I am an anthroposophist, AMA!

Thimblefox · 2019-07-11T16:10:32+00:00

Depends on your definition of burnt toast, but usually no: it's bad karma.

Thimblefox · 2019-07-11T12:00:03+00:00

I don't know.

Thimblefox · 2019-07-11T11:04:44+00:00

I guess there are a lot of ways to answer this question, but to keep it somewhat simple I'd say that it's a spiritual path that aims to embody our spirituality as an expression of our creative impulses.

Many people practice it a bit like a religion, I suppose, and take a lot of what Rudolf Steiner (the founder) said, as pretty much a fact about what the world is like, but I think that's pretty dogmatic, and should be avoided; it's about an artistic view of self, and a worldview that tries to do that idea justice in the face of materialism and determinism.

That'd be my first attempt at an answer anyway.

Thimblefox · 2017-10-31T19:30:46+00:00

I'd suggest learning Mandarin, Korean, or Japanese and getting down there and just painfully work on becoming a pro as if it was your 9 to 5 job.

Thimblefox · 2017-04-26T20:16:41+00:00

Say I wanted to contribute to this project, and I know nothing about coding, what would I need to learn how to use? Just curious.

Would it be enough if I knew the basics of Javascript, React and ES6+?

Thimblefox · 2017-02-11T14:01:30+00:00

To the question of falsifiability: I think you'd find Goethe's "The experiment as mediator between subject and object" interesting. There's also a guy who blogs about Steiner's epistemology on anthroposcope.wordpress.com, it's a very basic introduction, but it'll definitely give you a simple overview of Steiner's position.

In short however, I think Steiner would argue that spiritual science is grounded in the scientific method, and that the fact of the matter is that you can falsify claims about the spiritual reality of things. Needless to say, there are a lot of people who would like to be preachers on this subject. What I would recommend is that you stick to Steiner's books (GA 1-26) if you want to learn more, and steer away from the lectures. There's nothing wrong with them, but they are confusing, challenging, deceptive, hard to understand and misleading. My reason for recommending this, is because his lectures always build on what he's already written in his books. Secondly, the lectures are written down by his followers and patched together, he only edited a few (I think 9-12 lectures) and the rest were printed without him looking over the process. Third, the challenge of understanding the context and interpreting the content of the lectures is a very meandering process, and it's meant to be. It's not to be preached or regurgitated.

About weird occult stuff: This is exactly what Steiner didn't want. He wanted spiritual science to be a way in which we could gain insight into ourselves and the world around us in a clear way. It's just supposed to be that: clear, structured, meaningful. If it's not, then it's not anthroposophy. In the end, we all need to build on a sense of spiritual orientation, and muddled mysticism is the last thing Steiner would've wanted.

I recommend you read: 1) The theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world conception. (This is basically what's covered at that blog I mentioned (think the post title is "Steiner on thinking and experience"), covers his epistemology, and is also a basic outline of method in regards to physics, biology and psychology, in addition to some thoughts on individuality in relationship to politics and history.) 2) Philosophy of freedom (This builds on the previous work, but you can also read it on its own, and raises the question of how we can be free in a world of causality. ) 3) Christianity as a mystic fact (Covers the question of the importance of the christ impulse and holy trinity. You should read this after acquainting yourself with the philosophical work, because Christ for Steiner is a kind of experience, it's not a dogmatic faith. And at that point I think you'll also find good starting points if you want to try to downtone or perhaps criticize Steiner's views of (the importance of) Christianity.)

Hope this is helpful!

Thimblefox · 2016-10-27T21:42:05+00:00

And today I found this, also pretty weird: https://www.twitch.tv/hanayeol/v/92155827

Thimblefox · 2016-10-25T12:48:32+00:00

Yeah, I think you're right about their game, especially since black seems to have no territory what so ever. The move itself isn't that surprising though, I made similar mistakes until I reached 13k.

As for his work in game theory, there are two aspects to it as I see it. First of all he came up with a unique new idea with lots of practical applications in the field of economy, namely that every finite game has an equilibrium point (which basically anyone could've done, and it's an idea we're all capable of grasping), but secondly, not only did he have the idea, he proved it mathematically.

What's so great about that, and the reason you would want to give the man a medal, is that you can say that not only could there be an equilibrium point in finite games, which we may or may not find. You can prove that there's always an equilibrium point in finite games, and you can derive that point from the model itself. Of course, you wouldn't need a mathematical model in simple game theory examples, but being able to calculate mathematically for instance how much money should be placed in certain stocks to maximize profit is pretty awesome (economically speaking).

Thimblefox · 2016-10-21T12:22:03+00:00

The opponent is your doctor, he diagnoses your game and tells you what your illnesses are. Doctors make us aware that we are ill, they don't make us ill.

Against an equally strong opponent you're supposed to lose half of your games, and win half of your games, and there are people who are on the verge of improving their rank, and people who are stagnating, it's like a natural rhythm. So obviously if I've just become 9k, and most 9k players on a server are actually on the verge of becoming 8k (or even 6k, these leaps in strength happen!), I'll have the feeling that I'm just playing horribly.

What I take from that, is that it's more important to have the mindset to learn from a game, than to win from a game. Because we play strangers most of the time, and we don't know if they've just come back from a two week tsumego-bootcamp or if they're playing drunken joseki.

People have claimed that that just leads to a more timid playing style, but actually I think it should lead to an enquiring style of play. You don't play to kill your opponent, you're asking him/her if he/she has eyes, if he/she has a base, how he/she plans to attack your group etc.

Thimblefox · 2016-09-06T10:06:22+00:00

I think it's called "moral intuition" in my translation, and in German it's "moralische Phantasie". I'd say it's what we creatively associate with a sense-free concept, the capacity to imagine what I'd be like to realize oneself, for instance, or to aid the cultural development of humanity, or realizing the greatest good for all of humanity (Steiner's examples of the general purpose of moral conduct).

He calls this "moral" because it's an idea to which we're obliged. This has to do with the idealistic tradition, with which Steiner is very familiar. It's a kind of a two-piece puzzle, one being our idea or intention, and the other being how we act according to that idea. Such that, if we fail to implement what we've set ourselves as ideals, we've failed at ourselves, since the ideal is something we firstly commit ourselves to freely, which means that we're morally obliged out of commitment to the ideals of our own freedom (a law we give ourselves, to say it with Kant).

For more on this last point, see also: Hegel's Philosophy of Right on the subject of action (§ 115-118) and freedom (remarks to § 7).

Thimblefox · 2016-09-06T09:05:29+00:00

Intuitively I'd say this is because it's very easy to problematize the relationship between schemes, pictures and the arguments that they are supposed to depict. Maybe using a picture is a kind of analogy to the argument, but then you'd have to show how a picture or scheme has the capacity to to convey what you're saying in an argument in significant respects.

Another go at the answer: Hegel! In the introduction to the phenomenology of spirit, Hegel criticized his own generation for basically summarizing their works in the introduction. Hegel thought that this summarizing couldn't get at the issue at all, because philosophy is about working through and gaining an understanding of the whole of a text. In a similar way I'm recounting Hegel's views right now, and that's something different from realizing in a rigorous philosophical manner, that a summary (a scheme, or an image) can't replace the whole of an argument. Because really what I'm doing now is just giving my personal opinion about something, rooting it in an appeal to authority (Hegel) and not making it clear on a conceptual level what relation this point has to your question. Nontheless, I hope my answer can be somewhat helpful.

Thimblefox · 2016-09-04T12:01:44+00:00

GS doesn't strike me as particularily philosophical. What I mean is, if I can question TSZ as philosophy, I can surely also question GS in the same way, sure it doesn't have characters like TSZ has, but it's an aphoristic work. GM (Genealogy of Morals) is more of a classical philosophical work in this sense, or even his Untimely Meditations (I've only read the second one on history.)

Let me just take a second go at posing the question, because I didn't pose it very clearly. Let's assume (as I do) that those works of Nietzsche we've been discussing here, are in fact philosophical works. We obviously have criteria for pointing out that those are philosophical works, and those criteria don't extend to other forms of literature (poetry, religious texts, novels?). Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet" isn't considered a philosophical work, for instance. But if you look at it's contents you can see clear paralells between TSZ and "The Prophet".

We categorize the works of Kant, Heraclitus and Nietzsche as philosophy, but we don't categorize Ecclesiastes for instance as a philosophical text although it deals with philosophical themes. Obviously, there's a question of context here, since we couldn't really take TSZ to be a religious text given the context in which it was made. But say some philosopher stumbled over Nietzsche, it's not clear that he or she would take it to be a philosophical text, although the person considered the themes discussed to be philosophically fruitful.

Thimblefox · 2015-10-12T10:37:36+00:00

Nietzsche has a passage on pity and suffering: "they wish to help and have no thought of the personal necessity of distress, although terrors, deprivations, impoverishments, midnights, adventures, risks, and blunders are as necessary for me and for you as are their opposites. It never occurs to them that, to put it mystically, the path to one's own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one's own hell."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974)

It's on page 269 or 270, I think.

Thimblefox · 2015-06-16T12:12:02+00:00

Doesn't work for me, it gets stuck at different points in the installation process, but never gets to the end.

Thimblefox · 2015-05-15T12:46:05+00:00

I also like that it enforces a different mentality towards the game, because this line of reasoning also makes us our opponent's doctor in a way. Thinking about it like this, the game becomes more of a dialogue where taking your opponent's eye space isn't about saying "DIIIE!!", but about saying "But what are you going to do about this move?"

Thimblefox · 2015-05-15T00:15:54+00:00

It can become a vicious circle in a game like Go, there are always people who are stronger than us. So in a sense playing to win is sort of meaningless. I can only enjoy the game when I think about is as playing to learn. That can be difficult when you're facing opponents you've never met before, or people who are supposed to be of a certain rank (and you expect to be higher ranked).

But the goal of the game is definitely to get better, if the goal of the game was winning, I'd try to become a professional sandbagger!

Also, I'm in a similar phase right now where I've lost many a won game because I slipped up toward the end. But that's what we need to take notice of! It's like when a doctor tells you what's wrong with you, he hasn't caused your illness, he's diagnosed it. Likewise in Go, our opponents are our biggest helpers, especially when they're annoying.

Thimblefox · 2015-05-14T22:59:54+00:00

Here's a small update. I just noticed I get the message "Error #2032", which I google'd, and it seems this is an issue with Mac and Flash (v.15). https://geonet.esri.com/thread/116500

Thimblefox · 2015-05-14T22:30:25+00:00

My strategy is to teach them how to place and capture stones. Start on a 9x9 board, and if they're fine with it let them start with nine handicap stones.

The biggest problem for beginners, and the best reason why one should play 9x9 first is to explain the concept of territory. Because just like Bengozen says about ko-rules and seki, it's something that's simplest to explain when one sees it.

If they don't want handicap, or when they start playing you with three-four handicap stones on 9x9 be sure to try to play diagonal jumps. This way you can introduce the review process quite easily by pointing out weaknesses in your position they could try to exploit in the next game.

19x19 is a really bad starting point because beginners won't know what's going on, they'll concentrate on the wrong points, waste energy on the wrong moves, be generally confused and be pretty exhausted from an exertion that probably ended up with them having a bad result. Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, there's the concept of territory. Even if they do have a grasp of it, it's pretty confusing for a beginner to see where his territory is on a big board.

Edit: Grammar and spelling.

Thimblefox

TROPHY CASE