Cory Giles's Profile

I am interested in Languages,Programming,Electronics,Japan,Manga,Cognitive psychology,Behavioral economics,Artificial intelligence,Urban exploration,Data,History/Philosophy of Science,Anthropology,History/Psychology of Religion,Classical (Greco-Roman) literature,Real-time Strategy Games,Caffeinated beverages,Philosophizing,Pies in the Sky. My favorite music are Metal: Kamelot,All That Remains,Disturbed,Killswitch Engage,Nightwish,August Burns Red,Dream Theater,Within Temptation,Epica,Rammstein Softer Rock: Anberlin,Something Corporate,Senses Fail,Brand New,The Non,Sanctus Real,Weezer,The Starting Line Indie: Sufjan Stevens,Death Cab For Cutie,Simon And Garfunkel,Kenny G,Classical: Chopin,Schubert,Mozart. Movies: Lord of the Rings Dead Poets Society Iron Man Serenity Butterfly Effect Last Samurai Gladiator Star Wars. TV: Firefly,24,The Office,Bleach,Stargate,South Park,Colbert Report. Books: Lord of the Rings,That Hideous Strength,Ender's Game,Silmarillon,The Screwtape Letters,The Golden Compass,The Brothers Karamazov,Human Physiology by Stuart Ira Fox,anything by Madeline L'Engle,Voltaire's Zadig,Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography,The Boxcar Children,Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,Watchmen,Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Member since Jul 19, 2009, follows 0 people, 0 public groups, 333 public bookmarks (334 total).

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  • Ethics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robots and Society on 2009-11-08
    • Robots are things we
      build, and so we can pick their goals and behaviours.  Both buyers
      and builders ought to pick those
      goals sensibly.
  • Henri Bergson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on 2009-11-02


    • The influence of Bergson had led James "to renounce the intellectualist method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be." It had induced him, he continued, "to give up logic, squarely and irrevocably" as a method, for he found that "reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows, and surrounds it."

  • The Dilemma of Determinism, William James on 2009-11-01
    • Calling a thing bad means, if it means anything at all, that the thing ought not to be, that something else ought to be in its stead. Determinism, in denying that anything else can be in its stead, virtually defines the universe as a place in which what ought to be is impossible,--in other words, as an organism whose constitution is afflicted with an incurable taint, an irremediable flaw. The pessimism of a Schopenhauer says no more than this,--that the murder is a symptom; and that it is a vicious symptom because it belongs to a vicious whole, which can express its nature no otherwise than by bringing forth just such a symptom as that at this particular spot. Regret for the murder must transform itself, if we are determinists and wise, into a larger regret. It is absurd to regret the murder alone. Other things being what they are, it could not be different. What we should regret is that whole frame of things of which the murder is one member. I see no escape whatever from this pessimistic conclusion if, being determinists, our judgment of regret is to be allowed to stand at all.
    • The theoretic and the active life thus play a kind of see-saw with each other on the ground of evil. The rise of either sends the other down. Murder and treachery cannot be good without regret being bad: regret cannot be good without treachery and murder being bad. Both, however, are supposed to have been foredoomed; so something must be fatally unreasonable, absurd, and wrong in the world.
    • 6 more annotations...
  • William James - Psychology Defined on 2009-11-01
    • The purpose of consciousness is to assist individuals to adapt to their environment. The purpose of this adaptation is to secure the individuals' welfare . . . that is, their safety and prosperity [functionalism].
  • William James on Habit on 2009-11-01

    • "Every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort."

  • William James--some observations on 2009-11-01

    • "Perceptions and thinking are only there for behavior's sake."



    • "All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits."



    • 6 more annotations...
  • William James on memory on 2009-11-01



    • When we wish to fix a new thing

      in either our own mind or a pupil's,

      our conscious effort

      should not be so much to impress and retain it

      as to connect it with something else already there.



      The connecting is the thinking;

      and,

      if we attend clearly to the connection,

      the connected thing will certainly be likely

      to remain within recall.

  • Discordianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on 2009-11-01
    • Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
  • Psychology of religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on 2009-10-31
    • this is a relatively ineffective perception of God because it is so general that it fails to convey a strong sense of direction and purpose.

    • this is a relatively ineffective perception of God because it is so general that it fails to convey a strong sense of direction and purpose.


      An important thing for Adler is that God (or the idea of God) motivates people to act, and that those actions do have real consequences for ourselves and for others. Our view of God is important because it embodies our goals and directs our social interactions.


      Compared to science, another social movement, religion is more efficient because it motivates people more effectively. According to Adler, only when science begins to capture the same religious fervour, and promotes the welfare of all segments of society, will the two be more equal in peoples' eyes.

  • William James - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on 2009-10-31
    • soul-sickness
    • The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic.
    • 5 more annotations...

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