47 ideas
| 20678 | The Scientific Revolution was the discovery of our own ignorance [Harari] |
| 20686 | For millenia people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another [Harari] |
| 22285 | Impredicative definitions are circular, but fine for picking out, rather than creating something [Potter] |
| 22301 | The Identity Theory says a proposition is true if it coincides with what makes it true [Potter] |
| 22324 | It has been unfortunate that externalism about truth is equated with correspondence [Potter] |
| 22279 | Frege's sign |--- meant judgements, but the modern |- turnstile means inference, with intecedents [Potter] |
| 22291 | Deductivism can't explain how the world supports unconditional conclusions [Potter] |
| 22295 | Modern logical truths are true under all interpretations of the non-logical words [Potter] |
| 22310 | The formalist defence against Gödel is to reject his metalinguistic concept of truth [Potter] |
| 22298 | Why is fictional arithmetic applicable to the real world? [Potter] |
| 21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
| 22287 | If 'concrete' is the negative of 'abstract', that means desires and hallucinations are concrete [Potter] |
| 22284 | 'Greater than', which is the ancestral of 'successor', strictly orders the natural numbers [Potter] |
| 22281 | A material conditional cannot capture counterfactual reasoning [Potter] |
| 22327 | Knowledge from a drunken schoolteacher is from a reliable and unreliable process [Potter] |
| 22273 | Traditionally there are twelve categories of judgement, in groups of three [Potter] |
| 22290 | The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can't refer to a concept, because it is saturated [Potter] |
| 22283 | Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components [Potter] |
| 22282 | 'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter] |
| 22296 | Compositionality is more welcome in logic than in linguistics (which is more contextual) [Potter] |
| 20692 | Money does produce happiness, but only up to a point [Harari] |
| 20663 | If a group is bound by gossip, the natural size is 150 people [Harari] |
| 20677 | Since 1500 human population has increased fourteenfold, and consumption far more [Harari] |
| 20688 | People 300m tons; domesticated animals 700m tons; larger wild animals 100m tons [Harari] |
| 20674 | The Nazi aim was to encourage progressive evolution, and avoid degeneration [Harari] |
| 20679 | We stabilise societies with dogmas, either of dubious science, or of non-scientific values [Harari] |
| 20690 | The state fostered individualism, to break the power of family and community [Harari] |
| 20689 | In 1750 losing your family and community meant death [Harari] |
| 20681 | The sacred command of capitalism is that profits must be used to increase production [Harari] |
| 20682 | The main rule of capitalism is that all other goods depend on economic growth [Harari] |
| 20683 | The progress of capitalism depends entirely on the new discoveries and gadgets of science [Harari] |
| 20687 | In capitalism the rich invest, and the rest of us go shopping [Harari] |
| 20685 | No market is free of political bias, and markets need protection of their freedoms [Harari] |
| 20693 | Freedom may work against us, as individuals can choose to leave, and make fewer commitments [Harari] |
| 20691 | Real peace is the implausibility of war (and not just its absence) [Harari] |
| 20684 | Financing is increasingly through credit rather than taxes; people prefer investing to taxation [Harari] |
| 20675 | The more you know about history, the harder it becomes to explain [Harari] |
| 20676 | History teaches us that the present was not inevitable, and shows us the possibilities [Harari] |
| 20671 | In order to explain both order and evil, a single evil creator is best, but no one favours that [Harari] |
| 20664 | Animism is belief that every part of nature is aware and feeling, and can communicate [Harari] |
| 20666 | Most polytheist recognise one supreme power or law, behind the various gods [Harari] |
| 20667 | Polytheism is open-minded, and rarely persecutes opponents [Harari] |
| 20665 | Mythologies are usual contracts with the gods, exchanging devotion for control of nature [Harari] |
| 20669 | Dualist religions see everything as a battleground of good and evil forces [Harari] |
| 20670 | Dualist religions say the cosmos is a battleground, so can’t explain its order [Harari] |
| 20673 | Manichaeans and Gnostics: good made spirit, evil made flesh [Harari] |
| 20668 | Monotheism appeared in Egypt in 1350 BCE, when the god Aten was declared supreme [Harari] |