site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3113 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 23, 2022

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Merry Christmas!

As someone asked (ironically) in another thread - how would life change if everyone could read thoughts and there was no off filter?

I believe there would be many maybe surprising consequences, such as an explosion in social anxiety.

However the no filter effect would have interesting consequences on the group thinks/culture wars.

BTW one of the strangest things of this timeline is that apparently a huge chunk of the population is not able to think or at least they believe themselves they can't think.

Think as in subvocalize words.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/exan65/today_i_told_my_mom_that_i_have_no_internal/

I have extreme skepticism on this phenomenon but if true it has many implication for AI research and philosophy.

In other words it might be that for a chunk of the population there is not thoughts to read at all.

However, one could talk about telepathy for the intermediate subsymbolic representation but that's not what your original comment was about and is definitely much less well defined, by definition since it is ineffable.

I don't know if a reddit thread is a good place to say a huge chunk of the population! I wouldn't be surprised if people without internal voices existed though, there are a shitload of people out there with unimaginable variations.

I'd always imagined telepathy, and often it depicted, as something where you get a vague impression but not exact word-for-word thoughts from someone. I suppose it could depend based on how the person thought.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats