Thread:Forum:Genetic evolution vs memetic evolution (LQT!)/Gene propogation machines/reply (16)

"You'll just grab at anything that appears to support your philosophy. Look and you will see counter-examples."

Where to start?
 * There is a yawning abyss of difference between a "philosophy" and a gut reaction.
 * It is a very good thing that infants are cute, since that provides motivation for the laborious endeavor of keeping their little butts dry and clean, to say nothing of the hours spent marching up and down with a colicky kid on one's shoulder, screaming its lungs out right in one's ear. I can testify that it takes an awful lot of cuteness to make up for that, when the time could have been far better spent catching up on sleep.
 * I am not sure I even have a philosophy. To the extent that I might have the approaches to one, they could be summed up by the clever sayings on the back of the little tags once attached to Salada tea bags. My friend Paul claimed that those tags all said the same thing: "Don't be a dickhead."
 * There are always counter-examples. Something about them defining the parameters or boundaries of any rule... oh, right; that is what's meant by "proving the rule," putting it to the test.
 * More significant than the counter-examples are the central examples, the ones which define the prototype of a coherent cluster of ideas.
 * Philosophy has taken great strides since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Many of those steps had to do with demolishing the false dichotomies at the root of classical logic.
 * Have a nice day.