Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, Socrates said:

Actualized Quotes #481

This is probably the worst take I've seen from Leo.

Public education is 95% pre rational in itself; repeating and parroting "correct" scientific ideas isn't rational nor does it introduce you to rationality, it is blind indoctrination, hence it is pre-rational. Every uni student and academia-influenced person I know has no method for validating facts, nor does he care to develop one; he just takes an opinion, filters it through the academic who already verifies his preexisting beliefs, and basically outsources the whole process. This isnt rationality, this is fancy pre-rationality portrayed as rigor, and only naive conformist idiots fall for it.

So if you want to make a statement like that i'd be more willing to argue that you should treat people who went to college like pre-rational baboons than the other way around.

Your position makes no sense.

Where do you think humans learn rationality?

They don't develop it themselves. It is taught in university. Just cause many university students are poor students doesn't mean the classes don't teach it.

If you do serious university study you will learn it.

You speak like someone who hasn't studied seriously at a university. Without universities, virtually no one would be rational.

Edited 12 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Miguel1]

17 hours ago, Eskilon said:

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” -- Lao Tzu

Man, what a twist of fate. I laughted at this.

[Socrates]

@Leo Gura You're conflating the source of rationality with the institution that claims to teach it.

Rationality as a capacity predates universities by millennia. Aristotle, Socrates, and a long line of thinkers developed rigorous epistemic frameworks with no formal institution behind them. The idea that rationality is essentially a university product is a very modern and very provincial assumption.

On your second point, "poor students don't reflect on the classes," you're dodging the actual criticism. The argument isn't that the curriculum lacks rational content. It's that the system's incentives, structure, and culture don't produce internalized rationality in most graduates. If the output is consistently poor, at some point that's the system's problem, not a coincidence of bad students.

And your own position undermines itself. You say rationality "is taught at university," but teaching and learning are different things. If the majority of serious university students still outsource their validation to academic consensus rather than developing independent judgment, then whatever is being taught isn't landing. That's not a defense of the institution, it's an indictment of it dressed up as one.

The stronger point is simpler: a person who independently develops the ability to construct models, test claims, and update beliefs without deferring to authority is rational by any meaningful definition—regardless of whether they ever set foot in a lecture hall. Gatekeeping rationality behind institutional credentials is exactly the kind of authority-dependent thinking the argument is criticizing.

[Joseph Maynor]

In your view, Is the One Consciousness which is imagining everything also imagining all the finite perspectives including the small you (the finite you or me) that appear to exist?

Edited 1 hour ago by Joseph Maynor

[Leo Gura]

@Socrates You have not understood my original quote. You twisted what I said to fit your worldview.

If you want to grow, trying reading my quotes with more charity.

7 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

In your view, Is the One Consciousness which is imagining everything also imagining all the finite perspectives including the small you (the finite you or me) that appear to exist?

How else could it be?

Edited 1 hour ago by Leo Gura

[Joseph Maynor]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

How else could it be?

Do you feel like your finite presentation as a human is also being imagined, and how is this sectioned off from what you take God to be?

[Leo Gura]

Just now, Joseph Maynor said:

Do you feel like your finite presentation as a human is also being imagined, and how is this sectioned off from what you take God to be?

Everything and anything is being imagined.

To be human is to imagine what it feels like to be human.

Nothing is sectioned off. Your visual field is God.

[Joseph Maynor]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Your visual field is God.

This is the empiricist side to your philosophy.  Interesting.

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

This is the empiricist side to your philosophy.  Interesting.

It's not a philosophy.

Jesus.

[Joseph Maynor]

33 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It's not a philosophy.

Jesus.

Got it.  So you feel like you're reporting reality, not engaging in philosophy per se.