Making iambiguous's day

That’s exactly how you sound to me. Minus the “analytic philosopher” part. You don’t sound like a philosopher or a thinker at all. More like a broken record repeating fancy terms that you have picked from some external source but without understanding them. Terms such as, I don’t know, “dasein”?

Whatever you don’t understand you judge as “too abstract” or “up in the clouds”. Very convenient. I have nothing against it. Have your fun.

In other words, you’re too stupid to understand what I am saying – indeed, you have no idea what narcissism is – and beside being stupid you’re also unwilling to admit you are, or might be, stupid, so let’s put the burden on the other, on me, to justify myself instead of simply asking “can you please explain yourself to me, I don’t understand what you’re saying”.

Little. Your understanding of narcissism is superficial. It’s stupid. According to your definition, even animals such as lions are narcissists. When in fact they aren’t.

Maybe, if you were humble and trustworthy in general. Which you aren’t. So I can only mock you.

A narcissist is someone who doesn’t take responsibility for his actions.

What does this means?
It means he does not accept the consequences of his actions. In other words, he does not measure the performance of his actions by comparing what he wanted to happen (desired outcome) with what in fact happened (actual outcome.) The purpose of such a measurement is to facilitate learning. Learning is the process of adaptation, which is to say, the process of adjustment of strength of connections between some set of actions and some set of outcomes. When you make a mistake, which is a dissonance between what you wanted to happen and what happened, you adjust the corresponding connection between the action you performed and the outcome that was produced by weakening its strength, which is to say, by decreasing its probability of success. Otherwise, you strengthen the connection.

Narcissists don’t measure the performance of their actions thus they don’t learn. They change but they don’t learn. They stagnate.

They think that they are always right. That their actions are perfect and thus beyond any kind of measurement.

Think of Christians and their prayers. They believe prayers are perfect, requiring no measurement to adjust how well they perform, which is to say, their probability of success.

Think of democrats and their voting rituals. They believe voting is perfect, requiring no measurement to adjust how well it performs, which is to say, its probability of success.

These are examples of narcissistic behavior. Not what you’re giving us. But this.

Self-gratification, in the context of narcissism, refers to the refusal to restrain actions that are clearly not giving desirable results. It does not simply mean pursuing self-interest.

Again: Let’s bring this down to earth. Let’s bring our respective “terms” out into the world. Let’s focus the discussion on a particular [and well known] prong #2 conflagration.

You can attempt to encompass your own rendition of Gib’s prong #1 assessment, and then integrate it into the existential reality of this particular set of conflicted human behaviors.

No, what I do is to ask those who think they understand something…something relating to human interactions revolving around the relationship between identity, moral/political narratives and power…and take what they think they understand out into a particular context that we might all be familiar with.

They either will or they won’t.

Huffing and puffing? Making me the argument?

Well, believe it or not, I’ve been there and done that with any number of objectivists over the years.

Now, from my point of view, I invariably end up making fools of them.

But not you, right?

[b]Note to others:

Given his understanding of narcissism and my own who might be more effective when confronting the narcissist “in reality”?[/b]

Hi Biggy,

I’ve been away from this thread for a while. Been busy. I now have some time.

You shouldn’t be asking that question. You know it leads to a dead end.

That’s why I’m saying to take a different route. Get back into objectivism… then trying moving back out of it through an entirely different route.

What it means is irrelevant. In regards to living in a deterministic universe, what we are able to come to grips with on the “is” side of the “is/ought” divide and what we are able to come to grips with on the “ought” side of the “is/ought” divide should make absolutely no difference to you. If on the “ought” side, you can only conclude that, in our moral convictions, we come up with existential fabrications due to the fact that, living in a deterministic universe, it could not have been any other way, then that exact reasoning can be carried over to the “is” side, and you should be concluding exactly the same thing. I’m say that, I’m afraid, your dilemma applies even to “is” questions.

Then we come back to the meaning of “choice”. As I said above, the ability to violate the laws of nature is not the only way to define “choice” or “freedom”. Most people, when they talk about acting “freely” are not supposing they can defy the laws of nature–they simply mean that when they have the experience of making a “choice” they’re actions unfold exactly in accordance with what they feel they are “choosing” to do. The difference between being free or being forced has nothing to do with whether or not things could have turned out differently, but where the forces that determine the outcome of our actions originate from–do they originate from within or without? Are we the force that determines our actions, or is it a force that comes from outside ourselves? For example, a purse snatcher sneaks up on a woman and tries to yank her purse from her hand. She resists. The purse snatcher is a force that works against the woman, who is herself a force acting in resistance. The former defies the woman’s will to keep her purse. If he succeeds, we say she was robbed against her will. But suppose the same woman earlier that day handed her purse over to her husband for safe keeping. It could be construed as more or less the same action: she relinquishes her purse from her possession to another man. But in one case, she does so against her will, in the other case, she does so according to her will.

Any way you cut it, however, they are all forces working in the fray of a deterministic universe, and one could still say things could not have been any other way.

Bringing this back to your dilemma, the only way you can get away with saying that you are “stuck” in your dilemma, always doubting the truth of objectivist-sounding arguments, is if you were actually trying to be persuaded by them, eager to be open to them, but some outside force (as if someone else had control over your mind) was preventing you.

You have a very primitive understanding of psychology, naturally, since you’re a very primitive person. Maybe you should stop doing it because, you know, in my very own personal opinion which may turn out to be OH MY GOD wrong one day in the future, you are terrible at it.

What I’m seeing is this: you come here, make some noise that noone can make any sense of, then you watch people’s reactions and then try to spot a pattern you want to spot e.g. that they are losing it. Very funny.

You know it all. But because you show how humble you are by adding IMO after every claim you make, well, it can be excused.

Applause.

Two points:

1] I don’t know that it leads to a dead end. I only know that “here and now” I am not myself privy to the argument that does in fact resolve it.
2] my argument is aimed more at those who insist that not only has it already been fully resolved, it has been fully resolved by them

The objectivists in other words.

How then would one actually go about doing this in regard to particularly contentious conflicts like clitorectomies, abortion, homosexuality, animal rights, gender roles etc…

How would you do it? In other words, for all practical purposes pertaining to a particular context in which your values come into conflict with anothers.

Yet how in a wholly determine universe would I really have any autonomous choice in regard to deciding whether it makes a difference to me. If I think that it does then I was never going to think that it doesn’t. The “is/ought” world – the conflicts in it – are just an illusion. Every human interaction is necessarily subsumed in the immutable laws of matter.

We “come up with” only that which we could never not come up with. We conclude only that which we were never permitted not to conclude if we are to be in sync with the laws of matter.

Or: Then we are back to determining the extent to which the meaning that we attach to “choice” “here and now” is or is not the only meaning that we were ever permitted to impart given that we are permitted to impart only the meaning that is rooted in whatever [or whoever] set into motion the laws of matter.

And then the extent to which they either are or are not truly immutable.

Exactly: “Choosing”.

Here however we are clearly stuck. Why? Because in order to actually answer these questions we would have to be cognizant of that which wholly encompasses Reality and Existence itself. And surely one of the biggest mysteries here by far is where the brain ends and the mind begins, where all that is “out in the world” ends and where all that is “in my head” begins.

In other words, the truly enigmatic, perplexing connundrum embedded and then embodied in the self-conscious “I”.

Okay, assemble a bunch of us in a room. We are watching two film clips. In the first a woman is robbed of her purse against her will. In the second she hands over her purse willingly to her husband.

We are asked to react and we do.

Now in a deterministic universe every single thing that happens above was never ever not going to happen.

From my frame of mind once that is understood then it is understood in turn that our exchange here on this thread is in exactly the same boat. The only boat there is.

And then I am back to concluding that you are explaining something here of fundamental importance about “compatibilism” that I am simply [still] unable to fathom.

If “I” exist in a wholly detrmined universe then thinking and feeling that I am “stuck” here is just part and parcel of Reality. It is just another domino toppling over onto yours toppling over onto mine.

And at the very core of this problematic enigma is the understanding of what it means to “try” to accomplish something that is only ever going to be what it was never not going to be.

Possibly. But what on earth does any of this have to do with the points that Gib and I are discussing here?

After all, making me the argument doesn’t make the points that I raise go away.

Though it seems the points that I do raise here have often driven the objectivists over the edge. In order to stave off even the possibility that my own frame of mind may well be applicable to them, they feel this need to make me – to make me – the “problem”.

On the other hand, whatever works, right?

Like Biggy I like to keep things short and sweet, like getting hot with Some guy. How about it iambiguous? :wink:

The problem is you’re making no points whatsoever. Noone knows what you’re talking about. You’re living entirely inside your tiny brain while thinking it’s others who do so.

You merely spam, accuse, provoke, doubt . . . that’s all I see.

I asked you once, twice, several times, many times, billions of times . . . what do you want me to do? You never bothered to explain.

Note to others:

It’s rather sad [if rather typical] that I am able to reduce folks who are actually able to make intelligent arguments about any number of things down to declamatory glop like this.

You know, if he’s one of them. :wink:

There you go again. I ask you a question and you don’t care to answer it. And to remind you, I don’t have to interact with you at all. It is you who need me to. I am, in fact, doing you a favor. But what do you do? Nothing. You just spam. You don’t genuinely care about how others react to what you’re saying. You have no interest in interacting with people. You live entirely inside your tiny little head. All the while, of course, accusing others that they do so. That’s what narcissists do. They project what they fear they are guilty of onto others.

Again, I have no clue what you want me to do. All I see is an old man spamming other people’s topics with his own concerns.

You are a SPAMMER. That’s my impression of you.

Words and intentions do not matter. Actions and consequences do.

Over and over and over again you declare how interested in reality you are. But are you really? Everything that is outside of your declarations says otherwise. Maybe you need to increase the volume of your declarations so that everything else is squeezed out of our sight.

Over and over and over again you prove you have no interest in interacting with other people. Don’t tell us that you do. Show us that you do. You simply don’t. You merely think you do. You have “reasons” with which you try to defend yourself. To make yourself appear, to yourself first of all and then to others, that you’re someone who is honestly interested in reality.

What I see is an insecure old man who copes with his insecurities by telling himself all sorts of lies.

You’re too confident in your bullshit for someone declaring to be very humble.

And your pathetic understanding of human psyche . . . god! How horrible you are at psychoanalyzing other people. I would shoot myself to death if I were as retarded as you are.

How many emotions I must be stirring with my “huffing and puffing” and how many notes to imaginary others I must be inspiring.

You’re a living perfection. Forever innocent. Because you say so.

Biggy,

I think I’m going to make this my last response to you in this thread.

To sum up the point I’m trying to make to you (one of the points), it’s this: that you seem most certain in the moments when you ask your questions–when you grill people for answers to your dilemma, the one you feel they too must be ensnared by–you remain “stuck” here because this continues to seem to be the most reasonable position from which to argue and think. True, you aren’t making any claims–you’re just asking questions–but any proposal other than the dilemma you see yourself caught in is held suspect in your mind until it can be demonstrated to you that there is a way out of your dilemma (and presumably into the alternate proposal you hold suspect).

This is your default position. ^ Dasein. Your caught in a dilemma. How can you resolve the conundrum of being in a universe in which things could not have turned out differently?

It’s good to have a healthy dose of skepticism over one’s own views, but this is not unique to you. It’s not a license to say you don’t have a default position–as though your nihilism permits you to say you don’t believe in anything.

Just like the objectivist, we are all prone to this–to having a default position that seems the “most reasonable” to us. My point is that we will only ever see the “reasoning” in our position simply in virtue of having those positions, that they are the ones we fall back on to deliver answers to questions, justifications to charges. It’s the “going into” that makes the reasoning seem evident, the being in the midst of the experience (even if the experience is an abstract thought).

If you really wanted out of your dilemma, if you really wanted to see whether an alternate position holds any merit or not, you wouldn’t be challenging such alternate positions nearly as much as you do. When an alternate view is proposed to you, if you really want to grip the merits of that view, you would dive into it, believe in it (if only temporarily), for that is the only way to see the logic of such views.

My point has always ever been that you have to allow your mind to “go there”–to temporarily suspend its usual tricks, its usual defenses–to be open to that which, at present, may not all together be a reality to you, just an existential contraption. But this is what existential contraptions do: they give us realities to believe in. Your nihilism, your “dasein”, is no exception.

If you did this, if you “went there”, you would find (eventually) that you have become just as convinced of your new outlook as you currently feel you are of your nihilistic/dasein-based outlook. It would gradually seem obvious to you. You would look back at yourself now and say: what was I thinking?

But I don’t think you want that. I think you find some kind of comfort in being stuck in your dilemma. It’s working for you on some level, for some purpose. And it’s true that you may not be entirely happy, unfulfilled, you may still feel some angst over being caught in a world in which prong #2 situations abound everywhere, but this is the dead end in the maze I spoke of earlier (the analogy to human thought). You feel the passage way you have followed has gotten you closer to your goal, but you didn’t expect a wall to stand between you and it. Now you’re repeatedly butting your head against that wall, still trying to get to the exit from the maze. It may be right behind that wall–so close yet so far–but sooner or later, you have to come to grips with the fact that the right way to get to the exit, the only way, is to backtrack. That’s why I’m trying to tell you: go back! Yes, backtracking does hurt, it means repeating mistakes you thought you’d never have to commit again, it means delving back into things you don’t feel comfortable with, that you thought you could leave behind, things you don’t really believe in anymore. But like I said: if you really want it, you could easily believe in it again. Objectivism is the default mode of viewing the world, the way the brain naturally works. It takes effort to see the world in any other way, to stretch the brain far from its natural mode of thinking. Relinquish that effort, and your brain will fall back on whatever “truth” seems most objective to you. I doubt you’ll ever forget that, at the end of the day, it’s still an existential contraption, but you’ll find that it’s so much easier to just slip into that objectivist mode of thinking than to be fixated on the fact that it could be construed as an existential contraption. The latter will become just a fleeting thought that passes through your mind and won’t seriously disrupt the stability of your brain’s default “objectivist” outlook.

But I don’t think you’ll do that. I get the impression so far that the effort you put in to resisting your brain’s natural objectivist mode of thinking is worth it somehow, worth some goal you feel is still within reach, or perhaps worth it because it brings you some kind of comfort that you feel would be lost if you slipped back into an objectivist frame of mind. I think you feel comfortable in your dead end. Not fully satisfied, of course–it’s not the exit you long for–but to backtrack… that entails surrendering what little comfort you have left.

I’d like to offer you some advice:

1] you need to ask yourself why [as with folks like Satyr] you get all worked up like this in responding to my posts
2] you need to explore how this reaction might be intertwined in the possibility that my points may be applicable to you

Come on, if you really felt this way about my arguments you would have long since moved on. And you certainly wouldn’t let my own assumptions here get under your skin. And they really do, don’t they? Hell, I remember back in the day when I was an objectivist. These sort of arguments nettled me too.

It’s just that, unlike most objectivists, I finally succumbed to them. Now I am entangled in a dilemma that I am really, really trying to yank myself up out of.

Sure, you’re spent years constructing this monolithic narrative that allows you to imagine that you really do understand the world around us. Just as I did. And the last thing you want is for someone like me to yank you down into a dilemma of your own.

One revolving around the existential relationship between identity, values and power.

Right?

People (meaning everyone) get worked up because subjectivists are the biggest assholes on the planet!!!

They want no accountability…

And dude, you have no dilemma!!!

I too would like to offer you some rather serious advice.

  1. you need to ask yourself why you THINK that I get all worked up when responding to your posts (because I do not)
  1. you need to explore how this reaction of yours might be intertwined in the possibility that I have no obligation to treat you with respect (because you don’t deserve it)

You have a very poor understanding of psychology.

I have no idea what your assumptions are.

I am pretty sure that it did for you. But I am not you.

Again, you are projecting yourself because your primitive, very embarrassing, psychology is the only kind of psychology that is familiar to you.

You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Certainly, you are not talking about me. You are talking about yourself. You are completely self-absorbed.

He thinks there is only one reason why people might be insecure. And this reason is basically the possibility that they might be wrong. In reality, however, there are many other possible reasons.

He’s motivated to question, to doubt, that which makes him insecure. He’s motivated to lie in order to cover up the uncomfortable facts. He has no interest in truth. He’s a liar, that’s what he is, and that’s precisely why he’s despised.

And Magnus, that’s objective :slight_smile:

For example, he’s the kind of person who will lie to you that there is something wrong with your behavior so as to paralyze you in your attempt to punish his behavior. He’s going to tell you that you are “losing it” or that you are “getting worked up” not because that’s what’s really going on but quite simply because it’s useful to him to think that such is true (because then it would be better for me to cease to be angry with him.) That’s the core of victim mentality. Maniputaing others by confusing them into thinking that what is better for you is also what is better for them.

I wouldn’t word it that way, but sure.

Here’s the deal with him:

He’s terrified of being judged

He’s trying to get lots of friends because he’s terrified of making hard decisions

And if you’re telling him that this dilemma doesn’t exist at all, he’ll just tell you that you don’t understand him and call you a little kid …

He’s extremely insecure, you’re correct about this