Pattern-chaser

And yet (some of) those to whom those utterances were directed did kill people, or have them killed. Was that coincidence? :chin:

How sad. Even as a child, when your imagination and creative-learning ability was at its peak? What a shame. :fear:

And yet the topic title clearly says "by itself". :chin:

Yes, repression ... but also protection. One shows concern for you, the other doesn't seem to. And law does both at the same time. So it has good poin...

A poor joke, I suggest. Your wish to demean the 'snowflakes' has lead you to write nonsense. The provocation in your words is aimed specifically at @"...

Now I'm going to contradict myself, just a little. For although societies do as they wish, their 'minds' can be changed by their component 'cells' (us...

I see from your post that you're a relatively recent recruit to our ranks, as you mention web development, and starting with Agile. Nevertheless, you ...

...unexpectedly coupled with its need to satisfy human-based desires (requirements), which move well away from "pragmatism". Many of them are only dis...

It's a joy to see posts based on real knowledge and understanding! @"Ansiktsburk", aren't you wandering around the word "design" in what you wrote? :w...

And yet right and wrong are relative to who they refer to. What's right for me, a tuberculosis bacterium, is wrong for you, a human with damaged lungs...

I'm not sure that's possible. Because I'm not sure that moral arguments have components that are capable of being reduced to numbers and/or raw measur...

The original strain is primary because ... it's the original strain, and it's primary. English is the language of the English. English is a "native la...

Yep.

From my point of view, and probably yours too, they would be wrong. From *their* point of view, it would be right. Societies set their own laws, as th...

I've also spent some time thinking about D&D alignments. First, law isn't good. That's part of what the alignment system says: there is a spectrum lin...

So you're not really into fantasy. That's OK. But what are you doing here? Did you play D&D at some point, or are you just seeking entertainment, as w...

Actually, and in practice, it does. The people of a tribe or nation may create laws as they wish, and they are "right" to do so. The laws they create ...

I've been reading fantasy books for 50 years now, and I played AD&D for 20 years until our little group petered out, and I haven't really seen what yo...

To pretend that we can successfully operate a human society without censorship is naive, I think. All we can do - and *I* think we should do - is to k...

Laws are made by people. If the people think this is serious enough, and they find that awkward bastards ignore it, they turn it into a law. Such is t...

I assume you refer to England, the land where the English people live, and where they speak their own language: English? That our language has been co...

No-one is claiming this is a LAW or something. It's a sensible suggestion that works often enough that we continue to use it even if there are occasio...

The difficulty with this apparently common-sense approach is that "objective" communicates universal applicability, and independence of individual bel...

OK, I'll bite: what is "High Fantasy"? :smile:

Is it a myth that people unnecessarily alarmed in this way could be injured in the fight to escape the (non-existent) fire? And isn't that potential i...

Thanks for creating this topic! It's a bit weird though, commenting on something I actually know something about! :rofl:

I tracked some of this stuff down. Here's what I found. Sorry about the text layout, it was originally laid out as a bulleted and tabbed list, but it ...

Disclaimer: I'm writing here as an experienced software designer, not as an expert in the "philosophy of programming". There are not two camps; there ...

Yes, there's a whole industry, supposedly based on 'teaching' the latest fads. Snake oil, mostly, as you suggest. Agile is one of the recent fads, and...

Some humans, most of them women, have four colour receptor types. It's quite rare, I think. This is is true, but in a very mundane way. I don't think ...

I already explained my intent. Perhaps you correctly diagnose my ramblings as "silly"? I'm a designer by profession. Flexibility of thought is a way o...

Yes, we do, but (assuming the door is the sort that can only be opened by twisting the knob and pushing/pulling) functionally, that knobless door is i...

In that case, I think we substitute the label "multiverse" or "multiverses" for "universe", and the concept (of solitary existence) continues undistur...

It can if the thing that exists is Everything. Sometimes we call it "the universe". Anything else that exists presumably exists within the universe, s...

I was only trying to avoid expressing myself dogmatically, so I allowed for exceptions. Recognition and acceptance only seem possible if you retain a ...

I say your summary is about right. I wish I could be more positive. But the awful truth is that humanity is a predatory parasite on Earth, capturing t...

What are paladins, then?

Perhaps you wouldn't. Almost nothing can be shown to be a fact. You might not choose to say that either, but I would. :razz:

This is said so often in discussions of atheism, but it's not as clear as it looks. Only those who are indifferent to God, and get on with their lives...

I suspect they're around, but keeping out of the limelight. I'm a believer, btw, not an atheist. But I think the real atheists find the concept of God...

After quite a few replies - thank you all who bothered - is it fair of me to conclude that we don't really have a simple and clear definition for meta...

This rings true - and useful - to me. But is this all that metaphysics covers, or is there more as well? I'm not sure. Anyone? :chin:

The world constrains us in that we cannot change most of it, so if we try, we will fail: constraint. It's just like saying we can explore anywhere the...

The freedom to do as we wish, constrained only by the world, and the way it is, and the way it behaves. So long as we accept that we can't change the ...

Doesn't free will imply freedom to act, but expecting the world to act as it always does? I mean we can't avoid the way the world works just because, ...

That it disappears as causality does, when faced with the real world. In theory, it might be that things are deterministic (and it might not). In prac...

So causality often disappears in the complexity of reality? Yes, I can go with that. :up: Thus causality disappears in practice, but probably not in t...

Doesn't that make causality a bit, er, indeterminate?

No, I offered a response to your words, nothing more. Your ego is your own affair. :wink:

Christian God. Christian God! God is not a coward, it's your presumption of grandeur that is the issue. You actually seem to think that God thinks and...