Comment Re:Dangers of being an arrogant ass (Score 1) 484
While I agree that limiting intellectual discussion to the higher halls of intelligencia is dangerous, destructive, and ultimately pointless, it does help to get some perspective.
Blogs are often the realm of the amateur philosopher where people repeatedly rehash things that have been either established or disproven decades ago. They talk about other things, though, and provide information to people who don't have it yet. Just because this information is redundant to what's going on somewhere else doesn't mean it isn't useful.
But the writer is correct in that many people present arguments about things that really have no validity, and then they expect others to act on their arguments. The concept of "family" is a good example. What is a family? Why is an adoptive family less valuable than a genetic one? Why would gay parents be less loving than straight ones? Does a family suffer if it's a man and his mother raising a child instead of a man and the child's mother? Or is it all equivalent if slightly different in a way that we personally disapprove of? We don't even bother to define the word "family" before we start insisting that "family values" are of primal importance, and yet the stupid people fall for it.
The argument of mind and brain is similar, but another order of magnitude tougher to understand. Nonetheless, people who have never bothered to think about the definitions make statements about them that they expect everyone else to take seriously. It's fine if we all recognize that this is all in fun, with maybe a bit of brain candy thrown in for good measure.