Forum Philosophy Update

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 4:34am

Guess that’s the way you see it.
I would brush it off.

“malicious”
“slander”
“accuse me of immoral activity”

Well, well, well.

Yeah, not impressive. Definitely not something that I want.

Except I would not say “oh I didn’t mean it like that”. And we would not “go on”.

You told me your version of the story. You told me what you wanted me to hear about it.
To know what is actually going on, I would have to check the CNBC version and the YouTube version and the Schiff version. Then could make an intelligent evaluation.

Serendipper · February 22, 2018, 8:57am

How did the people come into being? Who was the herder before there were herders?

It seems you’re thinking that by some remarkable luck we’ve made it this far in our evolution, so we should immediately take the reigns or we’ll go off a cliff.

Let’s say, just for example, that you believe the white race is superior (whatever that means), so would you believe there was someone directing folks coming out of africa on which way to go in order to evolve into white people? Who was the herder? Even if you think they didn’t come from africa, they had to come from somewhere and who guided them?

Whatever it is that you think is good that needs the protection of a dictator begs the question of how it arrived in the first place without said dictator dictating how things should be. If you claim remarkable luck, then that remarkable luck has been remarkable for a remarkably long time because 1 million years ago we could have said it was all remarkable luck so far, so why shouldn’t the luck continue without a guide?

And nevermind that power corrupts. That’s another line of attack on the monarchical theory of the universe. As well as benevolence being an impossibility because in order to love you must hate that which threatens what you love, so no one can be absolutely benevolent.

Alan Watts on this:

[i]You see, you never really know in which direction progress lies. And this is today a fantastic problem for geneticists. The geneticists, you know, because they think they are within some degree of controlling the DNA and RNA code, believe that it is really possible, perhaps, to breed the kind of human beings that we ought to have. And they say, “Hooray!” But they think one moment and they think “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! But what kind of human being?” So they’re very worried.

And just a little while ago, a national committee of graduate students and geneticists had a meeting at the University of California, and they asked a group of psychologists, theologians, and philosophers to come and reason with them about this and give them some insight. And I was included. That means that they are really desperate.

So I said, “I’ll tell you what, the only thing you can do is to be quite sure that you keep a vast variety of different kinds of human beings, because you never know what’s going to happen next. And therefore we need an enormous, shall I say, varied battery of different kinds of human intelligence and resources and abilities. So that there will always be some kind of person available for any emergency that might turn up.”

So you see, there’s a total fallacy in the idea of preaching to people. This is why I abandoned the ministries; I’ve often said, not because the church didn’t practice what it preached, but because it preached. Because you cannot tell people what sort of pattern of life they ought to have, because if they followed your advice, you might have a breed of monsters.[/i]

A plague of righteous people

But I’m here to tell you that anytime you get a similar group of organisms together in one spot, they’re going to be wiped out. Nature wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to chow down on such a plentiful snack. If you have all pine trees, the pine beetle makes itself at home and leaves you with nothing. The more you try to dictate what is good, the more you expose yourself to the possibility of extinction for lack of variety.

How long have you been here? I thought you were new per the date on your thingy there.

Serendipper · February 22, 2018, 9:12am

Why do you feel that shaming is the wrong thing to do?

That’s a good observation that seems right at first, but the reason for referees is that there are only 2 teams, so we need a 3rd person for a judge. Communities have many independent “teams” and don’t require a referee to judge since any member can chime in with an opinion on a situation and act as a referee.

Karpel_Tunnel · February 22, 2018, 9:34am

phyllo:

More than this poster and I have responded more generally than you have and fit the shaming pattern I encouraged above better than your posts. Perhaps it speaks to Prismatics need for chastisement that even when I mix up your name with someone else you have done things which less perfectly fit the kind of shaming I am recommending, but nevertheless are present in your posts.

You responded more specifically - though indicating a general criticism (the reference to his psychology) - and were ad hom in the sense of directing criticism at the person not the argument.

The moderators should have told him not to call others “shallow”, not me.
I don’t want to be doing that and if moderation was effectively implemented here, then I would not have to. I don’t come here to be somebody’s Daddy.

We would do it at a dinner party and at college seminar in a debate in a meeting.

If I’m running a meeting where people present their work and it’s critiqued by others, then one of the rules is “No personal attacks”. Nobody is a moron or shallow or ignorant. Their work is not moronic or shallow. If there is a deficiency in their work then specific problems and errors are pointed out.
Since I’m running the meeting, I’m enforcing the rule. o

There is way to interact with your peers. If you want to do something different afterwards at a pub or dinner then that’s your decision.

OK, then what were you doing with Prismatic where you talked about his psychology, where you referred to his posts as hilarious and did not explain how? The links above that is.
And it’s not about being a daddy, it is all about being a peer. To use the term ‘shaming’ is on the polemic side, but it will certainly be experienced as shaming by many if their patterns of behavior are pointed out to them and criticized. And referring to someone’s psychology and referring to their posts, for the gallery, as hilarious, is functionally shaming. You are pointing at them publically.

Serendipper · February 22, 2018, 9:46am

So you would brush off the insult or brush off the noninsult? Brushing it off implies you’ve determined it to be an insult or you wouldn’t have said you’d brush it off.

You forgot “smells”

You accuse me of not addressing your point when I’ve been wearing myself out addressing your points. Maybe it’s an honest mistake; I don’t know, but it smells malicious. That means it’s consistent with what a person who is looking for a way out via discreditation would do, but leaves open the possibility of an honest mistake. It’s hard to prove intent.

Why not? Would you prefer to be banned than scolded?

Why not? You accuse me of avoiding your question, I refute that with evidence but say it’s ok, let’s move on, then you say you don’t want to move on? Why would you do that? I’m friendly

Fine. Make it hypothetical then. Suppose you and I are having a conversation on Carleas’ forum; would you consider it right if Carleas forbid you from displaying that conversation on some other medium?

If you can’t answer that one, then I can make a pretty strong case that you actually are avoiding the question lol

Karpel_Tunnel · February 22, 2018, 9:58am

Though the specific approach you took was more like shaming. You addressed third parties, you mocked. Look, maybe you reacted in ways in a specific interaction that you don’t stand behind in general. It’s not to catch you out. I do find it telling that even though I confused who you were, it still turned out you had reacted to Prismatic in a manner that, if he took it seriously, would like cause shame. These kinds of responses to not necessarily have to cause shame. A person might immediately get it, and just shift, not being attached to the way they were behaving. My goal would not be shame, but to be honest about it, it is likely that calling someone out on their behavior is shaming

People do not change easily for the most part. I don’t think the first step is to go general. It might be a simple: hey, when you insult me, I lose interest. Or, you are not responding to my points and this makes it less interesting to talk to you. But once a general pattern is present and gentle responses are having no effect, the other person needs motivation.

Here with Iambiguous you are really getting into a more general response - it is ad hom about motivations and presumably comes out of some generalized frustration. He may or may not feel shame when he reads this, but most people, when confronted with such a post, if they realized it was true, would feel shame.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=190026&p=2662397&hilit=iambiguous#p2662385

I found these posts all fairly quickly. I am not going to go digging to see if there are even better examples in response to Iambiguous, Prismatic or someone else. Perhaps you don’t support what you did in these posts. If so, I would suggest that certain people drove you to a point where you felt there were pernicious patterns to their behavior, enough to drive you to ad hom comments (not arguments) and point out these patterns. I think that is valid peer response. It is not being a Daddy, though that would not necessarily be wrong. It is an adult response to patterns of poor behavior. You may be right, you may be wrong, but that person has gotten strong feedback about their habits. If they keep getting it from peers, they need to take it seriously. Of course even consensus could be wrong, but it is good information to have about the community one is in. Perhaps these guys are just fine and we are off. Well, they might thrive in another community. And both Iambiguous and Prismatic, from what I have seen, are not the kind of people who get banned. Still, they can really bring down a forum, I think.

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 4:06pm

I think that I already answered but maybe I was not clear enough.

So:

I don’t think that I lose the right to use my part of the conversation unless I specifically sign it way. IOW, I can always use the statements that I made in the conversation if I exclude his statements. Admittedly, if I wanted to post it somewhere with his part edited out, it would look pretty silly.

If I signed away all my rights, then it’s my bad. I can’t use any part of the conversation. I should have read the agreement more closely. Honestly, I’m too lazy to read it again and check.

I also think there is an unwritten agreement in effect. If he asked me not to use the conversation, then I would not use it unless I thought that there was some serious issue of public welfare or a specific person’s welfare at stake. But maybe that’s just me.

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 4:11pm

That’s not going to make the game play better, faster, smoother … multiple “teams” making calls is only going to make it worse.

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 4:27pm

Thanks for the heads up.

I have reviewed those links and some other threads.

I think that some of my posts were purely statements of fact and ought not to be taken in any other way. Some were statements of fact which were not clear and could have been misinterpreted as something else.

I think that some of the posts were my attempts to manipulate, to accuse, to bully and to shame. I regret those. I do not condone that behavior. I brought down the level of the forum.

I need to be more on guard so that it doesn’t happen again. Think twice, post once.

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 4:54pm

There is hard division between ‘insult’ and ‘non-insult’ when it comes to words like “retard”.
It’s not clearly divided when dealing other statements like “fall off a ladder”. You place it into ‘insult’ and I put into ‘non-insult’. When faced with these different evaluations, my reaction is to “brush it off” as falling into a debatable, unclear, unsettled regions. You haven’t convinced me that it’s an insult and I haven’t convinced you that it’s not an insult. We’re not going to dwell on it, are we?

Given the example, I would prefer to be banned.

Evidence? You just accused me of all sorts of ‘extreme’ motivations and intentions. That’s stuff you can’t possibly know. I don’t consider that to be evidence.

Karpel_Tunnel · February 22, 2018, 5:05pm

WEll, I suppose I am glad you found it useful. For me we lost some useful communal feedback.

iambiguous · February 22, 2018, 7:14pm

Just for the record, anyone here can respond to me in any manner they see fit. If someone feels I deserve to be ashamed of my contributions here, shame away.

Still, my point regarding that which is of interest to me philosophically – how ought one to live in the is/ought world? – is basically that feeling shame doesn’t really make much sense. Why? Because in recognizing that my views here are in turn [subjectively/subjunctively] just existential contraptions, I acknowledge right from the start that I once rejected them before and, given new experiences, relationships and access to information/knowledge, I may well reject them again.

Indeed, with respect to identity, value judgments and political economy, and given how grim, how bleak and how utterly cynical my frame of mind is here and now, a part of me would very much like to “think up” a way to jettison all that.

Then I too might engender the sort of “comfort and consolation” that I construe to be embodied in the objectivists among us. I have access to none of that here and now.

Given the moral and political interactions of mere mortals in a No God world, I honestly do believe “in my head” that “I” live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that segues eventually into oblivion.

And if some are able to convince themselves that their own interactions with others revolve around an essentially meaningful world that segues eventually into one or another rendition of immortality and salvation then, hey, come in, who “wins” in the end here?

Me?!!!

Really, just out of curiosity, how might I manage to bring this particular forum down? The bulk of my contributions here revolve around those things that largely distract me from my “philosophy of life”. Mundane irony, song, film.

I think in part though I tend to discomfit the “serious philosophers” among us. And that is because my own philosophy of life revolves almost entirely around exposing the profound limitations of philosophy – at least with respect to that which I deem to be its most important function of all: probing the existential factors embedded in human social, political and economic interactions. The part where words meet worlds.

In my view, once Will Durant’s “epistemologists” among us get closer and closer to that, the more philosophy itself begins to seem less relevant to the actual interactions that we engage in from day to day.

They move on.

Or so it seems to me.

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 7:50pm

Well, you ask for help with your dilemma, but never take any advice. You keep repeating the same ideas, using the same words and examples. There is no evidence of any progress, or even movement is a particular direction, in the discussions.

“Moving on” seems logical and inevitable.

Mr_J · February 22, 2018, 7:51pm

Serendipper:

Zero_Sum:

How did the people come into being? Who was the herder before there were herders?

It seems you’re thinking that by some remarkable luck we’ve made it this far in our evolution, so we should immediately take the reigns or we’ll go off a cliff.

Let’s say, just for example, that you believe the white race is superior (whatever that means), so would you believe there was someone directing folks coming out of africa on which way to go in order to evolve into white people? Who was the herder? Even if you think they didn’t come from africa, they had to come from somewhere and who guided them?

Whatever it is that you think is good that needs the protection of a dictator begs the question of how it arrived in the first place without said dictator dictating how things should be. If you claim remarkable luck, then that remarkable luck has been remarkable for a remarkably long time because 1 million years ago we could have said it was all remarkable luck so far, so why shouldn’t the luck continue without a guide?

And nevermind that power corrupts. That’s another line of attack on the monarchical theory of the universe. As well as benevolence being an impossibility because in order to love you must hate that which threatens what you love, so no one can be absolutely benevolent.

Alan Watts on this:

[i]You see, you never really know in which direction progress lies. And this is today a fantastic problem for geneticists. The geneticists, you know, because they think they are within some degree of controlling the DNA and RNA code, believe that it is really possible, perhaps, to breed the kind of human beings that we ought to have. And they say, “Hooray!” But they think one moment and they think “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! But what kind of human being?” So they’re very worried.

And just a little while ago, a national committee of graduate students and geneticists had a meeting at the University of California, and they asked a group of psychologists, theologians, and philosophers to come and reason with them about this and give them some insight. And I was included. That means that they are really desperate.

So I said, “I’ll tell you what, the only thing you can do is to be quite sure that you keep a vast variety of different kinds of human beings, because you never know what’s going to happen next. And therefore we need an enormous, shall I say, varied battery of different kinds of human intelligence and resources and abilities. So that there will always be some kind of person available for any emergency that might turn up.”

So you see, there’s a total fallacy in the idea of preaching to people. This is why I abandoned the ministries; I’ve often said, not because the church didn’t practice what it preached, but because it preached. Because you cannot tell people what sort of pattern of life they ought to have, because if they followed your advice, you might have a breed of monsters.[/i]

A plague of righteous people

But I’m here to tell you that anytime you get a similar group of organisms together in one spot, they’re going to be wiped out. Nature wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to chow down on such a plentiful snack. If you have all pine trees, the pine beetle makes itself at home and leaves you with nothing. The more you try to dictate what is good, the more you expose yourself to the possibility of extinction for lack of variety.

How long have you been here? I thought you were new per the date on your thingy there.

I do not wish to hijack this thread where I welcome your input of this conversation in the following threads where I will do my best to address all your points. Also, I’ve been on this forum under various guises and usernames since 2007.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=193832

iambiguous · February 22, 2018, 8:46pm

What does it really mean to take someone’s advice with regard to the hole that I have dug myself into?

All I can do is to ask them to note the extent to which they are not down in the hole themselves.

And then to speculate as to the extent to which I might think or feel or behave in the same way.

Really, what else is there?

At least I’m not arguing that if they’re not down in the hole with me, they are wrong.

And they can always choose to stay exactly where they are: convinced that human interactions are not essentially meaningless and absurd in a No God world. Some even manage to conjure up one or another set of beliefs regarding immortality and salvation.

And, here, psychologically, something is almost always better than nothing.

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 9:10pm

A number of people have given you advice on how to deal with your dilemma ( Moreno for instance). Yet I don’t recall any posts which indicate that you took any action.

For example, someone might tell me that he has back pain and I suggest that he tries Yoga. If he comes back and says that he tried 4 classes over the span of a month it didn’t help, then I know he took some action. Unfortunately it did not work.
If he says that he has back pain but he makes no mention of my Yoga suggestion, then I would suspect that for some reason Yoga does not interest him. I might suggest something else like Pilates or Feldenkreis.
But if he keeps coming back with the same complaint of back pain and he gives no indication that he has tried doing anything at all, then I’m not going to waste time giving him advice. He obviously doesn’t want to get rid of his pain, he wants to talk about his pain.

And after a while, I get tired and bored of hearing about it. That’s especially true when it’s a one way discussion of his problems. I would probably like some advice and sympathy about my problems. But if we constantly have to talk about his back pain, I don’t get what I need out of the interaction.

phyllo · February 22, 2018, 10:54pm

This seems to be saying that nobody can give advice about getting out of the hole since everyone is in the hole. Nobody has a way out.

Asking for help would appear to be useless. Why keep asking? In the off chance that THE ONE who got out might answer? But you won’t try his advice anyways. Why would you?

Karpel_Tunnel · February 23, 2018, 9:54am

Saying that feeling shame does not make any sense, does not make any sense, in the sense (ha, ha) that it is a category error. Shame is interpersonal - it may or may not come from objective values, but it certainly need not. It is about having done something that my community, including myself, has a problem with. They don’t like it, they think God forbids it, they think it leads to negative consequences, they think it smells aweful, whatever. It’s a social mammal thing, and whatever your epiphenies have accomplished, you are probably still a social mammal even if you are an anti-social one. If you are a psychopath, well, then it’s not a category error.

Why? Because in recognizing that my views here are in turn [subjectively/subjunctively] just existential contraptions, I acknowledge right from the start that I once rejected them before and, given new experiences, relationships and access to information/knowledge, I may well reject them again.

Indeed, with respect to identity, value judgments and political economy, and given how grim, how bleak and how utterly cynical my frame of mind is here and now, a part of me would very much like to “think up” a way to jettison all that.

Then I too might engender the sort of “comfort and consolation” that I construe to be embodied in the objectivists among us. I have access to none of that here and now.

Given the moral and political interactions of mere mortals in a No God world, I honestly do believe “in my head” that “I” live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that segues eventually into oblivion.

And if some are able to convince themselves that their own interactions with others revolve around an essentially meaningful world that segues eventually into one or another rendition of immortality and salvation then, hey, come in, who “wins” in the end here?

Honestly. Can’t you see how fucked up it is to repeat this here, again. It is not relevent to the topic. Is it masochism? Are you trying to upset people by repeating something I am pretty sure everyone in the thread has responded to elsewhere in threads where it belongs?

See above.
How can it bring things down: since you are not abusive - at least from what I have seen - can string together rational arguments. You can lock people on you. It can seem like an interactive dialogue will take place. But all discussions will end up with you repeating your assertions and focusing on what you think and what the other person’s statement did or did not do FOR YOU. Rather than some other options like seeing what you are doing does to others. When you comment on this, it is always the implicit smug: I seem to make objectivists angry, uncomfortable. Not being able to imagine that there are effects and problematics ones from your behavior that have nothing to do with other people’s weaknesses and your bravery for having shucked off objective values. Not being able to imagine how what makes you uncomfortable affects the dynamic and the content of your discussions and your inability to, ironically enough, see the discussions accurately from other viewpoints than your own - hence your repeated, I make you uncomfortable smugness. How convenient.

Perfect example.

Nothing that can get a ban or even a warning from most moderators, unfortunately. An appearance of an open mind. And actually not that much appearance of being able to respond to specifics in other people’s responses. You are not the only one. Prismatic is like this also. A facade of responding to what you wrote. He’s not as smart as you are - and/or his not having English as mother tongue is a problem - but in any case it creates a morass. A bog.

You think this bog is because no one can face the horror that there may be no ground to their objective values. This may be a factor in some dialogues. But it is not the rule, however appealing that interpretation may be to you.

These kinds of patterns where a person cannot learn or shift interpretations but there is a facade of ‘rational’ dialogue destroys forums. Of course, as I said earlier, the community is ultimately responsible. We need to undo the training that allows us to conflate apparant rational dialogue from rational dialogue where both parties can learn. That is, the community after responding to these patterns and not seeing any change, could ignore/shun that person. BEcause in the end it is a form of trolling, just a subtler one and one that Carleas will never, ever intervene in.

I will do my best to live up to this shunning since shaming is not effective. The interesting development with the internet is that I can shun even if others do not. To be effective for the forum, it would need to be a majority shunning. But to be effective for me, it need not be. Of course if the general level of the dialogue is affected by those I shun, I may have to move on, but it’s not like the Amish. I can’t see you at the barn raising, even if the rest of the community still can.

Serendipper · February 23, 2018, 11:35am

phyllo:

Fine. Make it hypothetical then. Suppose you and I are having a conversation on Carleas’ forum; would you consider it right if Carleas forbid you from displaying that conversation on some other medium?

If you can’t answer that one, then I can make a pretty strong case that you actually are avoiding the question lol

I think that I already answered but maybe I was not clear enough.

So:

I don’t think that I lose the right to use my part of the conversation unless I specifically sign it way. IOW, I can always use the statements that I made in the conversation if I exclude his statements. Admittedly, if I wanted to post it somewhere with his part edited out, it would look pretty silly.

If I signed away all my rights, then it’s my bad. I can’t use any part of the conversation. I should have read the agreement more closely. Honestly, I’m too lazy to read it again and check.

I also think there is an unwritten agreement in effect. If he asked me not to use the conversation, then I would not use it unless I thought that there was some serious issue of public welfare or a specific person’s welfare at stake. But maybe that’s just me.

That’s a good answer. I appreciate that.

Two things come to mind:

Do you think it is right that you could be compelled to sign away your rights to your half of the conversation in order to participate on a public forum?
Aren’t both parts of the conversation “public”? Obviously, there is no expectation of privacy, so isn’t it public? Once it’s on social media, it’s out there and there’s no taking that back. So if the conversation is public, how can you sign away rights to something that you don’t own?

Serendipper · February 23, 2018, 11:38am

What’s the difference if the 3rd teams acts as a referee as opposed to a real referee? Neither have any invested interest in either other team.