What I claim to know I know not and likewise only know that which I do not realize.

Worry is pointless---you cannot change the past nor do you know the future---quit worrying!
There is a primal instinct in man which seeks a path to follow, a way of living his life.
Reason is truth's light.

Humor carries the conversation.
Learning is more important than knowledge.
Society decides no one's value.