(16-11-2017, 12:00 PM)budRich Wrote: In one way I think philosophy might be just that, a plug and play game. One dude gets a great idea, think about it for a couple of years, put it in a book, another dude reads the book and replace some details of the idea with his preferences. Repeat for ever.

What I find weird about what your describing here is that you regard philosophy as "merely" a set of (probably coherent) ideas, and not much more. Saying that ideas develop and change from one person to another, from one generation to another, from one culture to another, from one interpretor to the next, is in my eyes a very uncontroversial truism. But Philosophy (I'll use a capital "P" to distinguish it from the day to day use of the word, roughly corresponding to the "set of ideas" concept), at least the way I understand it a much greater project, between Man and Reality, and even this relation itself. What do we know, what can we know, what does this tell us about life, society, the subject, and the interrelation of all these things. Furthermore we are interested in the eternal truths, although I personally have a few problems with putting it this way. When in epistemology the sceptic asks what can we really know, he isn't worrying (or at least most of the time) about day to day, contingent "truths" like "what is the color of my shirt", stuff you'd write in some self-help manual or "is it raining" but the fundamental, eternal questions and answers, such as the fundamental nature of reality, human nature (or lack of it), the connection between logic and the material world, etc.

Since this a Unix form, I'll take the counter example of how the "unix philosophy" would if you ask me be much better categorized as "the Unix idioms" (note plural), since the advises it postulates might tell us how to write a program that cooperates well within it's environment (the shell) with other programs, but it will not tell us anything about Politics, Aesthetics, Metaphysics, etc. If anything, it silently presupposes many conclusions from existing systems of thought/ideologies (or of course these values arose from the circumstances within which it was developed, "old 70's computers" to put it simply).

(16-11-2017, 12:00 PM)budRich Wrote: Otherwise there are only one true philosophy and everything else is fake those mindsets are often called religion...

I'm not saying that there can be different interpretations of the same subject... But that's a different topic, that should be discussed at it's appropriate time.

(16-11-2017, 12:00 PM)budRich Wrote: Do you read on paper, e-ink, phone, tablet, laptop, ultrawide or CRT?

While I would prefer paper books (most of the time), I have recently been doing most of my reading on a kindle paperwhite. The two main advantages is the backlit screen (which gives me much for freedom to decide when and where I want to read, without having to find a lamp place it in the right spot and not move at all while I'm reading) and the amount of books it can store. The last point is also kind of it's downside, since plays into my skipping from one book to another habit even worse, especially if I get stuck in a bit of a boring passage in one book. For example the introduction... I sometimes read articles on phones/laptops, but I find it generally much more distracting than a offline device.

I've also been using pandoc+calibre a lot since I got the ebook, which has really made me appreciate pandoc much more since I've learned about all it's capabilities.

---

And lots of thanks to @josuah for the lobste.rs invite. Seeing that I've been lurking on the site for nearly 3 years and have yearned to participate in some of the conversations so many times, I was so thrilled when I got the email. Don't remember being that happy in a long time, and I just graduated German high school (Gymnasium) this year, which for many others my age is the highlight of their life (until now).