Content Producers

I like that. Well said! Reminds me a Jesus railing against the pretentious sophists of his day:

[i]24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?[/i]

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. There’s that Judaeo-Abrahamic propensity you were on about earlier

Because James is gone?

I’m not sure if I’ve ever started a thread here Idk, it’s more of an incentive for me if I feel I’m helping someone else and I have a hard time helping myself… like the roofer whose own roof leaks.

Yep, that’s the problem. 90% of what I say is not replied to and I feel I may as well type directly into the recycle bin.

And replying is a rule!

2.2 Arguments should be made in good faith: no trolling. If a moderator sees a poster presenting an argument and dismissing any counterpoints without engaging them, or suspects someone of presenting arguments purely for the sake of inflaming debate or annoying other posters, a warning may be issued. ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopi … 1&t=175550

I would say more, but I have to make this post iphone/ADD compatible

Interesting quote from the musician, Branford Marsalis, about the students that he teaches - I think it applies here and probably in general too:

“What I’ve learned from my students? Is that students today are completely full of shit. Much like the generation before them, the only thing they are really interested in is you telling them how right they are and how good they are”.

Now, if it can be said that this applies here too, and even in general - why?

I’m hesitant to claim it to be a recent phenomenon, if it is in fact applicable to any significant degree at all. I think the tendency for people to claim something as new is often merely because they’ve only recently noticed it. Obviously things do change over time, but it’s easy to assume that subjective experience is reflective of objective experience - at least when you’re just going on a hunch and/or you haven’t already examined things as objectively as you can without confirmation bias. People like to be the first to know something new and share it, which no doubt goes back to new resource finding in earlier periods of human civilisation. But in older situations such as that, your subjective experience of a new resource is of an object whereas the subjective experience of new trends in behaviours and attitudes is of other subjects who are only truly known unto themselves. The straw men you hear these days are just embarrassing, but they’re not surprising due to the fundamental attribution error combined with what I have just described about a tendency for people to assume their subjective experience maps objective experience to the degree that they think it does. You see a feminist doing something stupid and all of a sudden, it’s a new trend amongst feminists…

What I do think is new is the need for instant gratification. I don’t think this is the fault of newer generations, it’s just what they’ve grown up into. We’re rich now, and businesses have figured out how to abuse certain psychological tendencies in people to grab their attention away from the competition and to buy into what they’re offering instead. I say we’re rich, there’s not much you need to be far richer than most - internet and mobile phone is all you really need to be drawn into a spiral of chasing instant gratification. This is actually where we all wanted to get to: this level of richness is what older generations were all trying to achieve - and now we have it we’re realising it’s more complex than we probably assumed and has downsides as well as upsides. I think the upsides are more than the downsides, but the downsides negatively affect - amongst other things - the realm of intellectual thought.

With the rise of “alt-right” and conservative demagogues in reaction to a rise in institutionalised social authoritarianism masquerading as “leftism” (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one, but hey, it’s caught on now so what can you do?), and immediate access to all their content, it’s easy to latch onto their arguments, ideas, or at least their attitude, and think you’ve found something new that you want to show off to others.

I support free speech, but this includes my own free speech to point out flaws in line with the tyranny of logical argument. For example, my “new thing” that I’ve found that I want to show off to others is not really new at all. It revolves around the inversion of leftism that has occurred and is remarkably simple, but I don’t see anybody else pointing it out - so I take it upon myself to do so. For example, how is it “liberal” (deriving from the Latin “of freedom”) to be enforcing e.g. affirmative action? Take its opposite: authoritarianism. How is such enforcement not instead authoritarian? The movement is literally getting authority to prevent freedom… and it’s called “liberal”. Liberalism is associated with new reactionary movements against Conservativism. Conserving the way things are and traditions presupposes a lack of freedom, a lack of Liberalism to do otherwise - often for good reason, but not always and certainly not indefinitely. Freedom to move on from old ways is the whole purpose of Liberalism - but what then when new ways have to be enforced to happen at all? The newness is still the goal, but the freedom from conservativism is now the enforcement of a new way to conserve - as opposed to supporting the freedom to deviate.

Seeing as everyone has forgotten or overlooked things such as this, I don’t get to be told how right I am or how good I am. I’ve even violated the need for instant gratification by not keeping my response short. If I was speaking about my thoughts out loud, assuming I had an engaging delivery of such thoughts, I could potentially get away with extended explanation, but listening can be a lot more passive and less active than reading. It seems to me like the preferred format has turned away from text and towards video. Conversational format is also a lot more natural than an exchange of monologues - people want to respond before you’ve even completed a thought: another factor that works against deep thought that takes time to lay out. This is particularly the case for those suffering from the decline in attention spans. It used to be the case that you had to have a long attention span just to get into intellectual thought, but now with the incorporation of those without attention spans, you can seemingly get a lot more attention by posting little and often rather than making each post count and putting a lot of thought into it. As such I should really have cut my response short a long time ago…

Yeah man, no way that’s fitting onto a 4in screen. My view of mobile devices has always been like crutches: something to limp-along on until reunion with adequate workstation for the convenient and proper dispensation of poppycock rather than eternal relegation to the likes of sidewalk chalk memeing for the sake of mobility (new stuff), but maybe that’s too sensible aka boring to delay the gratification of dispatching a quick one-liner instead of waiting for the proper equipment necessary to exercise the noodle by putting thought into a reply. These machines are really dumbing us down.

Stefan has become somewhat notorious for talking at length about r/k selection where the propensity to eat one’s seed crop out of lack of delayed gratification differentiates the “planners” from the “mass-breeders” and the phenomenon is in fact as old as the hills.

Yes and it rubs me wrong that businesses and websites have kowtowed to the dictates of the herd in the quest for profits which seems yet another disadvantage of capitalism since every product and service exists for the behest of milking the big hump in the middle of the iq curve regardless of sense or sensibility. My last phone bill seriously looked like a coloring book which is absolutely without sober explanation since paper bills do not have to be digitally displayed (probably some woman who typically couldn’t stand the furniture to be in the same spot for more than a week who also required some justification for her job. I wish those types would be paid to go to the beach to coddle their compulsions with sand castles rather than meddling with my life and being congratulated for it.)

That’s interesting.

liberal (adj.)
mid-14c., “generous,” also “nobly born, noble, free;” from late 14c. as “selfless, magnanimous, admirable;” from early 15c. in a bad sense, “extravagant, unrestrained,” from Old French liberal “befitting free people; noble, generous; willing, zealous” (12c.), and directly from Latin liberalis “noble, gracious, munificent, generous,” literally “of freedom, pertaining to or befitting a free person,” from liber “free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious.” etymonline.com/word/liberal

It reminds me of a scholar:

Old English scolere “student,” from Medieval Latin scholaris, noun use of Late Latin scholaris “of a school,” from Latin schola (see school (n.1)). Greek scholastes meant “one who lives at ease.” etymonline.com/word/scholar

So, liberal, scholar, gentlemen were describing the same person of leisure and means with time to contemplate the charming irrelevancies of life in lieu of having to actually drudge for survival which, of course, leaves them completely out of touch with the plebs.

I suppose the creation of laws are consistent with being nobly born. Someone has to milk the herd.

It presupposes a good and bad whereas liberalism is solely the intolerance of intolerance wherein everything is moral except the act of defining anything to be immoral. They are indeed antipodal and boil down to the answering of one fundamental question: do you believe in universal and absolute right and wrong or do you not?

Of course, if your worldview is absent of a fundamental right and wrong, then you’re not going to want people void of moral compasses to be armed. Since the ends justify the means, liberals tolerate creations of laws that restrict freedom if it means protection whereas conservatives generally protect themselves and their moral compass, so no drinking on sunday or sticking your tallywacker where it doesn’t belong.

1000s of years of listening to stories vs well, however long the majority of people have been able to read. Reading filled a niche necessary to bring about video, but has been since antiquated by the vastly superior conveyance of information that is audio (heck, I’m listening to youtube while I write this). Otherwise textbooks would have sufficed without a professor needing to explain what’s contained in the book.

If you want to search through ILP for good content then I’m certain you’ll cross many of my previous threads. My homework is done. You’re welcome to pursue any points in my threads, if you want to test Reason.

Gloominary has a standard: young, idealistic, socialistic perspective. He maybe intriguing to other young people, but not me. I’ve countered many of his socialistic agendas already. He doesn’t respond as though his core beliefs (about socialism) can change. So there are personal reasons behind his agenda. But socialism is “easy”, philosophically. It’s not that interesting.

Zero_Sum is running the same old game.

I can’t speak for Prismatic’ threads, but religion is also another dead-end. 99.9% of religious disciples share the same dogmatic principles, clinging to (Abrahamic) God.

A lot of the louder voices are selling-out fast, to Modernity, to gain popularity. What’s popular, is politics, and the “SJW” agenda, leftist-liberalism. But very few thinkers are really digging deep into the core of the ideologies. This signals that everybody is deeply set into their dogmas and institutions, without really caring to know them, let alone change them. People are apathetic, representing lack of leadership and inspiration (lack of genuine, quality, high artforms).

High artforms are the pinnacle in terms of inspiring a large amount of people, and then fundamentally, western civilization. In previous centuries, European inspiration and high art was more obvious. The architecture of Gothic Cathedrals. Holy wars, crusades, ideologies worth killing for. These are lacking in the modern era. Nihilism in the 20th Century gutted-out most of the ideologies that inspire people to kill each-other, along with the threat of nuclear annihilation of the human specie.

You’re mixing up the religious mindset with philosophy.

Philosophy starts with no future. The future is unknown. Philosophy focuses on premises and core principles. If premises are flawed then conclusions cannot be trusted, no matter how accurate they are. Philosophy starts with the premise and works toward the conclusion.

It is religion where people start with conclusions, with Desires, and works backward toward the premise. Justifying their desires, as they go. Acting first, thinking second.

Philosophy thinks first, acts second.

Urwrongx1000

You probably will not be finding them. Why? Because you do not see them within your own existent philosophical world.

I don’t mind leading and producing. I just don’t want to be the one to do it 100%.

Like when you are the Driver, all the time, sometimes you want somebody else to drive.

With strong enough reasoning, you can lead anybody and anything.

Degenerates love areas where they can speak loudly and verbalize all their illnesses. Philosophy is attractive because philosophers and their consumers, thinkers, are the best listeners. Degenerates latch onto anybody willing to listen. So degenerates are attracted to a philosophy forum where they will be listened to.

It’s like homeless people, crazies, and bums on the street, ranting about god, that they are jesus christ, the second coming. They will latch onto anybody who listens to them. Most people, appropriately, ignore them. But the same happens online, and in forums. In this philosophy forum, the avenues can get clogged up with shit. People are ranting and raving, spewing inanity, nothing worth listening to. But that is the price of ‘liberal’ environments, without strict rules and regulations. And it is the cost of “free speech”.

What needs to be done is, the degenerate voices shouted down and driven away, or into silence, to make way for those who have something worth saying, something valuable.

Religion and genealogy go hand-in-hand. So people are fundamentally, biologically attached to their ideologies.

Everybody should be defining what they say and mean, extensively. That doesn’t really happen around here. I’ve seen countless arguments, a majority of threads, where disputes and misunderstandings occur based on flawed definitions that each participant has not spelled out, but easily could have, from the beginning. That’s amateur and mediocre. Philosophers have to be adept at spelling out definitions and clarifying differences, the reasons why people define concepts differently (almost certainly caused by differences of experience throughout life).

The problem is that people can believe they are free, when they really are not.

No amount of clarifying terms and definitions would solve such a problem.

Could be a coincidence.

It’s been mentioned already.

The popular agendas dominate the public arena, not necessarily ideas with philosophical content.

Perhaps popularity itself, is part of the problem. Philosophy is rarely popular. Or rather, philosophy becomes popularized over time, as it becomes watered-down (from old or dead philosophers) and then dolled out to the masses.

Today’s politics is the “new philosophy” from 100-200 years ago.

That harkens back to the point about “world = humanity”. A majority of the world’s population live inter-connected in such a way as to be completely subjective. People are out-of-touch with “objectivity” or “the world outside humanity”. Therefore people latch onto, becoming dependent towards, the rare ones who are most objective with their ideologies. It’s a matter of “he said” what and when.

It’s also why much of “academic” philosophy revolves around quoting dead philosophers and their philosophies. “He said it”. It’s never a matter of immediate personal accountability. Saying things now, and immediately explaining all the whys and hows. Like how modern ideologues can only go so far explaining their own ideologies. They don’t even know all of why and how they think what they do.

People repeat what others are saying. So you have to trace it all back to their sources. That requires digging into the past. Then you will discover that most of what is said today, was said 1000 years ago. But the words have changed slightly, re-ordered, rephrased, to make it seem as though it’s new now, when it’s not. So it is a very genuine challenge to discover “new” ideas, thoughts, and perspectives.

Content producers are very valuable in philosophy, because philosophical ideas and writing is not immediate. It takes a lot of time, testing, and challenging, to develop ‘good’ or strong philosophical ideas. At the very least, philosophers should be able to know the flaws of positions as they are pushed from the beginning. Any good philosopher knows how to Doubt, how to critique and criticize, how to disprove the premises.

I still cannot even imagine any “perfect” premises. Every single premise possible, that humanity has ever developed, can be overturned. There are no absolute truths.

Regarding immediate gratification, I know that Modern people want the products of a strong philosophy and ideology, without putting all the work in themselves. They want to latch onto Ideology X or Ideology Y, feel that it is right, and then claim it for themselves. For example, people are quick to identify as “liberal” or “conservative” based on these same generalities. People want to be right, but don’t necessarily care to know how or why they are right. The feeling of “being right” is reason enough.

Yeah, people want talking-points. They don’t necessarily want the “thinking” involved. You could challenge and press simple-minded people, as you indicate. You could force them into contradictions and expose foolishness. They won’t necessarily appreciate it though.

This applies to the point of matching ‘right’ leadership with ‘right’ followers, or right production to right consumption. A content producer needs appropriate content consumers. If people are low-minded, simple, stupid, then you waste time by reasoning to them and explaining yourself. Lower content deserves low explanation and justification. Dumb it down.

If you find the right audience then the content can be fully extrapolated and divulged.

It’s very, very easy to differentiate females from males, textually, without any other indication of gender.

For example, almost all (over 90%) of threads on this forum are started by men. Maybe even 95%?

It’s as simple as that.

Currently, there are only five women frequenting this site with any regularity while there are close to twenty men so it’s no wonder why there is less content from women.

If I have an idea, which has reached a critical point, I have to test it - there is no self-consciousness, it’s like being pregnant in the sense that it’s gonna come whether you like it or not. There is no sense of duty or fairness either, just urgency. But just as much as inspiration hits me suddenly, it doesn’t hit me reliably and often not at the right time. I will often be at work or away from a personal computer and the urgency has died out before I get the chance to write it down. You get what you’re given when you get it, sorry.

In theory. I don’t think leaders like to be led unless they are sure they’ve already gained respect and are interested in leading someone else into a leadership role in order to enhance their own leadership.
But none of this is really relevant unless you feel under-appreciated and are resentful that people aren’t following you, and you long to be a leader but in vain. Natural leadership just happens - you don’t plan who to lead and how, lions or otherwise, but you might be likened to a lion by others if you emerge a leader. Doesn’t matter if you aren’t likened to one though.

I guess, although I think it’s more to do with numbers, and the availability of shallow content that seems deep to the shallow. It’s the same as saying there’s no good music anymore, because it’s so drowned out by the hordes of loudest easy-option takers. Everything loses it’s specialness when it’s opened up to the masses. It’s like a philosophy class, in my experience - there’s always at least that one guy who has incessant inane questions and comments to offer, and too much of the class is taken up addressing him instead of moving onto something interesting and potentially outside the box.

This is a very under-appreciated truth, one side of a political debate will rail on the other as though they were absolutely wrong and themselves absolutely right, when really it’s mostly all been pre-determined by biology and they’re both perfectly valid in expressing their values. This is why I support free speech - silencing one group invalidates a whole avenue of valid ingenuity that too often benefits everyone in ways completely underestimated by the other side.

It’s been my displeasure to be dismissed by a once reasonably respected contributor to this forum, FC, on the grounds that I don’t find it sufficient to derive knowledge from second-hand sources and as such I don’t place a huge amount of value on reading up on the works of others - though of course I open my ears and listen out for interesting inspiration when I can. My approach is far moreover to attempt to derive it myself from as fundamental principles as I can identify - to make conclusions my own and as solid as I can from start to finish. His parrot, UrGod, tried his hardest to discredit some such conclusions in another thread, and only shut up once I found some quotes for him from another source.

I am reminded of a quote, not that the fact that it’s a quote legitimises it at all but I think there’s something to it, by Eleanor Roosevelt: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”. I am with you when it comes to being against the “He said it” approach to “philosophy”, and also the “feeling of being right” and the plagiarised re-iteration of the ideas of others like you see on youtube.

What was/were your name(s) in previous rodeos btw?

Serendipper, have you had (a) previous account(s)?

No this is my 1st and only. I’m not sure why I waited until now to sign up Oh now I remember… women, friends, and work. If I did anything like this it was intermittently on a motorcycle forum in the politics section

I arrived just in time to be in the middle of a 6-year feud between James and FC. James and I got into a spat about the existence of infinity and I think there is a language or dialect difference affecting communication between FC and I, making it difficult to understand each other. Apart from that, I don’t have a huge complaint.

“Be careful reading health books or you may die of a misprint.” - Twain. Standing on the shoulders of giants is ok, but I don’t want to be too wrapped-up in other philosophers’ hangups. I like to do my own thinking and I think that’s why I’m drawn to these interactional dialogs because it puts me in a state of deep thought.

You noticed that too? I don’t want to be mean; he’s making good progress I think.

I think he’s arguing someone’s position that he heard and thought was cool at the time rather than arguing his own ideas. It’s perfectly natural in our culture and educational system which favors indoctrination over free thinking. I don’t want to embarrass myself admitting what I used to argue

Yeah that’s pilgrim Tom’s point that it shouldn’t matter who said what because “appeal to authority”, but I still find it interesting to know the attribution and credit should be given lest someone think it’s your own work.

I’ll have to remember that. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a debate where my diagnosis didn’t take center stage. “Oh you’re one of them, well they are stupid so you are wrong.” It’s a convenient method of dismissal.

In defense of that, sometimes we can’t articulate an intuition or suspicion.

Women seem to lack, well, for lack of a better terminology, balls. They don’t seem to “step up” and engage. Of course, that’s double-edged sword since they’re also more likely to admit defeat and accept correction which is the beginning of wisdom whereas men have more trouble with reproof. So it’s a mixed bag and I’m unable to tell who is better-equipped to be a philosopher.

If there are so few of us then it would seem to behoove us to learn to get along because unfortunately we do not have the luxury of picking the ideal companions with whom to share our passions.

And I need someone to disagree with me because if they didn’t disagree, then I wouldn’t have anything to talk about. But I don’t want them to disagree because they’re a dogmatic blockhead. Essentially, I share the problem that vexes all of humanity: how to have all good and no bad.