Ankidroid additions related to Science, History and Philosophy. More information about Anki can be found in this article.
Luck
In a recent interview Douglas Murray told the above quote by the former American Baseball player Branch Rickey. He used the quote in response to the Victimisation mentality which often lays the blame of one’s misfortune or good fortune down to ‘luck‘. For example, Australia, is commonly known as, ‘The Lucky Country’ because it has comparatively little crime and a high standard of living. But how much is that down to luck as compared to being a residue of design?
Envy
Irish writer Oscar Wilde once told a fictional tale about how the devil was crossing the Libyan desert. He came upon a spot where a small number of demons were tormenting a holy hermit. The sainted man easily shook off their evil suggestions. The devil watched as his lieutenants failed to sway the hermit, then he stepped forward to give them a lesson.
“What you do is too crude,” he said. “Permit me for one moment.”
He then whispered to the holy man, “Your brother has just been made Bishop of Alexandria.” Suddenly, a look of malignant envy clouded the once-serene face of the hermit. Then the devil turned to the imps and said, “That is the sort of thing which I should recommend.”
Dialectics
I wrote a review of the above movie Half Nelson recently where I discussed Gosling as a middle-school history teacher using a form of ‘dialectics’ in concept and dialogue in implementation. I have heard the term Dialectics used a lot more in recent presentations by James Lindsay about Critical Methods and Radical Thinking. So, what is Dialectics?
It is the art of investigating or discussing the truth of options or the inquiry into metaphysical contradictions and their solutions. It is the modus operando of Leftism for the past 200 years since Hegel and later Marx. It is a Socrates technique of exposing false beliefs and eliciting truth – Arguments that juxtapose or contain contradictory ideas. In summary, it’s discussing the ‘thesis’ (meta-narrative) then exposing the ‘antithesis’ (postmodernism) and resolving it through ‘synthesis’.
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
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