unenlightened

Perhaps we could just call him a loser, and note as an aside that there is no virtue in winning without virtue. If bad policies are popular, and good ...

I haven't explained that very clearly. The virtuous circle came about because of labour power, not the efforts of capital. Organised labour was able t...

Absolutely. There's a few of those being rightly celebrated, though I suspect some are really adult jokes. I can do without the 'blonde' cliche though...

Well I'm venting my spleen there of course. There was a piece on the radio the other day about the value of failure. A head teacher who consciously em...

Well, I want to discuss. I want folks to acknowledge that teaching and learning is more than can be specified by a curriculum and measured by test sco...

Well on one interpretation, this is the reification: "Reality cannot be post-truth, of course." Knowing you, I think you mean that truth does not appl...

Poetry.

There's an interesting slippage of meaning, from ... "Reality cannot be post-truth, of course." is true. to... Reality is the truth. Statements are tr...

Yes, exactly. There seems to be broad agreement here so far, that education involves indoctrination and liberation together. The point I am trying to ...

It won't happen because the Guardian says that Godzilla is not real, and ebythink the Grauniad sais is ture.

Well that was all very interesting. I confess my statistics are not entirely up to the job, but allowing a little charity that Mr Autor is not trying ...

Around 2060 -70 if sea level rise does not accelerate, which it might well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier And London is one of the best...

Thanks, looks interesting. Sea levels are rising. Ice is melting. These are not back somersaults but facts. Climate change measures, feeble as they ar...

Somehow, I find empty insults unconvincing. It must be my well known arrogance, along with a certain distrust of those in power, fed by a smattering o...

I was kind of hoping someone would talk me out of it by showing where I've gone wrong. Pessimism is not my usual mode, nor politics my usual concern. ...

You are not making a point against me, unfortunately. You are identifying someone to blame, which might make you feel better, but comes under the rubr...

Mass destruction is accomplished by war and natural disaster, that's the 'how'. If you want to go into the psychology of it, then yes the need for sec...

I thought I'd just drop this in, in case anyone is sceptical about the centrality of psychology in the framing of advertising and business. https://ww...

Yes, I didn't want to rehearse the argument in detail again, but that is the problem exactly. The vision of schools as factories and students as produ...

Sure. But locking a few people up doesn't change anything much. I don't think so. Trade unions are losing power because heavy industry is being automa...

It doesn't work. The model changes. Robots don't make stuff for workers to consume because there are no workers. Non workers become non-consumers and ...

No. I'm pointing out that the argument is no argument. Slavery persists in society as long as slaves are helpless to change it, and slaveowners find i...

Needed by whom? The helpless are unable to change things, by definition. Therefore they tolerate even their annihilation. Those who are able to change...

Nothing is intolerable to the helpless.

No worries dude. Once 99.9% of the population is gone, the roads will be much safer. Looking upwards from the gutter, it appears that bankers are in c...

The concentration of wealth is a 'natural' phenomenon - a surplus accumulates as capital and is 'put to work' creating more wealth. The concentration ...

Since we have degenerated into politics now, I'd better remind or inform folks that at the inception of this site, I argued that it should support its...

Abnormal psychology, the study of mental illness, is a nice area of muddy water in my polemic, because it slides into medicine and medical research. M...

As per my earlier aside, it's all Descartes' fault, with his 'thinking things'. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#2 (Thanks to Terrapin ...

Indeed not. I am not asking it to; I am asking science to very kindly fuck off from where it cannot help but only harm. I am saying that the science o...

I should apologise for starting this with advertising; it has rather misled people. One can resist advertising, avoid it perhaps, but advertising is m...

Exactly. And a person without subjective phenomena is a zombie. Treating people like zombies is the best way to turn them into zombies.

Where did I say that?

In case anyone hasn't noticed, my target in this thread is scientific, experimental psychology. The concern with modern advertising arises from this b...

An aside. When did the problem of other minds first occur to philosophy, Was it Descartes? Someone educate me. To the ancients, other minds were the e...

That might explain why no one has made that claim.

No one is claiming they invented it; but they promote it, and elicit it. And that is undeniable; a contented man needs nothing. It is when the going g...

Well the fall as I read it happened a while before that, and was the fall from animal innocence. But please, there is no question but that science dir...

This is the heart and soul of the inhumanity, directed inwards. It's worthy of its own thread, but I'll just concur that to operate on a person, (ones...

Yes. I hope that folks will entertain the ideas here, rather than be entertained by them. In being entertained by talent competitions, police melodram...

That too, and for sure it is not an entirely modern phenomenon. But I'm coming to the view, as a result of this discussion that the modern feature, th...

Shame on you, Nils. ;) One is not dehumanised by being asked to wipe one's boots, nor by being shown the door if one starts kicking the dog.

I'm not in a position to encapsulate it in a neat definition, but apart from Kant, Martin Buber talks about it in I and Thou. It is I suppose the igno...

I'm aware of the connection with Kant. I would say that Kant and Hume are the philosophical ancestors of psychology, speaking before the subject was c...

I'm not suggesting that objectification began C.1900. Women have seemingly forever been dehumanised, black people for a long time. And your reciprocal...

Yes, and I'm one of them. Ads are a small part, an easily analysable manifestation of of this much bigger thing called scientific psychology which is ...

People, I notice are really really unhappy. And nobody knows why. We have more and more stuff and we are more and more unhappy, insecure, mentally ill...

Usually, the education one might end up with is focused on the techniques of misinformation and certainly awareness can help one resist the implanted ...

If anyone wants to start a thread about me, I'll certainly participate. I'm an interesting and important topic, and I have a particular interest in it...

I have a bath and change my socks almost every week whether I'm upset or not. What I am saying is that advertising and propaganda deliberately set out...