Slashdot

Here, people speak freely so they can learn about human nature. Most of them join groups and defend their ideas against other groups. But they should stay separate. They should spend their time defending their own ideas against truth. Truth is veracity; sincerity; "honesty, uprightness, righteousness, virtue, integrity;" "absence of deceit, pretence, or counterfeiting;" and "accuracy of delineation or presentation."

It's much harder to be true than to win. But people here can fight each other. I can't do anything to stop the fighting. They must stop themselves.

It probably won't happen. But that's okay.

"Freedom returns in wretchedness, and truth returns in doubleness."

Rigorously arguing from first principles, cynically denying truth, and naively misreading truth are different subtly. In books they may all look the same.

It's going to work because it's right. It's going to be right because I've been there.

My school's environment has been bothering me. I have figured it out. I had forgotten that, because of the nature of competition, many people here have cheated, used other students, or used their parents to get here. Now they are failing, or they are succeeding by using the same methods they used before.

Hard scientists. What's the deal with them, anyways? We all know that lots of them are antisocial geeks who can't get along with other people, partly because they are abrasive and partly because other people are jerks. In anger and fear they turn away from the social, which is distressing, and take refuge in what they define as "the scientific," which is nice and pat and doesn't play mind games with you or give you guilt trips; remind you of your sainted mother or hated father; pass you over for a less angry, more fun, and more well-groomed male; or anything like that.

People displace their energies onto a more tractable target. Numbers, colliding masses, and chemical reactions aren't ambiguous the way people and perception are. Then they, and others who don't really feel one way or the other but like to draw conclusions about unfamiliar things, say that social scientists are bad, maybe not even scientists, because their work is sloppy, imprecise, unverifiable, and, most damningly, does not give them comfort.

Sorry, guys. You try it sometime.