24 ideas
9271 | Human knowledge may not produce well-being; the examined life may not be worth living [Gray] |
7508 | Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker] |
7510 | Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker] |
7513 | Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker] |
8836 | Must all justification be inferential? [Ginet] |
8837 | Inference cannot originate justification, it can only transfer it from premises to conclusion [Ginet] |
9275 | Knowledge does not need minds or nervous systems; it is found in all living things [Gray] |
7509 | Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker] |
9276 | The will hardly ever does anything; most of our life just happens to us [Gray] |
7511 | Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker] |
7512 | There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG] |
7505 | Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker] |
9278 | Nowadays we identify the free life with the good life [Gray] |
7516 | In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker] |
7515 | All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker] |
7514 | Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker] |
9280 | Over forty percent of the Earth's living tissue is human [Gray] |
23061 | Free atheism should start by questioning its faith in humanity [Gray] |
23057 | Gnosticism has a supreme creator God, giving way to a possibly hostile Demiurge [Gray] |
23056 | Judaism only became monotheistic around 550 BCE [Gray] |
23055 | Christians introduced the idea that a religion needs a creed [Gray] |
9272 | Without Christianity we lose the idea that human history has a meaning [Gray] |
9279 | What was our original sin, and how could Christ's suffering redeem it? [Gray] |
23058 | Buddhism has no divinity or souls, and the aim is to lose the illusion of a self [Gray] |