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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  2377 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Wired | Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought

    there are no optimist thought daddies

I counter with Stephen Pinker

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker





user-inactivated  ·  2377 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Pinker might be optimistic, but in a pretty naive way. His method is ignoring the problems. He's very much an advocate of business-as-usual. There really isn't a lot of wiggle room in his philosophy as he (the thought daddy) has already figured out exactly how the "mind" works and therefore his political prescriptions MUST be correct. Christ.

tacocat  ·  2377 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was just pointing out that he exists. He seems like the USA Today of armchair academic philosophers who philosophise outside their area of expertise

user-inactivated  ·  2377 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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user-inactivated  ·  2376 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I thought so too, until Bill Gates declared it his favourite book of all time. Clearly you can be a billionaire yet remain very ignorant of certain things.

user-inactivated  ·  2376 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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tacocat  ·  2377 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No and based on your statement I was assuming it was a history. I'm disappointed it's not a history of hundreds of years of European history based on a class he took in the sixties. I was expecting this

But serious and starring Immanuel Kant, the Founding Fathers and Isaac Newton

user-inactivated  ·  2377 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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Quatrarius  ·  2377 days ago  ·  link  ·  

that's a good one