Mastodawn

MARCUS: How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!

[Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi et decretis suis pareat?]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 2, ch. 4 (2.4) / sec. 11 (2.11) [Marcus] (45 BC) [tr. Peabody (1886)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/cicero-marcus-tulliu…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #cicero #character #hypocrisy #philosopher #philosophy #practicewhatyoupreach #pride #reason #selfawareness #showingoff #sophistry #truebeliever

Cicero, Marcus Tullius - Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 2, ch. 4 (2.4) / sec. 11 (2.11) [Marcus] (45 BC) [tr. Peabody (1886)] | WIST Quotations

WIST Quotations

bookandswordblog 2d ago

is there an established term in rhetoric for trying to spread an idea by criticizing it half-heartedly? Praising by faint damn? #rhetoric #communications #sophistry

Marfisa Jun 4

“Modal Collapse”

#bigboobs #bigbreasts #boobs #breasts #caption #chastity #cleavage #chastitycage #chastitydevice #chastitycaption #chastityslave #modallogic #modal #philosophy #glassesgirl #glasses #freewill #femdom #femaledomination #dominantwoman #mistress #dominantfemale #domination #femdomcaption #dominantgirl #dominatrix #keyholder #breastfetish #keyholdercaption #sophistry

Amy Serrat May 26

The only good ENTERTAINMENT is that which makes one forget, if but a moment, the HELL in which one exists. #sophistry #philosophy #errtling #bookcafe #opinion #morning_thoughts 🧠 ✒️

skua Mar 18

Irish coffee, 3 position on it.

1. Being sure that coffee with a shot of Irish whiskey in it is better than drinking the whiskey straight.

2. Thinking that it can never be known whether a shot of Irish whiskey that is being drunk would have been better mixed into a coffee. (Agnostic)

3. Drinking Irish whiskey, sure that it would not be better in a coffee. (The spiritualist position)

Which somehow leaves 1. to be twisted into "atheism".
This is your task.

#Sophistry #AngelsOnTheHeadOfAPin

Vadim N.Jan 13

Arguing with the devil never does any of us any good.
He has had 5,000 years of practice.
He knows all the weak spots.
©

#sophistry

Daniel Dvorkin Dec 17

#Knowledge is #justified #true #belief. That definition is about 2500 years old, and although #philosophers have been trying to come up with a better definition ever since, no one has. All claimed counterexamples are #sophistry.

A lot of my fellow #scientists and/or #atheists have trouble with the word "belief" because they associate it with faith—which in turn can be defined as belief *without* justification, or whose truth is unknowable. But it's really a lot simpler than that.

If I walk inside dripping wet, and someone asks me if it's raining, and I say it is because I've just been out in it, then I'm stating my belief. What you believe is anything you can honestly affirm if someone asks you, "Is such-and-such true?"

Belief can be simple and immediate or complicated and long-term. It can be trivial or profound. It can be true or false, justified or unjustified, testable or untestable. The honesty, that's the key. Knowledge, a proper subset of belief, has a much higher standard.

The above is an extended way of saying that if someone begins a loaded question with an aggressive, sarcastic "Did you know ..." then you are amply justified in truly believing they're full of shit.

Interesting Links Nov 25, 2025

LLMs are bullshitters
Kagi's head of machine learning on what LLMs actually are, what they aren't, and what you should definitely not rely on them for. Ranger does think that they can be useful (comparing philosophers, who actually think about things, to lawyers or sophists, who only care about what the rhetoric accomplishes), but only spends one paragraph on it.

#AI #LLM #Kagi #sophistry

LLMs are bullshitters. But that doesn't mean they're not useful | Kagi Blog

*Note:* This is a personal essay by Matt Ranger, Kagi’s head of ML In 1986, Harry Frankfurt wrote On Bullshit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit ).

lmorchard's links Nov 20, 2025

LLMs are bullshitters. But that doesn't mean they're not useful | Kagi Blog

"But remember that LLMs are bullshitters: you can use LLMs to get incredible gains in how fast you can do tasks like research, writing code, etc. assuming that you are doing it mindfully with the pitfalls in mind

By all means, use LLMs where they are useful tools: tasks where you can verify the output, where speed matters more than perfection, where the stakes of being wrong are low.

But don’t naively trust a system that freaks out at the inexistence of the seahorse emoji to complete critica..."

https://blog.kagi.com/llms

#ai #bullshit #genai #llms #sophistry

LLMs are bullshitters. But that doesn't mean they're not useful | Kagi Blog

*Note:* This is a personal essay by Matt Ranger, Kagi’s head of ML In 1986, Harry Frankfurt wrote On Bullshit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit ).

WIST Quotations Has Moved!Oct 20, 2025

A quotation from John Adams

As I have always been convinced that abuse of Words, has been the great instrument of Sophistry and Chicanery — of party, faction and Division in Society.

John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter (1819-03-31) to J. H. Tiffany

More info about this quote: wist.info/adams-john/36295/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #johnadams #equivocation #ambiguity #chicanery #deception #language #meaning #persuasion #rhetoric #sophistry #talking #terminology #wordplay #words #definition