Unenlightened

[Note: It occurs to me that I should give a caveat for this. You should read the quiz in Tiemann's commentary first; reading it straight may make some people a bit nauseous. I included it primarily to make the point I make at the end: anyone can claim to be rational; the thing is to show it. And, although Shaftesbury was certainly wrong in saying that ridicule is the test of truth, he was certainly right that, when it makes a clear and defensible point, it is sometimes the most rational defense.]

A very funny Transhumanism quiz (HT: Brian Tiemann at Peeve Farm, who says all that needs to be said in the way of commentary on it). Or rather, it would be funny if it weren't clear that someone takes it seriously; as it is it's rather disturbing. My score:

MEMETIC SHOCK LEVEL 01 (0-4): average. More than a few candles short of Enlightenment. The sheepish, conformist, intellectually lazy masses reign supreme here. Hell's overcrowded livingroom.

And that was interpreting the statements as charitably as I could. Somehow I just couldn't say yes to the claim thatphilosophy is useless for anything but scientific popularization; and, as a useless philosopher who studies the real Enlightenment, I just couldn't affirm the contradictions that libertarianism should be imposed by centralized authority and that rational people believe that there really isn't any such thing as reason; nor, of course, could I accept any of the Nazism or attack on human rights.

This is why I always insist that people can't just claim to be rational; they have to show it discursively by reasoning and civil discourse.