Recent content by Schrodinger's Hat

I'd be interested to know who you learned that from... as it was definitely not a linguistics professor. That is the point though... guides to usage are part of the dictionary, and the guide to usage for this word will tell you that the meaning "to reduce by one-tenth" is no longer used...

To everyone who insists on pointing out the original "reduce by one tenth" meaning of the word decimate- this is not the meaning of the word now. Although dictionaries still list the original meaning, if you read the usage notes you will find that the original meaning is only used in two...

Most of Seneca's writings are fairly profound, especially on the subjects of nobility and suicide. Erica Jong's ideas on sexuality were profoundly affecting to me as a teenager. Max Planck's decision to consider quanta was both profound and serendipitous. Albert Camus's absurdity of existence is...

If you want to be a writer, you also need to work on your comprehension. S/He didn't criticise your off-line writing, s/he simply extrapolated on the basis of your posts. I would also say, on the basis of your posts, you should not attempt to become a writer. People don't write well in one...

Seriously? If your phone rings in class, at the least you should be made to leave. If it rings often you should be kicked out of the class. You are at college, you're not a f#cking doctor. No-one needs to get hold of you that urgently.

I use contractions like "fucktard" as insults quite often. In general (and this is probably the opposite of most people) I swear a lot at work and hardly ever outside it- it may sound strange, but I work in the transport industry so most people I talk to use "fuck" as every second word.

For the most commonly accepted definitions of "good", that is the opposite of what is true.

Divine Fiat is a popular viewpoint, but absurdly weak to the Barren Tautology problem.

Absolutely it is important; what I was trying to point out is that it makes no sense to make sweeping statements about something if you don't understand it. I'm all for people discussing something in order to try to understand it; it's when people say "morality is dumb derpa derpa derp" that I...

Th All Blacks are doing ok... if we could find a first five-eighth who could play more than half a game without getting injured. And don't even talk about McCaw's foot... Also- Wales were robbed.

Good and evil are value judgements, and value judgements only exist with a valuer and a valuee. The valuee in this case is humanity; whether humanity is good or evil though is entirely determined by the valuer. And by how you define the terms of course, but linguistics is probably a little off...

As with most things discussed by internet nerds, the problem is that 99% of the people in the conversation have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Most of the posts on this thread so far are the equivalent of, if this were a sports forum, saying "I don't like football because I...