"As John Stuart Mill explained, when a doctrine has been accepted so widely that the people have generally inherited, rather than adopted it, it begins an inevitable decline. Converts bring with them a zeal, but also an intimate understanding of the merits and pitfalls of both the ideology they left behind and that which they have adopted. Their beliefs were formed actively, by wrestling with objections and rebuttals. Those who have inherited the values that shape their lives may never have done this work, and thus may be far more susceptible to the simplest persuasion and emotional appeals."

Quote of the day

"Common sense is soluble in testosterone!"

www.cultcycling.co.za

Gotta get one's hands dirty!

Without conducting experiments, building prototypes, having failures, and engaging in reality, an intelligence can have thoughts but not results. It cannot think its way to solving the world's problems.

- Kevin Kelly

Fractally wrong!

"The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

Debating with a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person's opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of logic, and outright lies, that requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one. It is as impossible to convince a fractally wrong person of anything as it is to walk around the edge of the Mandelbrot set in finite time.

If you ever get embroiled in a discussion with a fractally wrong person on the Internet--in mailing lists, newsgroups, or website forums--your best bet is to say your piece once and ignore any replies, thus saving yourself time."

Unknown.

Blindness

"There are none so blind as those who will not see"

- Jonathan Swift

Lifes' Meaning

"I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never be conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning."

Vasily Grossman in "Life and Fate"

While on the topic of pain ...

"Pain is weakness leaving the body"

Anonymous

I wish this was mine

"Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers."
Anonymous from here

On arguments ...

"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."
Father of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Change Control

"The process of removing existing bugs in a system and adding new ones."
Anonymous

The unpleasantness of self-knowledge

"We are all perpetually smoothing and rearranging reality to conform to our wishes; we lie to others and to ourselves constantly, unthinkingly. When, occasionally—and not by dint of our own efforts but under the pressure of external events—we are forced to see things as they are, we are like naked people in a storm. There are a few among us—psychoanalysts have encountered them—who are blessed or cursed with a strange imperviousness to the unpleasantness of self-knowledge. Their lies to themselves are so convincing that they are never unmasked. These are the people who never feel in the wrong, who are always able to justify their conduct, and who in the end—human nature being what it is—cause their fallible fellow-men to turn away from them."
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives

Not that I agree with everything Stephen Weinberg says but ...

Physicist and Nobel prizewinner Stephen Weinberg describes religion as an insult to human dignity. "Without it," he says, "you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."
Stephen Weinberg

Responsibility

"If you never want to run the risk of being in trouble for something you did, it's quite simple - just never do anything"
Anonymous

Indecision

"The key to flexibility is indecision"
Anonymous

Tree Huggers Unite

"Environmentalists are much too concerned with planet earth. Their geocentric attitude prevents them from seeing the greater picture -- lots of planets are much worse off than earth is."
Anonymous

Furry People

"There is something both worrying and obscene about society's requirement for adult women to remove the body hair that proclaims them sexually mature adults, and turn themselves into facsimiles of pre-pubertal girls."
Shazia Mirza, Mail&Guardian 18/05/2007

Life and Religion

"When life asks questions that test our resolve and fortitude, we often turn to the mysterious and mystical for answers. That way, we do not have the difficult taks of looking at the man in the mirror and telling him to change some of his ways."
Mohlomi Maubane, Mail&Guardian

Sport 'n Entertainment

[politicians] " ... who help remind us why sport matters. It's because without the mindless pursuit of a variety of funny shaped balls we might actually be forced to take seriously the mindless utterings of elected officials [politicians]."
Andy Capostagno, Mail&Guardian 18/05/2007