Random Thought Thread

StoneAndSteel said:
I agree with everything you said Nathan the Machinist Nathan the Machinist with one exception: it’s not just kids. I have some wierd interest, but holes in human psychology and reason is one of the weirder ones. What you’re talking about is called the Illusory Truth Effect and adults are just as suceptible to it as kids. The effect is one of the big factors as to why you will meet clearly intelligent people believing dumb things. What you hear first and most frequently is the thing you are most likely to believe. There are a million factors, of course, but it is a very predictable one.
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belief is a strange thing.

Religion can be sensitive for people so let's stay outside of that area.

If you have been given an explaination for something that you have to take someones word on you are either believing in that thing or ask questions because you're not convinced.

I try REALLY hard to just accept that those things are in the same box as the cat Schroeder was telling us about.

COULD there be human sized lizards with hologram tech blatantly moving Overtons window further and further toward a 1984 style Brave New World? I DONT KNOW or have evidence to suggest it being true or false. ILL NEVER know. Both scenarios, above = true and above =/ true are in the box.

or not.

Fuck it. I'm loony. babahahdyfurkfhdvdkfhrvshdkfhrbffk
 
Synov said:
Of course children are dumb, that's why parents have to educate them. Gullible children grow into gullible adults because their parents don't teach them critical thinking. Is your child going to be any smarter because they didn't use TikTok? I doubt it. Before social media, it was TV. Before TV, it was comic books,
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G.K. Chesterton once pointed out, and accurately, that children are the absolute masters of imitation (And far from dumb). That’s how they learn, and as someone who now has three kids ranging from 4 months old to 5.5 years, it’s absolutely true. So I can only imagine the impression social media, never mind a visually over- stimulating app like TikTok, could have on a kid.

That said, I got online in 1993 when I was 11. Things were much different in those days, and even into the early 2000’s. But once the smartphone revolution happened, right before social media blew up, it created a legitimate recipe for disaster. A feeling of being connected at all times, yet alone, while looking and seeing how much everyone else ‘appears’ to be doing... It's a terrible 'thing' for a child to invest any amount of time into. No chance my kids will be on social media before the age of 16, at the earliest.
 
tinfoil hat timmy said:
belief is a strange thing.

Religion can be sensitive for people so let's stay outside of that area.

If you have been given an explaination for something that you have to take someones word on you are either believing in that thing or ask questions because you're not convinced.

I try REALLY hard to just accept that those things are in the same box as the cat Schroeder was telling us about.

COULD there be human sized lizards with hologram tech blatantly moving Overtons window further and further toward a 1984 style Brave New World? I DONT KNOW or have evidence to suggest it being true or false. ILL NEVER know. Both scenarios, above = true and above =/ true are in the box.

or not.

Fuck it. I'm loony. babahahdyfurkfhdvdkfhrvshdkfhrbffk
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I don't know that I think belief is strange. I think how we get there is strange.

***WARNING: GOD IS ABOUT TO BE MENTIONED (but not religion, so I think we're ok, tinfoil hat timmy tinfoil hat timmy )***

I think my favorite example is, "If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Everyone laughs at it as a stupid question to ask, but literally no one has refuted the asker's answer. George Berkeley is said to be the father of the question and would have responded, "There is no forest." It's all centered on the idea that humans cannot imagine something that is mind-independent because once it is imagined, it is now mind-dependent. Therefore, people can't logically conclude that mind-independent phenomena exist. That means that all sources of experience (matter, sound, taste, etc.) are mental phenomena. He explains that when we walk out of a room, leaving our favorite CPK on the table, and walk back in with the knife where we left, it means that there must have been a mind keeping it in existence... and that mind is god.

It's an interesting argument and is still known as "THE Master Argument" because the only philosophers who have managed to combat it always rely on a redescribing of phenomena as being mind-independent as a fact... never addressing the question of if they themselves can even IMAGINE such a thing. I don't agree with his conclusion and find it extremely tough to buy into, but I wrote a paper trying to find a hole in the reasoning, and the best I came up with was, "There's simply a flaw in human reasoning... you're wrong Berkley."

Before anyone beats up on the argument: there is more to it. I only gave the bare bones. But the argument does seem to point to an evolutionary flaw in our cognition and I think that's interesting to consider how we got to it.
 
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Synov said:
Of course children are dumb, that's why parents have to educate them. Gullible children grow into gullible adults because their parents don't teach them critical thinking. Is your child going to be any smarter because they didn't use TikTok? I doubt it. Before social media, it was TV. Before TV, it was comic books, etc.
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Your kid might not gain intelligence by avoiding Tiktok or other social media. However, I can say that your kids will have less anxiety and depression. There are plenty of studies to support this. I'd also be willing to bet that your kids will be a lot less confused.

TV and social media are completely different. Television has never had as large an impact. Any idiot (or worse, a predator with an agenda) can gain a following on social media. Television, less so.

Everyone has the right to parents as they see fit, so long as it isn't abusive or dangerous to the welfare of children.
 
1AbominAble1 said:
suggest that you buy a pair of New Balance shoes that have a strangely orthopedic look to them. Once you slip into those NB shoes you’ll understand so much more about the dads that came before you
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I agree with most of this parental wisdom, with the exception that rather than New Balance I wish someone had told me about thin zero drop shoes earlier
 
Matthew Gregory said:
There’s no reason to restrict that statement to children.
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That was my point earlier, social media are bad all around (except Bf, of course :) ), there is plenty of bad impact on adults as well. In many ways, adult social media use makes life worse for all of us, not just for the users.

As a father of two adult girls, I do suggest to think twice about not allowing something.

I was allowed to drink alcohol by my parents (in Europe) starting with my confirmation (at 12). The only „rule“ set by my dad was „walk straight when you come home“. And what he wanted to achieve worked, I believe.

On the other hand, I was not allowed a motorcycle when I was old enough. And I’m still crazy about them.

When it’s most impactful, during puberty and shortly after, kids will get access to social media anyways, if you allow it or not. All you can do is minimize possible damage preparing for it.

Then again:

„Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past
From the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts
And recycling it for more than it's worth“

You do you, of course :)
 
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As far as the impact of the internet on kids... I grew up without owning a television but otherwise completely unfiltered access to media, including basically softcore porn sci fi novels as a kid, BBSes as a preteen, and the internet as a teen. I think I did ok, and some of the stuff I found out about through media actively helped (thank you Nomeansno).

My son grew up with similarly unfiltered access. He's graduating highschool at 16 and seems to be doing ok. I just asked him if unfettered access to the internet was a good or bad thing for him, and he said he'd rather not have known about skibidi toilet or andrew tate's bullshit, but otherwise it was positive.

I think some of the impact may be different based on gender of the kid. I've seen at least some research that girls have it worse, because posting personal info online and comparing oneself to "better" representations in media have a more negative impact and are more likely to occur for girls than boys.
 
StoneAndSteel said:
It's all centered on the idea that humans cannot imagine something that is mind-independent because once it is imagined, it is now mind-dependent. Therefore, people can't logically conclude that mind-independent phenomena exist.
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That doesn't follow, it's a conflation of a thing with the conception of that thing. I can imagine a rock that is independent of mind. The conception of the rock is dependent on a mind but the rock isn't.
That means that all sources of experience (matter, sound, taste, etc.) are mental phenomena. He explains that when we walk out of a room, leaving our favorite CPK on the table, and walk back in with the knife where we left, it means that there must have been a mind keeping it in existence... and that mind is god.
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All experiences are mental phenomena, but the sources of those experiences don't have to be. That's like arguing that if everyone had bad eyesight and needed glasses to see, then everything that can be seen is dependent on glasses, and everything that exists only exists when watched by a pair of glasses.
It's an interesting argument and is still known as "THE Master Argument" because the only philosophers who have managed to combat it always rely on a redescribing of phenomena as being mind-independent as a fact...
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No need, I didn't state it as fact. But you have to wonder why fundamental physics doesn't need a theory of mind to explain everything it explains if everything is so clearly dependent on mind.
 
Synov said:
That doesn't follow, it's a conflation of a thing with the conception of that thing. I can imagine a rock that is independent of mind. The conception of the rock is dependent on a mind but the rock isn't.
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You only have direct access to the conception: conceptions are only mental entities and, therefore, in the mind. Berkely agrees.

Synov said:
All experiences are mental phenomena, but the sources of those experiences don't have to be. That's like arguing that if everyone had bad eyesight and needed glasses to see, then everything that can be seen is dependent on glasses, and everything that exists only exists when watched by a pair of glasses.
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Correct, they are mental phenomena; that is Berkeley's point. And no, experiences don't HAVE to be derived from mental phenomena. However, the fact that you cannot imagine the unimaginable is a serious issue for physicalists. So to are discoveries suggesting that a single quark occupies various spaces simultaneously. An idealist can IMAGINE this as a mental entity but a phisicalist cannot replicate it. An individual not being able to see something, with or without glasses, doesn't cause it not to exist. It is the observation by A mind that causes it to persist (as the idealist would say), not that EVERY mind must observe it. No one holds this outside of Blues Blues 's solipsists.

Synov said:
No need, I didn't state it as fact. But you have to wonder why fundamental physics doesn't need a theory of mind to explain everything it explains if everything is so clearly dependent on mind.
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Again, you have skipped over the basis of his contention: can you imagine the unimagined? Nothing he claims undercuts discoveries in science. In fact I have spoken to physicists who have confirmed behaviors in light that are somehow dependent on observation (don't ask for elaboration, it is too far outside of my wheelhouse). There is a reason people are still spilling ink on this argument on both sides of this argument. Somehow I have my doubts it is going to be resolved on BladeForums after surviving 300 years of scholarly debate. If you truly want to make a slam-dunk argument to be entered into the annuals of philosophy history, I suggest reading the Three Dialogues Between Halas and Philonous and attacking from there. You won't get far referencing a no-name BS of Science in Philosophy you met on BF.
 
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