Staredit Network

For those who don't know, Humanism was started in ancient Greece and is the belief, simply put, that humans can do what they set their mind to do. You can get more information on it here.

DISCUSS!!

I half-believe in humanism - I believe that any non-retarded humans with an ounce of wisdom have a decent chance at doing whatever they set out to do. If you want to be a Billionaire and you're determined you'll do well in school, yada yada, get into a business school, yada yada, and become a business billionaire. Of course, one unlucky investment and that can go down the drain, but someone who's really determined can start over or assassinate the problem or something like that.

I don't believe in stuff like a human creating a way to do something that counters the laws of physics, such as creating magic and giving everyone the ability to shoot fireballs out of their fingertips.

I do agree with a lot of what's stated in that Wikipedia article. I am a moral universalist and believe in the supremacy of logic as an investigation system, both of which are mentioned in the article.

I do not, however, believe that you can necessarily do what you set your mind on doing. Sure, having the ambition helps, but there's a lot more to it than that.

I believe that in realistic cases there's a strong possibility of you succeeding - realistic as in having been done before.

I believe that I can do ANYTHING I want.
I have had less success believing that everyone can do whatever they want though, because they simply don't believe they can. I cannot press my philosophy upon someone else if they are unwilling to accept it. Therefor I cannot say that they are able to do things, they must believe it for themselves.

Well that all depends on what we define as the laws of physics. Many of the inventions we currently have now would have been "impossible" in older concepts of the physical world. So we have, in fact broken the laws of physics, because they are defined by us, and variable to change. Who's to say we won't find a strange way in which to fly, or something, and then adapt the theories we currently have in place to accommodate this new property.

I don't really know for sure, but I don't think they really had laws of physics that were like, mathematical, and stuff...

On Humanism, there is no way, whether I try my hardest or not, I can lift a tractor trailer in the air with my bare hands. Some stuff you just can't do :\

Physics was never taught centuries ago anyways, so it has never been majorly revamped.

That is the same thing as saying, "I believe that in situations where you are likely to succeed, you are likely to succeed."



Well, it is a true statement.. I guess.

When taken literally, "you can do anything that you set your mind to" means that you can defy the laws of this reality as long as you really really want to do it (reminds me of Hiro from Heroes)

Of course, what it really means is that you must never give up, work as hard as you can, and be better than others in order to accomplish your goals that are within the realm of possibility. In order for this philosophy to work in the business industry, you must rise above others in the corporate ladder and make their goals unobtainable. The only way for this philosophy to work in the corporate world for everyone, it would have to happen in a communist government.


Isaac Newton was born around the 1600s, so if I can do the math right, that's more than a century ago

I didn't really mean that recent -_-;;, I was assuming Rantent was referring to an earlier time. Anyways that supports the point that physics has never been majorly revamped.

Well I believe that people used to think that the world was flat wayyy back in the past. Also, they thought that the universe revolved around the Earth back in the Roman times-I think.
I'm not a historian so I don't know what other ridiculous things people believed in the past, but I'm sure that there're more than what I stated.

Well you know... that 'flatty' theory is the European people's beliefs. Asian worlds and Islamic worlds did not believe it that way. More and more things might revamp some theories we have right now.

Back then, they didn't have as much as elements in the charts we have now.
Back along then, they didn't know there were Protons and Electrons.
Back along then, they did not know how to use oil as a way to make kinetic energy.
Back in the 1600's, there were no quantum theories or theory of reletivity.
Alot of people in the 1800's did not even believe that humans were made up of bundles of cells.

The belief that the rest of the Solar System revolved around the Earth was present at least well into the 17th century. In fact, it was only in 1992 that the Catholic Church finally said 'Okay, yeah, Galileo was right'.

As for the Earth being flat, many peasants believed that even up through medieval times, however academics had known since the time of the ancient greeks that the Earth was in fact round.

Actually I was refering to a time later then that, in 1899 Charles Duell said the famous words "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
And just looking at computers, microwaves and such, he was wrong.

That wasn't a concept of that time, that was just some guy, who I don't know.

He worked for the patent office and that quote inspired a lot of people to get off their bums and invent things. (If you look through history of ideas, there was a spike at the early 1900's, possibly credited with his saying? Although nobody can know for sure. It did spark a controversy at the time though.)