Specious Logic

Thoughts without reason

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Disorganized thoughts about music and science and film and philosophy and literature and…

Archive for the 'Philosophy' Category

What is classical music?

Sunday, September 25th, 2005

What is “Classical Music” as most people think of it? People normally associate it with Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and think of it as music played by large orchestras or non-popular instruments such as violins, clarinets, and the like. It is something which “cultured” (aka snooty or old) people listen to, and it belongs to the […]

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PC = BS; Relativism

Thursday, October 28th, 2004

Political correctness is bullshit. Just look at the term itself: political = for reasons of politics, correctness = right, meaning in terms of procedure, not right in terms of morality. A collection of points about it that should give you a better picture of my overall feeling about it:

The biggest myth about PC is that […]

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Intelligence

Thursday, October 28th, 2004

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about intelligence: what it is, how to define it, how to measure it, where it comes from, can it be increased, etc. Although I’ve by no means made a final decision, here are some of my feelings about it:

Nature vs. Nurture: While I think you’re definitely born with […]

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Pirsig’s Analytical Razor

Monday, September 27th, 2004

In his books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and especially Lila, Robert Pirsig mentions the use of an analytical razor. I am often reminded of his discussion in everyday life, and I feel that his conclusions are very significant, and very often overlooked or simply not even realized by most people. I will […]

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Mutually Exclusive Dichotomies

Monday, September 27th, 2004

A related concept to the previous post about analytical razors is that of mutually exclusive dichotomies. This is a special case of the slicing, where things are divided so that they fall into exactly one of two different categories. The above example was such a dichotomy (male or female). While they may be adequate for […]

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