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Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

I welcome the day when ideas stand or fall on their own and are no longer pre-judged and rejected because they are “conservative”, “liberal”, “religious”, “scientific”, or whatever.

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My more educated friends go a step further and start calling things 'Hegelian' and such when I'm just trying to get directly at matters.

A fun drinking game is to ask them to rigorously define what “Hegelian” is, and every time the explanation becomes pointlessly vague or self-referential, drink. I take no responsibility for the inevitable stomach pumping though.

Hegelian just means that ideas are situated in series:

    Thesis
    Antithesis
    Synthesis/new Thesis
    Antithesis
    Synthesis/new Thesis
    etc...

And that while there is truth, there is no true idea. That what we experience as truth is a segment of dialectic that gives us emotional satisfaction enough to stop. But that this is personal and another person might need a longer chain which includes the antithesis of your ultimate (i.e. chain ending) idea.

I like to ask them to explain how I can build a rocket ship with it.

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