In a message dated 99-02-25 10:16:29 EST, you write:
Useful for feeling good and evading hard answers perhaps but it is rather unusual that making a symbol have 8-billion definitions makes it useful for anything at all.
Definitions are the sine qua none of understanding: they are the only proof that we have an understanding.
I agree with you here.
It is for us when your spirituality convinces you that we are blasphemers. It is for you again if another religionist decides that your God is competing with hers.
Why be so defensive to religionists? Atheists and other idealogues (such as Hitler and Stalin) also do these bad things.
Actually, the one person whom i respect most on this list (not saying who) is also the person whom i would predict would be the most kind and for whom I would, never having met them, do most anything. I recall also that the person on this list some years ago who struck me as most intensely critical was also the most objectively kind.
Why not say who it is? Can't we let people know it when we admire them? Is this reticense an extropian meme?
I guess that what I am saying is that critical capacity and affect are not only not opponents of one another (which no-one here has implied) but neither are they even particularly separable elements when analyzed at an introspective level (of course they are somewhat separable neuropsychologically, but then we are talking about dozens of computational modules processing such diverse things theory-of-mind, affective representations of others versus self and in fact a plethora of highly interesting, separable affective-cognitions).
Well said.
My feeling from watching this list is that some of its members are among the most wonderful affective and intellectual company I have ever experienced and that the two feed elements each other quite wonderfully.
tim
Great posting, Tim.
Adrian Spidle
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