#RATIONALITY

[cthulhubert]

A news site called WindowsCentral just posted a headline: "57% of all content on the web is AI-generated."

They're misquoting a Forbes article that said, "57% of all text-based content on the web is AI-generated."

Which itself was also a misquote of a study saying "57% of all text translations on the web are machine generated."

Figured I should give everyone a heads up

for all the "OMG dead Internet theory is real!" posting coming up.

[philosophybits]

The habit of logical thinking kills imagination.

Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible

[hexagr]

The paradox of binding your identity to victimhood is that it tends to generate social currency, but in a longer, broader perspective, it makes you spiritually and mentally weaker. This is true even if you're really a victim.

[artist-issues]

Yesterday my German coworker yelled at me because she firmly believes no world religion can know anything, for sure, about God, so there’s no way to call anyone “right” or “wrong.”

And it took all my strength not to say, “so you’re saying I’m wrong”

because truth in love, truth in love

But seriously. What actually is the deal with the discourse that goes: “you can’t know anything for sure about God.”

“Wait, yes you can, like I know you well enough to know for sure that you’re from ____ Place—“

“—no no, no, that’s different. This is about God.”

“How’s it different?”

“You can’t say someone’s wrong about God.”

“…Well, can I say anything that’s wrong about you? Like, if I say, ‘_____ Person likes to kick puppies,’ can’t you say I’m wrong about you?”

“Yes but I’m not God.”

“Right, but you’re a real person who exists, so there are some things that I can know for sure about you—“

“THAT’S DIFFERENT”

No it’s not! It’s not ‘different.’ Quit acting like it’s different. Christians don’t believe in a set of ideals or the properties of rocks or some mystical vibe that nobody can be right or wrong about. We believe in a living and existing deity with an unchanging, eternally constant personality, and will, and DESIGN, outside of ourselves. So we can be wrong about Him. You can be wrong about Him. Everyone can be wrong—OR RIGHT—about Him, because He actually exists.

He’s not some imaginary friend who’s open to anybody’s interpretation. You get to claim an independent identity, character traits, and a personal history, but the God of the universe doesn’t? What is happening?

I’ll tell you what’s happening. You’re fine with me believing in an imaginary figment that’s only real to me, but as soon as He starts having an effect on the outer world, as if He actually exists and you have to start making some decisions based on that fact, THEN you’re not fine.

[thirdity]

The world is, ultimately, an aesthetic phenomenon. That is to say, the world (all there is) cannot, ultimately, be justified. Justification is an operation of the mind which can be performed only when we consider one part of the world in relation to another — not when we consider all there is.

Susan Sontag, "On Style"

[victoriadallonfan]

I find “rational” Worm fanfics amusing

Because the authors never realize that Worm already has a “rational” character and his name is Accord.

And everyone in setting hates Accord because he’s a smug asshole, and his optimal way of thinking ends with him cut in half by his own actions.

[catmint1]

I don't know why people expect art to make sense. Life doesn't make sense.

—David Lynch

[strangelittlestories]

There’s a thing which really gets my goat, right.

And I mean *really* yanks my yak. Snatches my sheep. Appropriates my antelope.

It’s when a certain kind of person claims to be a rational, emotionless and objective being … with such certainty and with such zeal that it is *extremely irrational*.

Like they’re trying to be Spock or Data and have totally missed the point of those stories about finding and balancing humanity. 

And I think that’s very unsexy of them (which is tragic, given the sexiness of Spock/Data).

And it’s not just the near-religious fervour with which they fellate the rationality fallacy.

It’s that these Very Rational Men™ (because they are so often men) fully ignore how *unscientific* their view is.

Like how the best way to convince someone is to empathise with them, not to confront or antagonise them or just tell them they’re wrong.

Like how emotions are deeply connected to decision-making, helping to make choices quickly and in line with your values.

Is there a word for this kind of rational zealotry? If there isn’t one, can I suggest Toxic Spock Syndrome.

p.s. I realise I’m also coming at this from a place of certainty/antagonism, but hey: I’m an emotional person and I’m having an emotionally informed opinion, buttfaces.

[cpericardium]

[adventism-atheism-orthodoxy-me]

I find it amusing that Atheists go on about reason and rationality, without really ever knowing or considering the fact that Christians have celebrated, "Ἁγία Σοφία" - Holy Wisdom - for centuries.

Apparently, in their minds, rationality and reason trumps wisdom.

Sounds about right.

[areadersquoteslibrary]

"The lesson of Wuthering Heights, of Greek tragedy and, ultimately, of all religions, is that there is an instinctive tendency towards divine intoxication which the rational world of calculation cannot bear."

— Georges Bataille, Literature and Evil

[soulsevaporate]

“The individual in his rationality is determined by the rationality of capital which he encounters as a force of nature, which he experiences daily and which therefore must appear to him as rational through and through. His protest against this life-destroying force can therefore only be a protest of feeling or emotion. But since ‘reason’ rules, these emotional outbursts of the individual are rationalised and ‘disappear’ into stomach pains, gall stones, circulatory problems, kidney stones, cramps of all kinds, into impotence, head colds, toothaches, skin diseases, back aches, migraines, asthma, car and workplace accidents, depression, and so forth – or feelings mushroom in interpersonal relationships (emotional plague), in flat affects (‘serious’ people), in psychosis etc.”

Socialists Patient’s Collective, Heidelberg, 1972

[philosophybits]

A man is so prone to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared to distort the truth on purpose, prepared to deny the visible and the audible just so he can justify his own logic.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

[hexagr]

Objects decay. Information decays. Let's periodically reiterate obvious concepts as a safety measure.

[tilbageidanmark]

A list of cognitive biases

[thirdity]

To see human beings as signifying animals — even outside the practice of verbal language — and to see that their ability to produce and to interpret signs, as well as their ability to draw inferences, is rooted in the same cognitive structures, represent a way to give form to our experience.

Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language