I do subscribe to moral relativism. In a society where all the apples have a disease which instantly kills any human who eats it, it is morally good for the ruling class to ban eating apples. But in a society with healthy apples, such a law would be morally bad. I'm a complete layman regarding philosophy though, I just kinda wing it, so maybe that isn't what normative ethics is about, idk. To your point about nihilism, that's a mischaracterization- I said that meaning is everywhere, not that life is meaningless.
I think a lot of people, and in particular academic types, gatekeep philosophy behind abstruse texts to appear more learned-- I see that as elitism. I want to open the floodgates. There is moral philosophy being conveyed when Ash doesn't evolve Pikachu even though Raichu is stronger in theory. The maxim is friendship over personal gain. It's not deep but it's there. This frustration I have with elitism and gatekeeping is anger, yeah.
To the point of raising kids a certain way, you do you fam, I support you king. I will teach my son math too when he pops out in a few months. Not force per se, but... sneakily encourage ๐.
I didn't mean
moral relativisim.
Your were giving an interesting critique of my interest in anachronistic philosophy and scientific theory, and (it seemed to me) said "why not just watch pokemon". I think that comment descended into a kind of hyperrelativism where intaking any kind of "information" equals "knowledge" equals "learning" and in the end those words thin out until they vanish. I don't believe reading, say Hume, is "as good as" studying history or watching cartoons, for the purposes of learning/forming theory, about the topics he treats. Outside of the aim of learning/discovery - sure, anything is as good as anything. That's where the moral relativism would sit.
I think there are very concrete examples of modern scientific breakthroughs that have that exact trajectory. And so as an avenue of scientific inquiry i think it is meaningful.
Whether you'd force your son (CONGRATULATIONS!) to do math or not - the school system presumably would. I just agree with the worlds school systems in that basic premise, that it would constitute neglect not to teach them that. Just like it would not teaching them to wipe after taking a dump
I cannot see how
anything i've said could be described as elitism or gatekeeping of philosophy.
I think what you reacted to was what you saw as verbosity and unnecessary mentioning of my own interests, in the initial post (which i did warn you not to read :))
I don't blame you, i think it's personality type. There's this lady in my larger research centre (not near my lab) she's an excellent engineer. Helps us with a lot of math and programming. The first 2-3 times i spoke to her at meetings/conferences i would come up to her almost beaming and jumping and mention the latest mathematical area i was excited about. I remember the first itme it was about frequency domain analysis and fourier transforms. I think she had the same feeling you may have had. She said rather deflationarily: "yeah well, it's a nice tool, but that's what it is" - and i must have GUSHED something like: Yes, sure tool, but iSnT IT AlSo ThE DeEpest TRUTH EVER!? she eventually got over her worries. Perhaps she found out i was so dumb i couldn't possibly be truly arrogant or conceited.
But like her ... i might argue that you're the elitist there
YOU are thinking somthing like "he doesn't know ENOUGH about fourier transforms (or whatever it was you reacted to) to speak it's name!" when really, i never purported to be any kind of expert on it.
'm a medical doctor by original training, with a focus on neuro, so yeah, i can be boring at length about that. But is it really so bad that i love *your* field too? Who's standing watch at the gate, really?
This post was edited by emiq on Apr 15 2026 07:23pm