Re: Guilty pleasures
DharmaTroll
> On Oct 27, 4:02 pm, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 27, 7:06 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 26, 8:44 am, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Well, at least you're no so lost in woo-woo that you don't claim that
> > > > there is no time to run out of! You're demonstrating something I've
> > > > seen in folks, when you just do navel-gazing without critical
> > > > thinking, then meditation serves as 30 years of cementing and
> > > > hardening of your dogma and beliefs. I suppose if you're not in pain
> > > > and not hurting anybody else, this is ok, but I prefer using
> > > > meditation to help let go of dogma and beliefs.
>
> > > And his dogma and beliefs are ... what? That there's a spiritual
> > > contiguity from personal mind to extrinsic mind?
>
> > > Same for Keynes.
>
> > > Now you're doing battle with two spiritual agnostics, accusing them of
> > > minor crimes of noumenal and expansive mind formations (not that
> > > they're guilty, but the accusation is thus...).
>
> > No, I'm not accusing anyone of 'crimes'. I'm just statin' that
> > meditation without critical thinking leads to becoming more of a
> > believer, just as going to church every week tends to do the same
> > thing --
>
> Believer? In what? Direct experience?
>
> For many people I know direct experience leads to apognosis &
> disbelief.
That's begging the question. You mean their belief in direct
experience leads to apognosis and disbelief.
> > I'm not accusing churchgoers of being 'criminals', either.
>
> Of course you weren't, but you certainly tackle it thusly in a manner
> tantamount to prosecution of one.
No, I'm just askin' for evidence. Now confess!!!
> > I'm just saying that if you think you can follow some system and
> > meditate in some repetitive way, that doing such will necessarily lead
> > you to 'truth' or 'objectivity', that you're wrong, and wrong in a big
> > way, that's all.
>
> Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
> can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
> tantamount to delusional belief.
Well, I can get to the serious discussion of why the Buddha rejected
claims of direct experience, and didn't assert such things, or I can
just have fun whacking the nutters around here who claim to open trans-
dimensional portals to Nondual Undifferentiated Fluff.
> > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > eternal life.
>
> No it's not a belief.
Yes, it's a belief. You can't just say, "my belief isn't a belief,
it's da troof!" Well, you -can- say that, but it's nonsensical.
> You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> existing.
No, that would be question-begging again, and treating 'existence' as
a property of an already posited god.
> Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> phenomena from within and without.
Ah, "when pressed for how I know my magical woo-woo, I say 'it's a
model'." No, the nutters believe it, even if it's a model for you.
> > > Riddle me this: Can you measure how much Woo is being committed by
> > > Bodhidumba or Keynes?
>
> > You want me to count their posts? Or their meds?
>
> As always, we must start with ourselves.....
Well, I have posited zero transcendental realms or realities and zero
beasties.
> > > And what mote of ill reason lurks in their belief system how does that
> > > compare if their practice makes them happy?
>
> > Look, lots of folks also are made to feel happy when they believe they
> > are drinking the blood of Jesus H. Christ every week. What the hell
> > does that have to do with anything? If being a superstitious dolt
> > makes you happy, then do it, you say? You live in Southern California,
> > I bet, don't'cha?
>
> LOL. Nice try.
Heh.
> > I'm asking what evidence is there for what really is going on, not
> > which kind of deva-dung puts smiles on fools' faces!
>
> Ask away. But that's not the bone of contention, now is it?
Yeah it is.
> You're insisting that everyone needs to only look for material answers
> and as such should stick only to material questions.
You mean, we should only ask real questions, and not metaphysical
ones, such as,
Is the world eternal? or not?
Is the world finite? or not?
Is the self identical with the body?
Or is it different from the body?
Does the Tathagata exist after death? or not?
Yeah, that's what I'm insisting, stick to real material, tangible
questions, not metaphysical ones. Guess who else insisted on the same
thing? D'oh!!!!
> > Maybe I oughta kick your ass, you politically correct do-gooder!
>
> Like to see you try, bubba!!!
I'll blast your ass with my Pali Cannon.
> > > If you were arguing ball teams you'd be talkin' sports. But instead
> > > you're arguing religion when you push the triumph of materialism
> > > against noumenal theosophy.
>
> > Noumenal theosophy? What a crock of shit. And UFOlogy too.
>
> Now I see your problem.... mental constipation. It mistakes crocks of
> shit for interesting experiences. Splendor & UFO's, Love and rockets.
Nah, "noumenal theosophy" may be the biggest crock of shit ever. But
it might make a great name for your band. If you play bass, Keynes
will play the banjo. Boddhidumba can bang on drums.
> > Where do you nutters come up with these nonsense terms?
>
> I made it up.
Well, then, like I said, you have a name for your band!
> OK, how 'bout existential awe?
>
> Same thing.
Not at all. Existential awe is great. But you don't have to deny or
escape the world and posit Harry Potter stuff to feel existential awe.
You can be awed by the world as it is, without any magical fairy dust
added. And it's even more amazing if you don't add the magical fairy
dust of the Transcendental. Just like it's even more amazing if your
blissed out when sober and not drunk or stoned, even though you can
feel that way much more easily drunk and stoned. For an example of
existential awe without Transcendental Woo-Woo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
> <am I arguing with a serious person here?>
No, certainly not serious, and arguably not a person.
Or are you making fun of my tights?
> > > It's same old atheist mistake as ever, the piety of naive
> > > materialism.
>
> > No, it's an educated critical thinker flushing the skeptical toilet.
>
> He who smelt it dealt it.
>
> Too bad you paid your dime & only farted.
>
> > I say eff your ineffable noumenal theosophical woo-woo.
>
> Oh yeh! Well, scrute you !!!!
>
> /l
Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
said: "Mouths are flapping!"
Bwahahahahahah.
--My Divine Grace Yabba Dabba Dukkha Dharmakaya Trollpa
"Cynicism, as a state of mind, produces more accurate observations
about the universe than practically any other."
-Michael Wikoff
Beerlet Dhiblang
Perhaps. Not intentionally.
> You mean their belief in direct
> experience leads to apognosis and disbelief.
No, their direct experience triumphs against cognitive dissonance. The
process of disentangling internal contradictions entails apognosis and
then resolution into disbelief (disinterest).
> > Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
> > can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
> > tantamount to delusional belief.
>
> Well, I can get to the serious discussion of why the Buddha rejected
> claims of direct experience, and didn't assert such things, or I can
> just have fun whacking the nutters around here who claim to open trans-
> dimensional portals to Nondual Undifferentiated Fluff.
Where does duality arise in the grand field of coarising phenomena?
Stand back far enough away and it's all one big unit. Macro vs. micro
are all fully entangled in an ecosystem of nested phenomena dolls.
Sentient attention filters out extraneous noise when observing
constrained phenomena. Without dualities we could not learn.
> > > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > > eternal life.
>
> > No it's not a belief.
>
> Yes, it's a belief. You can't just say, "my belief isn't a belief,
> it's da troof!" Well, you -can- say that, but it's nonsensical.
Is it? Then what kind of belief? A belief stemming from direct
experience? One from intellectual analysis? Or a vicarious one
inculcated by social means?
> > You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> > existing.
>
> No, that would be question-begging again, and treating 'existence' as
> a property of an already posited god.
Good catch. But no, it's a joke, really, that you're just on the edge
of belief in your disbelief.
> > Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> > phenomena from within and without.
>
> Ah, "when pressed for how I know my magical woo-woo, I say 'it's a
> model'." No, the nutters believe it, even if it's a model for you.
And once again, the type of belief you can cite as the error, the type
of belief you are objecting to ... is ... what?
Structurally here, what is it structurally about their belief that
exceeds the parameters of mere modeling?
And when do models get turned into beliefs?
> Well, I have posited zero transcendental realms or realities and zero
> beasties.
And someone has cited immaterial realms that actually exist, or just
ones that can be experienced? Those are two different things - I can
experience an OOBE and other hypnogogic states, but I don't claim they
actually enjoy a separate tangible extrinsic existence, only exist as
a transient experience in my own intrinsic mind.
> You mean, we should only ask real questions, and not metaphysical
> ones, such as,
> Is the world eternal? or not?
> Is the world finite? or not?
> Is the self identical with the body?
> Or is it different from the body?
> Does the Tathagata exist after death? or not?
>
> Yeah, that's what I'm insisting, stick to real material, tangible
> questions, not metaphysical ones. Guess who else insisted on the same
> thing? D'oh!!!!
Actually I think those type questions are a good exercise. Granted too
many stop short of the final analysis that reveals them as cul-de-sac
type dead ends, but like a koan the exercise if completed demonstrates
the limits of such analyses.
But it doesn't then prop up naive materialism as the answer to the
foisted dialectic of metaphysics vs. materialism.
> Not at all. Existential awe is great. But you don't have to deny or
> escape the world and posit Harry Potter stuff to feel existential awe.
> You can be awed by the world as it is, without any magical fairy dust
> added. And it's even more amazing if you don't add the magical fairy
> dust of the Transcendental. Just like it's even more amazing if your
> blissed out when sober and not drunk or stoned, even though you can
> feel that way much more easily drunk and stoned. For an example of
> existential awe without Transcendental Woo-Woo
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
:-)
Existential awe isn't limited to only those material experiences,
although it's obviously constrained by all of our cumulative
experience and mental capacities.
Transcendence without woo is eminently achievable and noumenal
experience needn't entail woo.
The problem here is defining information and experience, as to whether
experience of information is tantamount to Mind, or if elevating
experience to the level of Mind is equivalent to the error of
reifiying woo.
Atomic clocks experience compression of information as time dilation.
Was that experience - as a metainformation record or functional memory
- tantamount to an awareness as observer? And if sentient observer
mind constructs such a test as an observer, is the beginning-to-end
experience part of a functional information field that entails
contiguous mind from the worker to the spaceship to the clock zipping
around in orbit & coming back to earth?
All coarising, and it started with just an idea, right? Is this
anthromorphication by imbuing mind onto things that aren't
contiguously linked? But they are contiguously linked, otherwise we
set a dualism where there's a disconnect of coarising experience and
information streams. They're all contiguous.
Or is the alternative to de-mind experience by claiming that
experience doesn't exist outside of interior (sentient) mind?
What makes our own experience more equal than non-sentient experience?
It's just a different locus of experience but compounded by emotion
and memory. Might as well say that mind doesn't exist inside our own
heads as well!
Where *IS* mind? But time dilation demonstrates experience compression
as experience travels through higher speeds through information,
creating an entirely different reference frame that is still
contiguous with coarising phenomena on the planet's surface.
The risk here is reifying Mind into a non-dualist woo of some mega-
gestaltic noumenal unarist openness that is so very groovy.
I don't see that here. I see that drawing a definite conclusion is
mistaken, but I don't see it as a philosophical dead end.
It's a functional model of coarising phenomena, that's all, and the
idea of non-dual is just an abstraction of that schema.
Should anyone elevate that schema into some kind of cargosopher's
belief doesn't make the model any less functional, just the meaning to
the person becomes more personal.
It's not an error unless it produces erroneous results.
> Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
> a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
> monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
> flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
> said: "Mouths are flapping!"
>
> Bwahahahahahah.
What is the sound of three monks slapping?
A Trollpa crying!
/l
DharmaTroll
Nonsense. The claim of "direct experience" is a dogmatic belief that
"my woo-woo is objective truth". That is, when I say "I directly
experienced God", I'm claiming that a transcendental beastie
objectively exists, and that what I say about Him is objectively true
and infallible (otherwise it wouldn't be a direct experience), and
thus I'm a supreme authority, and anyone who disagrees with me is full
of shit." You can substitute "Undifferentiated Nondual Ultimate
Reality, or any other capital lettered terms for God, and it's still
the same.
Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
> > > Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
> > > can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
> > > tantamount to delusional belief.
>
> > Well, I can get to the serious discussion of why the Buddha rejected
> > claims of direct experience, and didn't assert such things, or I can
> > just have fun whacking the nutters around here who claim to open trans-
> > dimensional portals to Nondual Undifferentiated Fluff.
>
> Where does duality arise in the grand field of coarising phenomena?
> Stand back far enough away and it's all one big unit. Macro vs. micro
> are all fully entangled in an ecosystem of nested phenomena dolls.
Duality is the nature of the world. Magnets have north and south
poles. Electrical circuits are on or off. Rather than blurring
everything in your noumenal blender, better to study and experience
the interconnection between opposites and differences.
> Sentient attention filters out extraneous noise when observing
> constrained phenomena. Without dualities we could not learn.
Scrap the world 'duality'. It's a misunderstood term wrongly used.
> > > > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > > > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > > > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > > > eternal life.
>
> > > No it's not a belief.
>
> > Yes, it's a belief. You can't just say, "my belief isn't a belief,
> > it's da troof!" Well, you -can- say that, but it's nonsensical.
>
> Is it? Then what kind of belief? A belief stemming from direct
> experience? One from intellectual analysis? Or a vicarious one
> inculcated by social means?
First, there is no 'direct experience'. Look inside at your belief
that your beliefs are the truth and others' are false. We all have
those. Except the nutters and superstitionists take them seriously.
> > > You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> > > existing.
>
> > No, that would be question-begging again, and treating 'existence' as
> > a property of an already posited god.
>
> Good catch. But no, it's a joke, really, that you're just on the edge
> of belief in your disbelief.
No. Rather, I don't posit anything without evidence for it.
> > > Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> > > phenomena from within and without.
>
> > Ah, "when pressed for how I know my magical woo-woo, I say 'it's a
> > model'." No, the nutters believe it, even if it's a model for you.
>
> And once again, the type of belief you can cite as the error, the type
> of belief you are objecting to ... is ... what?
The positing of claims that have no evidence for them, again, that I
had a direct experience of God, and therefore I have the ultimate
truth and anyone who disagrees with me about God is necessarily false,
and so on. All that comes from the initial claim of objective
knowledge. There just ain't no such thing.
> Structurally here, what is it structurally about their belief that
> exceeds the parameters of mere modeling?
Well, it's the collapse between model and territory. Note that the
nutters both claim that the model is the territory (direct experience)
and then simultaneously that there is no territory (all is Mind), so
that really what we're left with is solipsism (masturbation).
> And when do models get turned into beliefs?
When we mistake them for the territory that they are intended to
model.
> > Well, I have posited zero transcendental realms or realities and zero
> > beasties.
>
> And someone has cited immaterial realms that actually exist, or just
> ones that can be experienced? Those are two different things -
Yes, unless they claim "direct" experience, and then they are the
same.
So if direct experience existed, then to claim one had it would be to
claim that such realms actually exist, and that one has infallible
certainty about them as well. And once you convince yourself of that,
you're forever locked into your own Private Idaho and need no
confirmation or verification and can just spew your story over and
over -- like that guy in your band, U.U. Keynes.
> I can experience an OOBE and other hypnogogic states,
> but I don't claim they actually enjoy a separate tangible
> extrinsic existence, only exist as a transient experience
> in my own intrinsic mind.
Then what you mean is that you have an experience that seems (could
interpret as) an OOBE. And there have been some excellent neuroscience
articles in just the past month on creating the sensation of OOBEs.
> > You mean, we should only ask real questions, and not metaphysical
> > ones, such as,
> > Is the world eternal? or not?
> > Is the world finite? or not?
> > Is the self identical with the body?
> > Or is it different from the body?
> > Does the Tathagata exist after death? or not?
>
> > Yeah, that's what I'm insisting, stick to real material, tangible
> > questions, not metaphysical ones. Guess who else insisted on the same
> > thing? D'oh!!!!
>
> Actually I think those type questions are a good exercise.
Only if you realize that they are meaningless. Yes, doing thought
experiments are quite valuable, I agree. Such as with being identical
or different with respect to the body, asking if you would survive
Star Trek teletransportation is a wonderful and valuable exercise, as
either way you answer uncovers what underpinning assumptions you have.
Sure.
> But it doesn't then prop up naive materialism as the answer to the
> foisted dialectic of metaphysics vs. materialism.
I'm not positing a naive materialism, you Brahmanist bully. Indeed the
nutters who posit "Undifferentiated Transcendental Reality" are
actually positing a naive materialism, and one which can be
"experienced directly".
I'm positing a robust naturalism, where only that for which we have
evidence is posited, and when we don't understand something, we don't
add magical fairy dust to explain, but instead say "we don't know" or
"we don't know yet".
> > Not at all. Existential awe is great. But you don't have to deny or
> > escape the world and posit Harry Potter stuff to feel existential awe.
> > You can be awed by the world as it is, without any magical fairy dust
> > added. And it's even more amazing if you don't add the magical fairy
> > dust of the Transcendental. Just like it's even more amazing if your
> > blissed out when sober and not drunk or stoned, even though you can
> > feel that way much more easily drunk and stoned. For an example of
> > existential awe without Transcendental Woo-Woo
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
>
> :-)
>
> Existential awe isn't limited to only those material experiences,
Since there is no other type of experience, it is. There is no such
thing as a "non-material experience". Unless you mean thinking, and
that's really just pseudo-auditory and pseudo-visual sensation which
is highly interpreted.
> although it's obviously constrained by all of our cumulative
> experience and mental capacities.
More blather. All experience is bodily experience, sensed by bodily
senses. We may have a disgust for bodies and create make-believe
transcendental realms and spooks, but that's just fantasy and denial,
and there is nothing to back it up.
> Transcendence without woo is eminently achievable and noumenal
> experience needn't entail woo.
"Noumenal", being a make-believe term, can be substituted here with
any other make-believe term, such as "Magic" or "God". It is the very
definition of woo.
> The problem here is defining information and experience, as to whether
> experience of information is tantamount to Mind, or if elevating
> experience to the level of Mind is equivalent to the error of
> reifiying woo.
The problem is that you add an ineffable soul (Mind) into the mix
there, and again are question-begging and talking nonsense. If you
actually describe your experience, there is no woo-woo "Mind" to be
found, just visual sensation, auditory sensations, smells, tastes,
bodily sensations, and memories and thoughts, which are mainly pseudo-
auditory and psuedo-visual sensations, and emotions, which are
compositions of sensations and thoughts. No 'Mind'. No
Undifferentiated Fairy Dust. Don't believe me. Shut up and check it
out for yourself like I do.
> Atomic clocks experience compression of information as time dilation.
No. Clocks do not 'experience'. They don't have sense organs and
brains to create experiences from those sense organs.
> Was that experience - as a metainformation record or functional memory
> - tantamount to an awareness as observer? And if sentient observer
> mind constructs such a test as an observer, is the beginning-to-end
> experience part of a functional information field that entails
> contiguous mind from the worker to the spaceship to the clock zipping
> around in orbit & coming back to earth?
Why don't you try stating that better, instead of in a run-on
sentence. And don't add math terms like contiguous and apply them to
terms like 'mind' without an explanation. Otherwise you're just
spewing nonsensical sentences.
> All coarising, and it started with just an idea, right? Is this
> anthromorphication by imbuing mind onto things that aren't
> contiguously linked? But they are contiguously linked, otherwise we
> set a dualism where there's a disconnect of coarising experience and
> information streams. They're all contiguous.
No. Clocks and rocks don't have brains, and don't feel and think and
experience. No amount of run-on sentences of yours suggests any
evidence otherwise.
> Or is the alternative to de-mind experience by claiming that
> experience doesn't exist outside of interior (sentient) mind?
I'd ground experience as a "brain function", as 'mind' is not a thing
with an interior or exterior, and such talk is nonsensical.
> What makes our own experience more equal than non-sentient experience?
> It's just a different locus of experience but compounded by emotion
> and memory. Might as well say that mind doesn't exist inside our own
> heads as well!
Again question-begging. You have to assume that rocks have non-
sentient experience as a pre-supposition condition for your nonsense
sentence to make sense in the first place. And rocks and clocks don't
function as brains do.
> Where *IS* mind?
Another nonsense question. You're asking where is software, but
"where" only applies to hardware, such as the brain. You are now
reduced to sophistry by making category mistakes again and again, and
then concluding woo-woo from them.
> But time dilation demonstrates experience compression
> as experience travels through higher speeds through information,
> creating an entirely different reference frame that is still
> contiguous with coarising phenomena on the planet's surface.
You might want to consider being a writer for jargon talk in b-grade
sci-fi television shows.
> The risk here is reifying Mind into a non-dualist woo of some mega-
> gestaltic noumenal unarist openness that is so very groovy.
Whatever you're schmokin', save some for me.
> I don't see that here. I see that drawing a definite conclusion is
> mistaken, but I don't see it as a philosophical dead end.
>
> It's a functional model of coarising phenomena, that's all, and the
> idea of non-dual is just an abstraction of that schema.
>
> Should anyone elevate that schema into some kind of cargosopher's
> belief doesn't make the model any less functional, just the meaning to
> the person becomes more personal.
>
> It's not an error unless it produces erroneous results.
If it's a map of an Ineffable CandyLand, it can't produce erroneous
results, because it can never be tested.
> > Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
> > a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
> > monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
> > flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
> > said: "Mouths are flapping!"
>
> > Bwahahahahahah.
>
> What is the sound of three monks slapping?
>
> A Trollpa crying!
>
> /l
Nah, I'd kick their butts too.
--DharmaTroll
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
-H. G. Wells
Keynes
wrote:
>
>Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
>something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
>beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
>Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
>or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
>
Whereas your position is completely different?
(Talk about incoherent irrational believers! heh.)
>Duality is the nature of the world. Magnets have north and south
>poles. Electrical circuits are on or off. Rather than blurring
>everything in your noumenal blender, better to study and experience
>the interconnection between opposites and differences.
>
Are you a magnet? (Or just naturally repulsive?)
Seriously, is there up without down, or good without bad?
No pole of a duality can exist except in relation to it's opposite.
The fact is that most named dualities don't actually exist except
as personal feelings-biases. Most words don't even have an
existing referent. As for the imaginary changes of time,
there is the mother and father of all woo woo.
(Called "clinging and grasping".)
Nowhere to go, and no time to get there.
If you were mindful, what else would you see?
>
>First, there is no 'direct experience'. Look inside at your belief
>that your beliefs are the truth and others' are false. We all have
>those. Except the nutters and superstitionists take them seriously.
You'd never do that. Except about trees, cats, and magic sofas.
>
>No. Rather, I don't posit anything without evidence for it.
Then show me tomorrow.
>
>I'm positing a robust naturalism, where only that for which we have
>evidence is posited, and when we don't understand something, we don't
>add magical fairy dust to explain, but instead say "we don't know" or
>"we don't know yet".
>
There is no such thing as evidence.
You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
Your atheistic crusade goes too far.
You accuse everyone of everything you hate.
How can this do -you- any good?
(Metaphysical question. heh.)
Charles E Hardwidge
news:janfe5lcoqg19uutf...@4ax.com...
> There is no such thing as evidence.
> You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
>
> Your atheistic crusade goes too far.
> You accuse everyone of everything you hate.
> How can this do -you- any good?
>
> (Metaphysical question. heh.)
Nobody reads that shit (or the other 67 similar replies in here).
Right Click->Catch Up.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Beerlet Dhiblang
> > Atomic clocks experience compression of information as time dilation.
>
> No. Clocks do not 'experience'. They don't have sense organs and
> brains to create experiences from those sense organs.
>
> > Was that experience - as a metainformation record or functional memory
> > - tantamount to an awareness as observer? And if sentient observer
> > mind constructs such a test as an observer, is the beginning-to-end
> > experience part of a functional information field that entails
> > contiguous mind from the worker to the spaceship to the clock zipping
> > around in orbit & coming back to earth?
>
> Why don't you try stating that better, instead of in a run-on
> sentence. And don't add math terms like contiguous and apply them to
> terms like 'mind' without an explanation. Otherwise you're just
> spewing nonsensical sentences.
>
> > All coarising, and it started with just an idea, right? Is this
> > anthromorphication by imbuing mind onto things that aren't
> > contiguously linked? But they are contiguously linked, otherwise we
> > set a dualism where there's a disconnect of coarising experience and
> > information streams. They're all contiguous.
>
> No. Clocks and rocks don't have brains, and don't feel and think and
> experience. No amount of run-on sentences of yours suggests any
> evidence otherwise.
Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter inside your head is
superior to an animate object that records information?
And what differentiates a human brain from a dynamic, animate physical
recording medium? Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
On the one hand you want to point to the physical basis of the human
mind and remove the spook. Good, fine.
But then because of those additional dynamic properties you now want
to put the physical media of human experience above the physical media
of other animate things that record information. This is the same
argument for God in religious tomes, that man is qualitatively
*better* or superior to everything else.
That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist argument to put a
ghost back into the machine.
Which is awfully sweet of you, really, you closet romantic you.
/Beerlet "May I never achieve enlightenment" Dibhlang
Beerlet Dhiblang
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:51:41 -0700 (PDT), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
about it all.
But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
years.
Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo, but his
utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics strikes me as
curiously defensive. Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any*
position, whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian woo-
woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
Having been there, done that, I know what it's like.
/l
Tang Huyen
Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
> about it all.
>
> But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
> years.
>
> Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo, but his
> utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics strikes me as
> curiously defensive. Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any*
> position, whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
>
> Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
> everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian woo-
> woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
>
> Having been there, done that, I know what it's like.
The Christians who revolt against Christianity
(which they carry in their head) like Fu and DT
are so incredibly funny to me. They seem stuck
in a time warp of around eighty or ninety years
ago. I went to French secondary school in
Vietnam, and my French teachers (who
presumably came from a Catholic background)
taught me a modern, secular worldview, and
coming to these boards, I fell over laughing when
Fu keeps saying that antibiotics, especially
penicillin, save more lives than prayers (he means
to the Christian God, that he carries in his head).
Of course, that is a settled issue, and it was settled
around eighty or ninety years ago or more. So Fu
and DT waste the major part of their time and
energy fighting a long-since settled war against
Jewish mythology, though both are walking
relicts of Jewish mythology. They have never
learnt to become calm and equable in front of
Christianity (which they carry in their head), even
less to think outside of its box. They are totally
framed by it, and they think in its terms, so when
they revolt against it, they revolt against it in its
terms. It keeps them tightly tethered to it, whether
they are for or against it. And Fu (or at least one
part of him) is still a Christian of good faith, even
as he (or at least another part of him) revolts
against it, but the latter is still Christian to the core,
only the values are turned upside down, e. g.,
positive is turned into negative, and vice versa, but
he is locked into the Christian worldview, so that
the part of him that revolts against Christianity is
Christian of bad faith. Still Christian, only of bad
faith.
<<Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter
inside your head is superior to an animate object
that records information?
And what differentiates a human brain from a
dynamic, animate physical recording medium?
Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
On the one hand you want to point to the physical
basis of the human mind and remove the spook.
Good, fine.
But then because of those additional dynamic
properties you now want to put the physical media
of human experience above the physical media
of other animate things that record information.
This is the same argument for God in religious
tomes, that man is qualitatively *better* or
superior to everything else.
That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist
argument to put a ghost back into the machine.
Which is awfully sweet of you, really, you closet
romantic you.>>
Likewisse, Fu still thinks in the magical worldview
that Christianity inculcated in him sixty years ago.
Now the two parts that are exact mirror images
of each other -- Christian of good faith versus
Christian of bad faith -- tend to share much in
common, as concave to convex, but both also share
some things *in the same direction* (i. e., not as
concave to convex), like magical thinking, and the
militant anti-Christian part that totally rebels against
Christianity is shrilly physicalist yet thinks magically,
as with Gene Roddenberry's ash falling from the sky
but carrying with it Gene's "godless" quality to
stupefy Christians who take Christ as their saviour,
and the part of Fu that is Christian of good faith falls
into the class of such unwitting recipients. The two
parts differ in content but share the same structure,
here magical thinking that Fu normally damns as
"woo". So Fu carries on this internal war, with one
part of him fighting another part of him, back and
forth, recursively. Christianity has him locked up
solid.
Tang Huyen
Charles E Hardwidge
something readable and relate to people better. But you can't do that so are
still locked in the same 10 year old pattern of smug I-told-you-so.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
keep rolling on is a bit twatish. When threads start turning into a
clusterfuck I just hit Right Click->Catch up so never read it. Mostly, I'm
not missing anything so it's no bother and easier than digging through that
shit.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
DharmaTroll
wrote:
>
> The Christians who revolt against Christianity
> (which they carry in their head) like Fu and DT
> are so incredibly funny to me.
More avoiding of the issues from the Tang-banger, just making up bios
about folks.
> And Fu (or at least one
> part of him) is still a Christian of good faith, even
> as he (or at least another part of him) revolts
> against it, but the latter is still Christian to the core,
More Doctor Evil ranting from Tang's closed loop. The Tang-banger sits
at his computer maturbating, in closed loop, while making up elaborate
fantasies about his fantasy lovers, Fu and DT. Doesn't matter what he
makes up, because, it's all fluff, all closed-loop eminating from
Tang's mind, and so there is no need to posit a real world or real
people, just repeat the fantasies while masturbating in closed loop.
--DharmaTroll
Lee Rudolph
>They have never
>learnt to become calm and equable in front of
>Christianity (which they carry in their head), even
>less to think outside of its box.
Relinquish the reliquary.
Lee Rudolph
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
> Nonsense. The claim of "direct experience" is a dogmatic belief that
> "my woo-woo is objective truth". That is, when I say "I directly
> experienced God", I'm claiming that a transcendental beastie
> objectively exists, and that what I say about Him is objectively true
> and infallible (otherwise it wouldn't be a direct experience), and
> thus I'm a supreme authority, and anyone who disagrees with me is full
> of shit." You can substitute "Undifferentiated Nondual Ultimate
> Reality, or any other capital lettered terms for God, and it's still
> the same.
Yes and no.
Among all reasonable people, there is a gentleman's agreement that
claims, including claims of Absolute Truth, will be regarded as a
matter of the speaker's belief, in principle possibly incorrect.
Either you are not aware of this convention, or you willfully choose
to disregard it for the sake of argument. Literally.
> Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
> something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
> beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
> Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
> or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
Of course, there have always been people who are nutz, ignorant, and/or
dishonest.
Can you think of any, hint hint?
[snipped unread rest of post]
--
hz
DharmaTroll
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:51:41 -0700 (PDT), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
> >something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
> >beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
> >Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
> >or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
>
> Whereas your position is completely different?
> (Talk about incoherent irrational believers! heh.)
Yup. I've never claimed to directly experience any woo-woo.
>
> >Duality is the nature of the world. Magnets have north and south
> >poles. Electrical circuits are on or off. Rather than blurring
> >everything in your noumenal blender, better to study and experience
> >the interconnection between opposites and differences.
>
> Are you a magnet? (Or just naturally repulsive?)
>
> Seriously, is there up without down, or good without bad?
> No pole of a duality can exist except in relation to it's opposite.
But that's just what I"ve been tellin' you, Nutter Dude.
But you insist on your magic NonDual fairy does with only one pole.
> >First, there is no 'direct experience'. Look inside at your belief
> >that your beliefs are the truth and others' are false. We all have
> >those. Except the nutters and superstitionists take them seriously.
>
> You'd never do that. Except about trees, cats, and magic sofas.
No. I make the most reasonable inference which I can test. If my hand
goes through the cat, then I wouldn't guess that I'm actually seeing a
cat.
> >No. Rather, I don't posit anything without evidence for it.
>
> Then show me tomorrow.
Ok, wait a day and then re-read this post.
Ok, here it is. This is yesterday's tomorrow.
> >I'm positing a robust naturalism, where only that for which we have
> >evidence is posited, and when we don't understand something, we don't
> >add magical fairy dust to explain, but instead say "we don't know" or
> >"we don't know yet".
>
> There is no such thing as evidence.
> You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
Sure I can. You've never taken a lab course in biology, chemistry, or
physics, have you, Keynes? You may think you can make up your own
cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
Such as all your nonsense that I refuted a year ago. You still haven't
apologized for calling me a liar, and then pretending that my post of
refutation of your nonsense was really posted, even though I gave you
the link, nor have you acknowledged that my answers were correct and
backed up by evidence, whereas you're babble was nonsensical. Admit
it, Nutter Dude: "I, Keynes was completely wrong and deluded and the
Trollpa was right about physics and the speed of light and Buddhism
and everything else, but I'd rather insult and accuse the Trollpa of
lying than admit that I'm clueless and thta the Trollpa has kicked my
butt yet again."
--DharmaTroll
herbzet
Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
> about it all.
>
> But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
> years.
>
> Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo, but his
> utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics strikes me as
> curiously defensive. Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any*
> position, whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
He appears to following what in transactional analysis is called
a "negative script". In TA it is posited that many people tend
to follow life scripts adopted in childhood. Some people throw
down the script instilled in them by authority, and immediately
start living out a "negative" script: they adopt a life script
that is the precise opposite of the script they have thrown away.
Though this may supply some much-needed relief, this can be
just as neurotic, and possibly more (or possibly less) destructive
than the original script.
Of course, the goal of TA is to remove neurotic script-based behavior,
or preferably, to remove scripted behavior altogether.
You know, "Once burned, twice shy."
> Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
> everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian woo-
> woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
>
> Having been there, done that, I know what it's like.
I seem to recall he mentioned attending Catholic school.
That burns out a lot of people on Catholicism -- I meet
them now and then.
--
hz
Charles E Hardwidge
news:4AE84A96...@gmail.com...
>
> Among all reasonable people, there is a gentleman's agreement that
> claims, including claims of Absolute Truth, will be regarded as a
> matter of the speaker's belief, in principle possibly incorrect.
>
> Either you are not aware of this convention, or you willfully choose
> to disregard it for the sake of argument. Literally.
[...]
> Of course, there have always been people who are nutz, ignorant, and/or
> dishonest.
The lack of accountability and relativism is a drag in here just as much as
it is in politics. I took one look at some high traffic blog earlier and
there were the usual megaphone claims and nit-picking.
Personally, I'd rather just read something useful, and the rest of the
comment is collateral that gets passed over unread. That's the difference
between effective and mere posturing.
While there may be no guaranteed absolutes there are certainly things which
are true to a high degree of certainty and experts with a measurable
hit-rate. The rest is superstition and crowd pleasing.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
DharmaTroll
The physical matter in my head certainly is superior to an inanimate
object that records information. (You made a spelling mistake: were it
an animate object, then it would probably be another brain, and my
brain is probably still superior to that brain, simply because I have
one of the most superior brains around, but I wouldn't know that for
sure.)
> And what differentiates a human brain from a dynamic, animate physical
> recording medium? Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
Again, you mean a dynamic, inanimate physical recording medium? You
are asking me what the difference is between a human brain and a tape
recorder? See, when you go all woo-woo you lose all common sense, and
you can't tell the difference from a human being with a brain and a
tape recorder. That's just plain silly.
> On the one hand you want to point to the physical basis of the human
> mind and remove the spook. Good, fine.
>
> But then because of those additional dynamic properties you now want
> to put the physical media of human experience above the physical media
> of other animate things that record information.
Well, yeah. Tape recorders have just a couple of moving parts. Human
brains have more neurons in them than there are stars in the entire
galaxy. And their complexity is so far unfathomable.
How, in that dynamic system with a trillion neurons or however many
their are, is consciousness produced? Hell if I know. That's why I
post amazing cutting-edge articles on it, because we're learning more
every day.
The mistake here is to say "Aha, we don't know yet, so lets add souls
and fairy dust and magic Undifferentiated Transcendental Realities and
Gods and..."
No, no need to add any of that crap which is fantasy and nothing for
which we have evidence. Just say "we don't know yet: it's a
mystery."
You don't have to fill in the mystery with woo-woo.
Let me repeat that:
You don't have to fill in the mystery with woo-woo.
Better no explanation yet, then to add woo-woo babble.
> This is the same
> argument for God in religious tomes, that man is qualitatively
> *better* or superior to everything else.
No, it's not. Rather, I'm only suggesting that (1) the only sentient
critters we know of have brains, and (2) the human brain is the most
complex object/system in the known universe.
As for 'better', that's a value judgment. I'm just saying "smarter"
and "more complex". If we pretend that the world is an illusion and
just pollute it and multiply like a virus and run out of food, or blow
each other up, then we'll go extinct and not be so 'better' after all.
But we do have the greatest complexity. That's all I'm saying.
> That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist argument to put a
> ghost back into the machine.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that when the physical system of billions and
billions of neurons are organized into dynamic, functioning brains,
that no ghost is needed, that the system is conscious all by itself.
Now is it possible that really it is an inneffable spooky that is
'driving' the brain, as DesCartes suggests, or some other woo-woo
spook with a captital letter as some folks on this list suggest? Yes,
it's possible, but it's not likely. The problem of how Transcendental
Woo-Woo or ghosts could even interact with matter is much more of a
problem than simply saying that the matter when organized is
conscious, but we don't know how it works yet.
I'm not claiming to know; I'm just saying that highly complex brains
being conscious without needing ghosts or Transcendental Woo-woo is a
simpler explanation, and there is no reason to posit a ghost or any
other kind of woo-woo.
Similarly, if I find a dent in my car, it is possible that an
ineffable transcendental deva materialized and kicked it because he's
pissed that I don't grant him or his realm existence. But more likely,
somebody driving by bumped into my car. The latter is more reasonable,
like the brains being conscious, because I can explain the event
without positing an ineffable deva, much less the realm it comes from,
much less explain how the differing realms interact -- I can simply
say that brains are probably conscious and that when I see a dent,
that means that a tangible person in a tangible car probably bumped
into miy car.
I don't have certainty, just common sense.
I'm just 'playing the odds'.
--DharmaTroll
herbzet
Charles E Hardwidge wrote:
That's true of course.
But some humility is called for, in principle at least. One generation's
science is the next generation's historical curiousity.
I imagine a great deal of present-day science, particularly regarding
brain science, will be looked upon in the future as about as useful
as alchemy. We're punching around in the dark here.
--
hz
DharmaTroll
>
> I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
> about it all.
I am totally awesome!
> But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
> years.
No, my sophisticated naturalist view was developed over years of
studying philosophy and science. Trollpa actually argues from about a
half-dozen 'materialist' views, switching from time to time, but you
don't notice, due perhaps to your 'naive' judgments. Really, the only
thing that Trollpa accepts is psycho-physical supervenience, and
beyond that, is very flexible and tries on all sorts of views.
> Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo,
Well I'd hope so. You sometimes appear to be one of the sane and
intelligent posters in these parts.
> but his utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics
> strikes me as curiously defensive.
Actually Trollpa takes an agnostic view on metaphysics, agnostic
meaning don't posit anything without evidence.
Once again, as Thomas Henry Huxley, the mentor of Trollpa's who
invented the term agnostic defined it:
"Positively the principle may expressed: In matters of the intellect,
follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any
other consideration. And negatively, in matters of the intellect do
not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or
demonstrable."
And this is exactly what the Trollpa does, following reason as far as
it will take him, and not pretending that conclusions are certain
which are not demonstrated or demonstrable (e.g., reject "direct
experience" which is a claim of certainty and a claim about woo-woo,
which is not demonstrable).
> Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any* position,
> whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
No, you came in defending the nutters on the list, so I'm assuming
you're defending nutter views in general.
> Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
> everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian
> woo-woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
Well, Tang uses the ad hominem argumentum to say "Trollpa grew up
Catholic, therefore his reasoning must be wrong because he had a
Catholic background" and on and on and on.
No, more plausible is that the nutters who posit transcendental woo-
woo are replacing their own traditions' "God' and 'soul' with new woo-
woo words, and that this is the emotional appeal. But unlike the Tang-
banger, I only once in a while speculate on such things, and don't
write long fictional bios of them. I'd rather stick to showing that
they have no evidence for their woo-woo claims, regardless of what the
motivating factors are that lead them to cling to their claims.
That's what makes me more totally awesome than Tang.
DharmaTroll is the Alpha-Troll! Yeah! Yeah!
--DharmaTroll
Charles E Hardwidge
>
> I imagine a great deal of present-day science, particularly regarding
> brain science, will be looked upon in the future as about as useful
> as alchemy. We're punching around in the dark here.
I don't obsess about the brain or Buddhist scriptures. If I wanted to do
that I'd be a psychologist or a professor. Beyond a certain point it's as
boring as watching fanbois argue over the merits of different consoles, or
politicians and armchair wannabes screaming in each others faces over
marginal policy issues.
Personally, there's more practical, relevant, and varied things to talk
about which obsessing on the brain and dusty scrolls just short-circuits.
Actually, someone wrote an article today which said the obsession with
banking versus cash for clunkers as an economic recovery strategy was down
to snobbery, and I'm inclined to agree there's something in that.
I've got way more pressing issues for me like, say, getting a new LED
backlit display versus another 2 TB hard disc. Or should I just focus on
something else I really need like some new furniture and letting some
baggage go. Why? It creates the world I live in plus how I go about this
does more than wanking over the brain or scrolls.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
herbzet
May I be so bold as to make a suggestion?
Open an account somewhere and post under a phoney name. That way
you don't have to post in code, just lie about things related to
your identity. Just a suggestion.
Otherwise, I'm open to new on-topic topics.
--
hz
Charles E Hardwidge
news:36070c1a-57f3-47fd...@j4g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
> That's what makes me more totally awesome than Tang.
> DharmaTroll is the Alpha-Troll! Yeah! Yeah!
That sort of thing isn't necessary. It just makes you look a dipshit.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Keynes
wrote:
>On Oct 28, 2:20 am, Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote:
>>
>> There is no such thing as evidence.
>> You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
>
>Sure I can. You've never taken a lab course in biology, chemistry, or
>physics, have you, Keynes?
Actually I have. So what?
You are always bragging about your education.
But your posts show you have no ability to think.
None. Why are you going on like this?
You haven't a clue.
>You may think you can make up your own
>cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
In the scientific paradigm by the scientific rules.
Just as those who accept other rules can argue
for angels and demons and miracles. It's all just
rationalization based on baseless premisses and
proliferating thereafter. Making castles in the
air and then moving right in. Reason misleads
everyone who depends on it. Even and especially you.
How can the future matter right this moment?
Nor can the past harm you right where you are now.
You take time as a measure even though the very
idea of measuring the unreachable past and future
is the height of insanity. But you are stuck in
never-never-land as your first absurd premise.
Time uses you. Stuck in an unhappy dream.
But if you were mindful you could use no-time
and never use it up.
'Scientific truths' are totally beside the point.
Why do you wallow in such irrelevant trivia?
Even if you knew all the yet unknown answers,
what would that get you? It's pointless.
>Such as all your nonsense that I refuted a year ago. You still haven't
>apologized for calling me a liar,
You never refuted anything. You just make claims.
In the convo you cited, you chose to misunderstand what
I said, and your so-called refutation was my very own
argument from previous posts. Your knowledge of
physics is sketchy at best, and your ability to think
rather than recite that which you don't understand
is too weak for you to see what an ass you are.
You are a liar, a cheat, and an unhappy person
spreading as much unhappiness as you can.
(And then claiming to be a buddhist? LOL)
Your tactical sense is average, but your strategic
sense is totally absent. What do you think you're
doing fighting woo-woo with woo-woo?
Get real. Wake up!
Charles E Hardwidge
nobody cares about desiccated whining. It's unreadable crap and tacking the
obligatory special needs student kung-fu of "let go" on the end won't change
that. Fuck, I'd rather eat sandpaper.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
DharmaTroll
>
> He appears to following what in transactional analysis is called
> a "negative script". In TA it is posited that many people tend
> to follow life scripts adopted in childhood.
From metaphysical woo-woo to psychobabble???
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
So you don't have an intellectual response, and so, like the cowardly
Tang-banger, it's now resort to ad hominem argumentum and make a
personal attack on the character of My Divine Grace.
Not, "maybe the Trollpa studied all the views and did metaphysics in
college and grad school and has thought about all this shit intensely
and is having fun with fools who cling to simple-minded woo-woo
views". No, it's "he doesn't fall for my woo-woo and Capital Letter
dogma because he felt bad in Catholic School". What a wuss.
> I seem to recall he mentioned attending Catholic school.
> That burns out a lot of people on Catholicism -- I meet
> them now and then.
I've got at another half a century and probably longer before I burn
out. Yeah, when Sister Phyllis in 8th grade told us we'd go to Hell if
we married a Jew or a Protestant or Atheist, I asked, "but Sister, if
we were in China, wouldn't you probably be telling us not to marry a
Catholic or else we'd be reincarnated as a toad?" She threw me out of
class. And I knew, as I know with you pathetic woo-woo-ists, that she
didn't have a clue, and had the 'disease' of claiming to have some
objective truth when she didn't know anything. Such experiences only
made the Trollpa stronger, and probably led My Divine Grace to Eastern
Philosophy -- that and watching 'Kung Fu, the series', which next to
Star Trek was the most totally awesome series when I was a kid.
No, the Trollpa is going strong, and that's why he rolls over the lot
of you whiners like a bowling ball over duckpins.
So, what's next, are you going to babble in defeat like the Tang-
banger does with Fu by making up ludicrous biographies instead of
discussing the issues? Is that all you got?
--My Divine Grace Yabba Dabba Dukkha Dharmakaya Trollpa
"You're a wuss. Part wimp, part puss."
-Dr. House
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
If the shoe fits, wear it.
--
hz
zenworm
> On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:53:34 -0700 (PDT), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
if he can not have it no one can?
ZN :D
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
zenworm
has it been a long time since your last glimse/satori?
DharmaTroll
If the shoe fits, I'll kick your ad hominem butt with it.
--DharmaTroll
DharmaTroll
Well, Keynes, oh Priest of Prevarication, you've reached a new level
of dishonor tonight.
>
> >You may think you can make up your own
> >cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
>
> In the scientific paradigm by the scientific rules.
>
> Just as those who accept other rules can argue
> for angels and demons and miracles. It's all just
> rationalization based on baseless premisses
First, that's always been your line, that science/empiricism is
completely arbitrary, and that astronomy is thus always 100% reduced
to astrology, and is simply made up.
This is why I suggest to you to walk in front of a truck: if you
walked the walk you talk, you wouldn't believe science telling you
that the truck will run over you. Not that I wish you to die; I only
wish you to admit that you know you're in my universe and playing with
my rules and not in your "Nondual-empirical-physics-equals-cartoon-
physics" Woo-Woo World.
Now after pelting me with more insults, let's discuss my skillful and
laborious refutation of your physics claims last year:
> >Such as all your nonsense that I refuted a year ago. You still haven't
> >apologized for calling me a liar,
>
> You never refuted anything. You just make claims.
> In the convo you cited, you chose to misunderstand what
> I said, and your so-called refutation was my very own
> argument from previous posts.
No, it wasn't. Indeed, you claimed 'amnesia' about my post, and when I
posted it, with your reply and my rebuttal, you denied it still, and
accused me of lying twice, until I posted the link from google.
You claimed that space was curved positively, and I refuted that and
pointed out that space is flat. Your earlier posts had never once
reflected real science, and were all your own made up stuff, such as
claims that the speed of light was not constant, which I had also
refuted very clearly.
Now even if I take your 'amnesia' at face value, after calling me a
liar, you didn't retract it and admit that I refuted your cartoon
physics (admit being once again to insult me by saying that all the
books and physicists agree with me). Instead now not only do you have
amnesia, but you claim to have made my real physics claims in previous
posts which you now remember (and you never made any such real physics
claims). You've added a new lie which blatantly contradicts your
previous amnesia lie. This would be the climax of the case and you
would be discredited were I a trial lawyer on TV.
> Your knowledge of physics is sketchy at best,
Actually, because I always like to win and kick butt, I had sent that
earlier version to a friend with a Ph.D. in physics, who had confirmed
that all my points in that post were true and accurate, before I
spiced it up and posted it. I do have just a sketchy knowledge of
physics compared to a Ph.D., and the same with chemistry, biology,
astronomy, psychology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, history,
and mathematics, but I've studied all these subjects and I'm a Jackass
of all Trades, you might say, and know a hell of a lot more than you
do -- I mean I know more in this reality where trucks run over folks,
not in your Nondual Undifferentiated Cartoon Physics Land.
> You are a liar, a cheat, and an unhappy person
> spreading as much unhappiness as you can.
> (And then claiming to be a buddhist? LOL)
Well, all of your denials, and your not even honorably admitting you
were wrong, as well as being wrong about my claims about refuting you
suggest that (as usual) your words most appropriately describe
yourself.
You hung yourself this time, Keynes.
I didn't even have to make fun of you.
"We find the defendant Keynes guilty of Nuttery in the First Degree!"
> What do you think you're
> doing fighting woo-woo with woo-woo?
Well, in the real, physical world, where astronomy is not astrology
and empirical physics is not cartoon physics, my assertion of the
former is not your assertion of the latter, and so there is a
dualistic difference between the empirical science I express and your
woo-woo. Turns out we're in my dualistic reality, and not in your
Nondual Relativistic fantasy. (If you question that, walk in front of
a truck, and you'll see that you're in my universe and not vice-
versa).
--My Divine Grace Yabba Dabba Dukkha Dharmakaya Trollpa
"LOL! Keynes, I hereby proclaim you totally nuts on at least
two subjects (the other is buddhism), even though you may be
a decent banjo player."
-Deja Flu
"I am a practicing physicist. Everything Dharmatroll has been
trying to tell you about physics is basically true.
Virtually every physicist I know would agree on this."
-Dr. Scott Oser
Keynes
wrote:
>On Oct 28, 1:25 pm, Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote:
>
>Well, Keynes, oh Priest of Prevarication, you've reached a new level
>of dishonor tonight.
>>
But as always, you can top me.
>> >You may think you can make up your own
>> >cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
>>
>> In the scientific paradigm by the scientific rules.
>>
>> Just as those who accept other rules can argue
>> for angels and demons and miracles. It's all just
>> rationalization based on baseless premisses
>
>First, that's always been your line, that science/empiricism is
>completely arbitrary, and that astronomy is thus always 100% reduced
>to astrology, and is simply made up.
>
Your arguments are all a closed system.
You're stuck in your own trap, and can't see it.
Keep digging your slow hole to china.
>This is why I suggest to you to walk in front of a truck: if you
>walked the walk you talk, you wouldn't believe science telling you
>that the truck will run over you. Not that I wish you to die; I only
Oh sure.
>wish you to admit that you know you're in my universe and playing with
>my rules and not in your "Nondual-empirical-physics-equals-cartoon-
>physics" Woo-Woo World.
>
Your rules are delusion-samsara. Get yourself out.
>Now after pelting me with more insults, let's discuss my skillful and
>laborious refutation of your physics claims last year:
>
>You claimed that space was curved positively, and I refuted that and
>pointed out that space is flat.
You asserted that. You didn't prove it.
Neither did you deal with even -one- of my points.
"No, no, no" is not a rational argument.
"They say so" is not a good argument either.
(A herd of buffalo are not necessarily intelligent.
It's possible that every one of them is just as sharp
as you are.)
>Your earlier posts had never once
>reflected real science,
How would you know?
Why do you think the fossil background radiation
comes from all directions at once to land on the earth
(regardless of it's ever new position)? What is your
explanation of that?
In a flat 3D universe, that radiation would be on the
outer surface of a sphere, just like small explosions
on the earth. It would be expanding outward at the
speed of light, and we would never even see it.
The cosmos is self-contained, all inside without an
outside, and without a surface or a shape. Every point
is equally central. This is impossible to visualize, but
if one considers the properties of two dimensional
(euclidean) space extended in three dimensions (like
the two dimensional surface of the earth which has
no edge, shape or center) it becomes obvious. Three
dimensional space is curved in a higher dimension.
This ain't woo woo. There is evidence that even
'scientists' can see.
That's the only way to explain the universal expansion,
and the earth's apparent centrality. No point is privileged.
All points are equally the central scene of the crime, namely
the big bang.
>and were all your own made up stuff, such as
>claims that the speed of light was not constant, which I had also
>refuted very clearly.
You are an ignoramus. Not satisfied to be a fool just once,
you keep on repeating your lack of acuity. You have no
understanding at all of relativity. Even when it is explained
to you in small words. You must have cheated your way
through college and escaped as ignorant as when you went in.
>Now even if I take your 'amnesia' at face value, after calling me a
>liar, you didn't retract it and admit that I refuted your cartoon
>physics (admit being once again to insult me by saying that all the
>books and physicists agree with me).
Rather, it's you who agree with them.
(Catechism and all that, your Piousness).
>Instead now not only do you have
>amnesia, but you claim to have made my real physics claims in previous
>posts which you now remember (and you never made any such real physics
>claims). You've added a new lie which blatantly contradicts your
>previous amnesia lie. This would be the climax of the case and you
>would be discredited were I a trial lawyer on TV.
>
You'd get laughed out of any court, your honor.
>> Your knowledge of physics is sketchy at best,
>> You are a liar, a cheat, and an unhappy person
>> spreading as much unhappiness as you can.
>> (And then claiming to be a buddhist? LOL)
>
>"I am a practicing physicist. Everything Dharmatroll has been
>trying to tell you about physics is basically true.
>Virtually every physicist I know would agree on this."
>-Dr. Scott Oser
Most catholics agree with the pope too. So?
Ron Fuller
8a83-7b1...@o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com:
kind of like what you do about the "nutters". same plot,
different cast.
and yet both of you from time to time post insightful things.
and both of you will go of on your favorite pet peeve on a
regular basis.
at least tang likes to admit that it's all subjective. you on
the otherhand infer that yours is real because it's "science".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
rfu...@freeway.net rfu...@cainsquestion.org
if you and the universe are going in the same direction
you will find that the whole world conspires for your
benefit.
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll wrote:
> D�j� Flu:
>
> >Hidden Draggin:
>
> > > There is very little evidence that these things exist
> > > but they, too endure.
>
> > Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
> > Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
> > obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
> > of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
> > nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
> > past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
> > for it? Not me.
>
> To claim that ideas like 'justice' exist, or even that 'ideas' exist,
> doesn't make sense (unless we're doing Plato). No idea exists
> independently of a thinking mind, as does a cat behind the couch. To
> say an idea 'exists' is nonsensical. Rather, there is thinking you are
> doing now, that is similar to thinking you are doing later or that I'm
> doing. We have a rough sense of what we mean by 'justice' but to say
> our ideas are 'the same' is insane. It's to suggest that justice is
> like a cat. We can test the DNA of the cat to see if we are referring
> to the same cat. 'Justice' has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
> exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of organizing our thinking; it
> doesn't refer to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by DharmaTroll):
�If men define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences.�
Iow, what people believe is real will have real effects.
It's like with paranoia: what people believe is real
(whether it is real or not) will have real effects. If
people believe that God rewards them for accepting
him and punishes them for rejecting him, then that is
what happens to them, even if they are raging
anti-God rebels. They just don't finish their rebellion,
but are stuck with both their God and their rebellion
against him. And their God (that they carry in their
head) keeps punishing them for their rebellion against
him, according to the rule that they learnt during their
inculcation into his monotheistic religion, which claims
exclusivity, not just with regard to his unicity (there is
only only one God, him, who therefore deserves that
word "God" all to himself alone, and nobody and
nothing else has the right to that word), but also with
regard to the the whole world, presumably created by
him, so that they still live on the earth created by him
and under the sky also created by him, soak in the
sun created by him, talk in the language laid down by
him and think in the thought invented by him, so on
and so forth, without end -- which explains why they
are so jumpy and edgy, as they are totally surrounded
by what they revolt against. Remember, they even
carry it in their head. They are locked up for good,
with dead finality. The locking up is permanent as it
has gained functional independence from its milieu of
origin -- it runs on its own, on the emotional fuel
invested by their dumb, thoughtless rebellion.
They may have learnt methods to get rid of him, but
they never bother to put any of them to practice to
really get rid of him (and all methods to get rid of him
are gentle, require subtility and non-resistance, and
basically unsubstantiate him to defuse his reality by
not lending him any imputed reality, slowly and
gradually -- letting sleeping dogs lie [but what reality
has he, other than imputed reality?]), because they
heatedly charge ahead into rebellion right off and
never have a glimmer that such hard-charging rebellion
only ensconces him more deeply into their mind, so
that he only becomes more real to them, as Thomas
says, even if only *in their mind*, but that is where it
counts, doesn't it? Doesn't the mind control everything,
as the very first verse of the Dhammapada (dear to
dar) says? Where does matter figure in there?
Anyway, the path to liberation is pointed out by the
Stoics: to disinvest from everything. It applies even
more poignantly in the release from all claims of
exclusivity. You have to disinvest from what you want
to let go of. But it has to be practiced, for real. Ardent
revolt is at antipodes with it. Lip service doesn't do
anything.
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph
>As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by DharmaTroll):
>
>If men define situations as real, they are real in their
>consequences.
I favor pairing that up with the slogan (attributed to Philip K.
Dick) "Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in
it".
Together, they make the point that the 'reality status' of a
"consequence" is, across all pairs (situation, consequence),
related in no direct way (in particular, not in a 'truth-table'-ish
way) to the 'reality status' of the preceding (I won't say 'causal')
"situation".
In particular, things (including "situations") that do "go away when
you stop believing in them" can have "consequences" that don't (appear
to) depend on "believing in them".
I would put more on this sticker, but the margin of my bumper is
too small to contain it.
Lee Rudolph
Beerlet Dhiblang
> On Oct 28, 6:36 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter inside your head is
> > superior to an animate object that records information?
>
> The physical matter in my head certainly is superior to an inanimate
> object that records information. (You made a spelling mistake: were it
> an animate object, then it would probably be another brain, and my
> brain is probably still superior to that brain, simply because I have
> one of the most superior brains around, but I wouldn't know that for
> sure.)
>
> > And what differentiates a human brain from a dynamic, animate physical
> > recording medium? Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
>
> Again, you mean a dynamic, inanimate physical recording medium? You
> are asking me what the difference is between a human brain and a tape
> recorder? See, when you go all woo-woo you lose all common sense, and
> you can't tell the difference from a human being with a brain and a
> tape recorder. That's just plain silly.
Well, you're the strangest Turing device on the 'nyet anyone's ever
encountered ... so you could understand the confusion.... :-)
> > On the one hand you want to point to the physical basis of the human
> > mind and remove the spook. Good, fine.
>
> > But then because of those additional dynamic properties you now want
> > to put the physical media of human experience above the physical media
> > of other animate things that record information.
>
> Well, yeah. Tape recorders have just a couple of moving parts. Human
> brains have more neurons in them than there are stars in the entire
> galaxy. And their complexity is so far unfathomable.
Right-o.
The neural systems of creatures are nodes of complexity existing in
non-complex surrounds.
No, wait, their surroundings are complex too.
OK, the experience of conscious singularity is an emergent property of
that complexity.
But the complexity is all that it is, and conscious mind is a dynamic
abstraction of the constant flux of coarising phenomena, both
intrinsic and extrinsic, from within and without.
To say all coarising phenomena are fungible or equivalent would be too
simplistic. To say they enjoy parity on a fundamental level would be
true however. Given reasonable parameters everything coarises and
interacts simultaneously together and are capable of somehow storing
the information of past events and are changed in the process.
The events experienced by a non-conscious animate device can be
recorded. This is not a category error, this is fundamental to
information.
So an atomic clock orbiting the earth has a different record from an
earthbound equivalent, each experiencing different rates of coarising
frames. The equivalent astronaut experiences the same thing as his
atomic clock, he & it have traveled from the past into the future at a
slightly faster rate than everyone else.
So here's a case where the rate of experience passing through
extrinsic information is fundamental to all things, not just conscious
things. The medium of space-time imparts this constraint on existence,
that since the physical medium of space has a speed limit then
something has to give, and that something is the rate of experience.
The astronaut will always live 72.65 years (barring intervening fate
to the contrary) but by a solely earthbound metric he'll live 72.70
years. He & his atomic clock's experience lines are fixed, but to
everyone else their existence and experiences have been stretched
thinner across the fabric of time-space. To the astronaut and the
clock, the space-time world around them appears compressed (in the
case of speeds in excess of 0.9C, 1000's of years could go by in the
span of a few short months...).
The point to all this relativistic talk is that at a fundamental level
there is an essence in coarising phenomena - whether reflected in
conscious experience or not - that is directly experienced whether
there's a conscious mind to perceive and respond to the essence of
constant flux or not.
A housefly's neural system is many orders of magnitude more advanced
than a nematode - we know it enjoys some kind of basic experience,
there's some kind of basic ability to learn & make decisions. The
nematode is still experiencing flux and essence as well. Creatures
don't need consciousness in order to experience. There's an awareness
of extrinsic flux, even in simple creatures.
OK, take away an active neural network, what is left for a creature to
experience? Well, the essence of flux is still there, there's just no
biological medium (the neural system) that creates some partial
facsimile reflection of events in its surrounds.
Now enter the Buddhist use of the word "Mind." This is where "Mind,"
"experience," "flux" and material essence start sounding synonymous.
But the Buddhist meaning of Mind shouldn't be lost, because what Mind
is is a reflection of flux from one of the five aggregates. The
phenomonological flavors stimulating a conscious mind at the time are
immaterial (intrinsic, extrinsic, aggregate 2, 1 or 5 don't matter),
it's experiencing the constant flux of coarising interactions.
Conscious experience via the extrinsic aggregates is a bowdlerized
facsimile. Pure thought (reason or logic) might be considered more
pure (doesn't matter if the reasoning is flawed...) and so the
solipsistic experience proffers immaculate mind.
But the conceptual model of Mind is not woo-woo'ist. It's just a
conceptual model that levels the playing field of intrinsic mental
phenomena against external ones, showing the observer mind that it's
not so privileged in the realm of coarising phenomena.
> > This is the same
> > argument for God in religious tomes, that man is qualitatively
> > *better* or superior to everything else.
>
> No, it's not. Rather, I'm only suggesting that (1) the only sentient
> critters we know of have brains, and (2) the human brain is the most
> complex object/system in the known universe.
Well, you did say they were superior to a tape recorder above. But
I'll let you pass ... this time!
> As for 'better', that's a value judgment. I'm just saying "smarter"
> and "more complex". If we pretend that the world is an illusion and
> just pollute it and multiply like a virus and run out of food, or blow
> each other up, then we'll go extinct and not be so 'better' after all.
> But we do have the greatest complexity. That's all I'm saying.
Aaaaahah! So you admit we're not so special after all...
> > That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist argument to put a
> > ghost back into the machine.
>
> No, I'm not. I'm saying that when the physical system of billions and
> billions of neurons are organized into dynamic, functioning brains,
> that no ghost is needed, that the system is conscious all by itself.
But, if your argument is that conscious experience is qualitatively
different from material flux elsewhere then you do risk putting a
ghost into the machine.
> The latter is more reasonable,
> like the brains being conscious, because I can explain the event
> without positing an ineffable deva, much less the realm it comes from,
> much less explain how the differing realms interact -- I can simply
> say that brains are probably conscious and that when I see a dent,
> that means that a tangible person in a tangible car probably bumped
> into miy car.
Right, so animate consciousness can recall, interpret, and predict
events that less capable things cannot. But the basis for that ability
is still material and the material basis of it -- a neuron, the
molecules within the cell, etc. - has no more consciousness than an
atom from a stone.
Consciousness is an emergent property of complexity and is constrained
within the boundaries of an animate system more complex than its
surrounds.
But flux, essence, phenomena are not so constrained parametrically.
Semantic question moment here: Is flux mind or is mind flux?
So where is Mind, Trollpa?
/"May I Never Achieve Enlightenment" Dibbleebert
DharmaTroll
Their surroundings aren't anything as complex as brains.
> OK, the experience of conscious singularity is an emergent property of
> that complexity.
I have no idea what you mean by 'conscious singularity'. You're again
adding terms without defining them. As for "emergent property" that's
one reasonable way of looking at it.
> But the complexity is all that it is, and conscious mind is a dynamic
> abstraction of the constant flux of coarising phenomena, both
> intrinsic and extrinsic, from within and without.
Now you've switched and are saying something else. In fact, you'd have
to write that run-on sentence in English for me to respond to it.
> To say all coarising phenomena are fungible or equivalent would be too
> simplistic. To say they enjoy parity on a fundamental level would be
> true however.
Again, unless you write this in English, I could interpret that in
about ten different ways as well.
> Given reasonable parameters everything coarises and
> interacts simultaneously together and are capable of somehow storing
> the information of past events and are changed in the process.
Another incomprehensible statement, from which you're trying to
conclude that clocks have feelings or whatever.
I'm just going to stop there. Try writing a post in English next
time.
Skipping down:
> The point to all this relativistic talk is that at a fundamental level
> there is an essence in coarising phenomena
Essences? Ok, you're arguing for souls or spooks of some kind, and
that clocks have souls or whatever. I don't see any evidence for any
essences at all, but I can't make sense of your talk to tell what
you're actually trying to say.
--DharmaTroll
Déjà Flu
> Their surroundings aren't anything as complex as brains.
I don't agree, but that's immaterial to the rest of this
"conversation". I've had something like this with leebert
before and couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.
Seems like some kind of apologist position while trying
to avoid out-and-out woo. It's been years and the only thing
I've been able to figure out is that he's definitely brighter
than a Karen Armstrong (that's two parts gin, two parts tequila,
one part creme de Y'vette, one part blue curacao).
--
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph wrote:
> Tang Huyen:
When one drops everything and opens up, one
suspends belief and disbelief, and it can be said
that in such moment, one stops believing in
everything, even if one is still aware that what
happens still happens and has not vanished. If
one stops chunking and bagging, one still
experiences what happens, though one no
longer believes (for the duration of such
stoppage) in the products of chunking and
bagging. One still experiences something that
is like the whole of sensation, the Hegelian
concrete universal, the Spinozan substance
that is the thing of all things (Spinoza does
not call his substance the thing of all things,
Ernst Cassirer does), with all its differentiation,
though one refrains from cutting it up and
chunking and bagging the bits, so that the stuff
from which the empirical units of normal life
(built up by chunking and bagging such bits)
would be produced is still there, in all its
vibrance, but the empirical units of normal
life are not produced. The concrete universal
is there, but the particulars that would be
produced from it by chunking and bagging
(by means of the abstract universals, like
concepts) into the empirical units of normal
life are not.
What is unexpected is that when one so
suspends belief and disbelief, iow when one
does not believe in anything any more,
Mother Nature comes in and fills one up
with serenity and wonderment, all unasked.
Not only does what happens not vanish, but
it happens in the company of serenity and
wonderment, none of which is actively
produced by one. It merely happens that
way (and one hasn't to believe in it). Any
belief or disbelief would instantly block it.
Such state of release is at antipodes with
what one can observe day in day out with
the locked-up people, like DharmaTroll
and Fu, with their incredible tension.
The morale is that if one stops believing in
the details, their whole does not go away
but shines forth all the more gloriously.
But such result is purely subjective, strictly
sentimental and there is no reality to it,
except the feeling. However one has to
drop all belief and disbelief to get there.
What one does (namely, suspending all
belief and disbelief) is purely subjective,
strictly sentimental, and what happens
thereupon is also purely subjective,
strictly sentimental.
<<We can test the DNA of the cat to
see if we are referring to the same cat.
'Justice' has no DNA or structure to
test. It doesn't exist. The word 'justice'
is just a way of organizing our thinking;
it doesn't refer to something the way
'cat' refers to a cat.>> DharmaTroll.
That is exactly what I mean when I
say that an experience is purely
subjective, strictly sentimental, in that
it is just a way of organizing our mental
space, whether the latter contains
thought (or anything else) or not, it
doesn't refer to something the way 'cat'
refers to a cat. If one organizes one's
mental space in harmony and accord,
then one organizes one's mental space
in harmony and accord. Same with
dysharmony and disaccord. The external
world is the same, only the way one deals
with oneself changes.
But a metaphysical question that is a
favourite with some philosophers is: you
can point to a cat, but you cannot point
to its existence. You can say that a ghost
does not exist, in that you cannot point to
something and say that it is a ghost, but
you cannot point to its non-existence,
either. Heh! Woo in full!
Tang Huyen
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll wrote:
> Ron Fuller:
>
> > at least tang likes to admit that it's all subjective. you on
> > the other hand infer that yours is real because it's "science".
>
> Actually, Tang acts as if his bios of me or fu or sphere or jigme are
> real. My comments about people's personal lives are all barbs and just
> to get a reaction, on the other hand. Whereas I do try to talk about
> what is, in the real world and don't behind talk of closed-loop
> masturbatory idealism. Tang may say all is fluff, but I say that if
> you step out into the highway, the truck will crush you.
My bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you can be
all wrong factually, but their factuality (or
lack thereof) is not the point. The point is
that they make their intended recipients jump.
And if they make their intended recipients
jump, then they are real. Who knows what
the truth is with regard to such people?
Factual truth is perhaps inaccessible, even to
such people themselves. But with mere
words on the screen, if they can be made to
jump, then what makes them jump is real.
As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by
you):
�If men define situations as real, they are
real in their consequences.�
If Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you take my mere
words on the screen for real -- as something
real, to be reacted to accordingly -- then
they are real. No further requirement is
needed.
<<We can test the DNA of the cat to see if
we are referring to the same cat. 'Justice'
has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of
organizing our thinking; it doesn't refer to
something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.>>
My mere words on the screen -- which
pretend to be bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or
you -- represent just a way of organizing the
thinking of said people in such a provocative
way as to make them jump; it doesn't refer
to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat. If
they make them jump, they have served their
intended purpose (sorry for the pleonasm)
and are therefore real. They, mere words on
the screen, have transmitted an intention, and
the latter is received and acted on, from mind
to mind. You can't point to an intention like
you can point to a cat, but an intention is
nevertheless transmitted and acted on. It is
woo and it works.
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll
I can't make much sense of Leebert, but I liked Karen Armstrong's "The
History of God". And even better, her "The Gospel According to Women"
where she argues strongly that Christianity's traditional hatred of
women and of the body still cripples woman's self-image today. That
may be her best book of all, and I think she gets it right in that
one. Haven't read her new "The Case for God" yet.
I don't know if you are calling Armstrong 'stupid' simply because
she's religious, or what. I see her as a good example of a highly
religious person who is sane rather than superstitious as are so many
transcendental whack jobs on this list. Don't get your dislike of her,
Flu.
--DharmaTroll
“It is, therefore, a mistake to regard myth as an inferior mode of
thought, which can be cast aside when human beings have attained the
age of reason. Mythology is not an early attempt at history, and does
not claim that its tales are objective fact. Like a novel, an opera or
a ballet, myth is make-believe; it is a game that transfigures our
fragmented, tragic world, and helps us to glimpse new possibilities by
asking 'what if?' -- a question which has also provoked some of our
most important discoveries in philosophy, science, and technology.”
-Karen Armstrong
Charles E Hardwidge
news:9aydnWYWAuhPvnfX...@supernews.com...
>
> My bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you can be
> all wrong factually, but their factuality (or
> lack thereof) is not the point. The point is
> that they make their intended recipients jump.
> And if they make their intended recipients
> jump, then they are real. Who knows what
> the truth is with regard to such people?
> Factual truth is perhaps inaccessible, even to
> such people themselves. But with mere
> words on the screen, if they can be made to
> jump, then what makes them jump is real.
You really are a prick.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
Zzzzzzz.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
> �It is, therefore, a mistake to regard myth as an inferior mode of
> thought, which can be cast aside when human beings have attained the
> age of reason. Mythology is not an early attempt at history, and does
> not claim that its tales are objective fact. Like a novel, an opera or
> a ballet, myth is make-believe; it is a game that transfigures our
> fragmented, tragic world, and helps us to glimpse new possibilities by
> asking 'what if?' -- a question which has also provoked some of our
> most important discoveries in philoso�phy, science, and technology.�
> -Karen Armstrong
Between the bullshit on the brain, science, banging on about Christianity,
and masturbatory handwaving like this you guys are stuck.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Déjà Flu
> -Karen Armstrong
Yes, I've read her trash extensively. Very sneaky. This is the sort
of stuff that ID is made of. It's very difficult to unravel because
it's so tightly woven. You could start, fex, with her assertion that
"myth" is a "mode of thought". It isn't. It is a mode of belief,
which precludes thought entirely. Her "what if" only introduces the
possibility of woo. I am quite surprised you don't see this. She
argues from the world of dreams - Disney Land - the perfect escape
from responsible reality.
Déjà Flu
He doesn't mean to be. But when you vote the party line and
the candidates are simply shades of black and white with
no other definition, you're tossing coins in the fountain.
This is why the UK and the colonies can't think for themselves.
Even if there were alternatives, they'd be trivial and not
worth putting on the ballot.
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
> If the shoe fits, I'll kick your ad hominem butt with it.
You seem upset.
--
hz
Déjà Flu
you seem to have lost your shoe,
DharmaTroll
Upset? No, I made a joke.
Perhaps you wouldn't lose your shoes so much if you didn't keep
putting your foot in your mouth!
--DharmaTroll
Déjà Flu
You just replied to the wrong post.
Please pay attentio or you'll wind
up like Karen Armstrong.
(and don't do *that*, fer god's sake!)
Hollywood Lee
Pharyngula Blog. There latest on her is titled "The Zombies will sup on
karen Armstrong with a Straw" at
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/the_zombies_will_sup_on_karen.php
Personally, I don't get riled up by her.
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
How did I know you'd deny it?
> Perhaps you wouldn't lose your shoes so much if you didn't keep
> putting your foot in your mouth!
Speaking of butt-kicking, that's not where I lost my shoe.
I'm not going looking for it, either.
DharmaTroll
wrote:
> DharmaTroll wrote:
>
> > Actually, Tang acts as if his bios of me or fu or sphere or jigme are
> > real. My comments about people's personal lives are all barbs and just
> > to get a reaction, on the other hand. Whereas I do try to talk about
> > what is, in the real world and don't behind talk of closed-loop
> > masturbatory idealism. Tang may say all is fluff, but I say that if
> > you step out into the highway, the truck will crush you.
>
> My bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you can be
> all wrong factually, but their factuality (or
> lack thereof) is not the point. The point is
> that they make their intended recipients jump.
In other words, you're saying, "I just make up false bullshit about
Fu, Jigme, Sphere, or DT just to get a reaction out of them and piss
them off."
Fair enough.
> And if they make their intended recipients
> jump, then they are real. Who knows what
> the truth is with regard to such people?
Now that's an interesting leap you now make: "If I make up bullshit
about people and they get on my case for being a jerk, then I turn
around and say, 'see, my bullshit must be true, or else you wouldn't
get on my case'."
But that doesn't make sense, Tang. Is it that folks get on your case
because the lies you make up about them are actually true, or does it
have nothing to do with the content of your nonsense, and they are
only getting on your case because you are being, as Charles puts it,
such a prick? I strongly suspect the latter in just about every
single case.
> Factual truth is perhaps inaccessible, even to
> such people themselves. But with mere
> words on the screen, if they can be made to
> jump, then what makes them jump is real.
That's exactly what Rush Limbaugh does in his personal attacks, btw.
Hell, he gets, what, $25 million bucks a year slandering others. Take
a look at this:
First, El Rushbo quoted a hoax, a piece of satire, which Rush thought
was real and that he was getting the scoop on by first exposing:
"So here is who we have as our president of the United States: an anti-
constitutionalist man who finds it an obstacle and is finding ways
around it on purpose, unconstitutionally," Limbaugh said on his show.
"Much of what he's doing is unconstitutional, and I'm waiting for the
lawsuits to be filed by some of these people at some point," Limbaugh
added. "How is that hope and change working out for ya, folks?"
Later in the same program, when Limbaugh learned the report was a
hoax, he corrected the record, alerting listeners that the quotes from
the thesis had been fabricated. But he insisted the fabricated thesis
was still in line with what the president thinks.
"So I shout from the mountaintops: 'It was satire!'" Limbaugh said on
the program. "But we know he (Obama) thinks it. Good comedy, to be
comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels
about distribution of wealth."
Limbaugh said he has license to go with the fabrication because other
members of the media have done this to him.
"So, I can say, "I don't care if these quotes are made up," he said.
"I know Obama thinks it!"
That's exactly what you do, Tang, isn't it? Here El Rushbo, while
having a little more honor than our list nutter Keynes, because Rush
at least admitted he was wrong and had repeated a hoax, then did a
Tang move. He said that it wouldn't be funny if there wasn't truth to
it, and besides, "I know Obama thinks it!" So Rush ends up trying to
reify his fabrication into a claim of fact. Isn't that what you do?
"If a poster responds to my slander, then I can turn around and say
'see, what I say about you must be true!"
> As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by
> you):
>
> “If men define situations as real, they are
> real in their consequences.”
Yes, that is one of my favorite quotes. I was hinting at it in my
answer to Possum, when she asked how something that didn't exist could
be meaningful, and I responded that the poker hand I don't have, but
which I get you to believe I have, gets you to fold. That's exactly an
example of W.I. Thomas' claim. We react to our beliefs and fears,
regardless of whether they are justified.
> If Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you take my mere
> words on the screen for real -- as something
> real, to be reacted to accordingly -- then
> they are real. No further requirement is
> needed.
Um, no. Again, we're most likely to be reacting to the -form- ("Tang
made up rude lies about me") than the content ("Fu is suffering from X
because of Y in his childhood") of what you're saying. It's like you
think you have this loophole that you've created with your Tangled
logic. Here are the steps:
(1) Tang makes up slander about an adversary poster
(2) Tang claims closed-loop ('everything I say is fluff, means
nothing")
(3) Poster responds ("No Tang, that's not true, that's mere slander")
(4) Tang responds, "Aha, the poster reacted to my fluff"
(5) Tang rejects (2), concluding, "My lies must really be objectively
true, because the poster responded to my lies!"
(6) Tang says, "see, I am serene in closed loop, whereas you are
reactive, so I'm more enlightened than you. I'm laughing my teeth out.
Hahahahah!"
It's step (5) that is nonsensical, as you arbitrarily attribute a
motivation for the poster to call you out on lying about him, and your
arbitrary attribution tends to be of the form "my lie must be true".
But you have no reason to conclude that. Again, the more simple and
reasonable explanation is that they are simply responding to your
lying, and not to the specific content of your fabrications.
> <<We can test the DNA of the cat to see if
> we are referring to the same cat. 'Justice'
> has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
> exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of
> organizing our thinking; it doesn't refer to
> something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.>>
>
> My mere words on the screen -- which
> pretend to be bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or
> you -- represent just a way of organizing the
> thinking of said people in such a provocative
> way as to make them jump; it doesn't refer
> to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
Right. That's your step (2).
> If they make them jump,
> they have served their intended purpose
> (sorry for the pleonasm)
> and are therefore real.
And that's step (5), which is an invalid step of reasoning.
No, they aren't real. And W.I. Thomas' quote doesn't apply here, as
none of us believe the fabrications you make about us.
> They, mere words on
> the screen, have transmitted an intention, and
> the latter is received and acted on, from mind
> to mind.
You are attempting to 'cheat' and jump out of your closed-loop by
making the claim "I can turn my lies into reality if I can piss people
off by lying about them." And that doesn't make sense at all.
> You can't point to an intention like
> you can point to a cat, but an intention is
> nevertheless transmitted and acted on.
> It is woo and it works.
>
> Tang Huyen
It's woo, alright, but it doesn't 'work'. You don't end up magically
turning your lies into facts, Tang. You can't magically turn your
fluff into fact any more than Keynes can magically turn a truck coming
at him into an mere dualistic illusion or turn neuroscience into
phrenology. (You're doing the opposite, trying to magically turn your
made-up fluff into reality.)
Anyway, I just wanted to mention this because of the coincidence that
I heard about El Rushbo's misquoting a hoax as a fact, and then trying
to magically claim that it was true anyway, and that El Rushbo even
has mindreading abilities to allow him to assert, "I don't care if
these quotes are made up," he said. "I know Obama thinks it!"
And then I read your post, and it hit me,
"Hey, that's the Tangster's game!"
And, of course, as it is my SuperHero duty to call out and tenaciously
take the battle to woo-woo and magic on this list, I feel compelled to
explain this to you.
Too bad you don't also get $25 million bucks a year for making up
fluff, eh?
--DharmaTroll
"I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for
over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery
built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just
saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after
dark."
-El Rushbo
DharmaTroll
No, I replied to the right post.
Herbzet made a Tang move by accusing me of being upset. You, Fu, made
a joke, that Herbzet lost his shoe. I added to your joke, claiming
that Herbzet has his foot in his mouth. But I responded to your
response, so that I could include your "lost your shoe" comment.
Herbzet is likely playing the Tang game (see my totally awesome post
to Tang today) where Tang accuses, then waits for you to deny the
accusation, and then says "Aha, you wouldn't deny it unless it's
true".
In any case, I responded to the right post, and Herbzet still has his
feet in his mouth.
So you can relax now, Fu. Now why don't you run along and go read
Karen Armstrong's new book?
--DharmaTroll
"There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad
cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too."
-Karen Armstrong
Beerlet Dhiblang
> DharmaTroll wrote:
> > On Oct 29, 9:22 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> ...
> > Their surroundings aren't anything as complex as brains.
>
> I don't agree, but that's immaterial to the rest of this
> "conversation". I've had something like this with leebert
> before and couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.
Let me know when you do. I'm still working on it myself.
Mostly just bemused musings on the limits of materialist rubrics that
try to constrain spirituality strictly on evidence, putting empiricism
on a pedestal while precluding any atheist universalism.
> Seems like some kind of apologist position while trying
> to avoid out-and-out woo.
I might be guilty of that. But it's not a surreptitious theist
apologetics ... er, more of a metaphysics for romantic
omphaloskeptics.
> It's been years and the only thing
> I've been able to figure out is that he's definitely brighter
> than a Karen Armstrong
LOL.... She comes recommended but perhaps I should be offended
anyway!
So.... maybe I should write a book or somethin'.
> (that's two parts gin, two parts tequila,
> one part creme de Y'vette, one part blue curacao).
Drambuie.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> Well I'd hope so. You sometimes appear to be one of the sane and
> intelligent posters in these parts.
Bullshit. I'm as crazy in my own way as most of the rest.... :-)
> > but his utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics
> > strikes me as curiously defensive.
>
> Actually Trollpa takes an agnostic view on metaphysics, agnostic
> meaning don't posit anything without evidence.
>
> Once again, as Thomas Henry Huxley, the mentor of Trollpa's who
> invented the term agnostic defined it:
>
> "Positively the principle may expressed: In matters of the intellect,
> follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any
> other consideration. And negatively, in matters of the intellect do
> not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or
> demonstrable."
> No, you came in defending the nutters on the list, so I'm assuming
> you're defending nutter views in general.
No, just their right to be nuts without being mocked for their guilty
pleasures.
"If we don't stand up for the kooks, who will?" -- Dean McCoppin, Iron
Giant
> That's what makes me more totally awesome than Tang.
> DharmaTroll is the Alpha-Troll! Yeah! Yeah!
Yer a hoot.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> > -Karen Armstrong
>
> Yes, I've read her trash extensively. Very sneaky. This is the sort
> of stuff that ID is made of. It's very difficult to unravel because
> it's so tightly woven. You could start, fex, with her assertion that
> "myth" is a "mode of thought". It isn't. It is a mode of belief,
> which precludes thought entirely. Her "what if" only introduces the
> possibility of woo. I am quite surprised you don't see this. She
> argues from the world of dreams - Disney Land - the perfect escape
> from responsible reality.
Have you ever stood in lines with a 3 year old at Disney Weird when
it's packed? There's no escaping reality.
/l
zenworm
> On Oct 29, 5:55 pm, Déjà Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > DharmaTroll wrote:
> > > On Oct 29, 9:22 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > ...
> > > Their surroundings aren't anything as complex as brains.
>
> > I don't agree, but that's immaterial to the rest of this
> > "conversation". I've had something like this with leebert
> > before and couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.
>
> Let me know when you do. I'm still working on it myself.
>
> Mostly just bemused musings on the limits of materialist rubrics that
> try to constrain spirituality strictly on evidence, putting empiricism
> on a pedestal while precluding any atheist universalism.
>
> > Seems like some kind of apologist position while trying
> > to avoid out-and-out woo.
>
> I might be guilty of that. But it's not a surreptitious theist
> apologetics ... er, more of a metaphysics for romantic
> omphaloskeptics.
unadvocated nonoumenal clature?
ZN :D
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
Jigme Dorje
Rush Limbaugh profits from adrenaline addiction. Is it any coincidence
that he is a substance abuser as well? Indignation sells. Getting
personal sells, as it is all rooted in the defense of a false sense of
self. From a Buddhist perspective, all this is just like going lemming-
like in the opposite direction of unbinding:
"...with the total ending, fading away, cessation, letting go,
relinquishment of craving, the Tathagata has totally awakened to the
unexcelled right self-awakening, I tell you." - Mulapariyaya Sutta
herbzet
Jigme Dorje wrote:
> DharmaTroll wrote:
> > Too bad you don't also get $25 million bucks a year for making up
> > fluff, eh?
> >
> > --DharmaTroll
> >
> > "I mean, let�s face it, we didn�t have slavery in this country for
> > over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery
> > built the South. I�m not saying we should bring it back; I�m just
> > saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after
> > dark."
> > -El Rushbo
>
> Rush Limbaugh profits from adrenaline addiction. Is it any coincidence
> that he is a substance abuser as well? Indignation sells. Getting
> personal sells, as it is all rooted in the defense of a false sense of
> self. From a Buddhist perspective, all this is just like going lemming-
> like in the opposite direction of unbinding:
>
> "...with the total ending, fading away, cessation, letting go,
> relinquishment of craving, the Tathagata has totally awakened to the
> unexcelled right self-awakening, I tell you." - Mulapariyaya Sutta
Quite so.
This could be really interesting, if someone wanted to take the
trouble to get down to the nitty-gritty of analyzing the social
dynamics involved (given the sense of self as nearly universal).
Perhaps it has already been done. My acquaintence with social
psychology as a science, alas, is virtually nil. I read an
essay on mob behavior, a long time ago.
--
hz
DharmaTroll
> > psychology as a science, alas, is virtually nil. I read an
> > essay on mob behavior, a long time ago.
>
> "Social psychology" became a science?
> I must have blinked...
>
> --
> Ubi dubium ibi libertas
Geez, guys. Try reading Erving Goffman's
_The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_.
http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/0844670170
I read it in two different sociology classes and put it in my "Top 10
books" of non-fiction to read. It's short and brilliant.
Oh, look -- on that amazon page I just found for it, I scrolled down
and there's a review from an alleged 'Buddhist':
"I really loved this book. First, I appreciated that it was written in
the mid fifties by someone who valued the nuances of words and before
books were dumbed down for popular understanding. It's a vocabulary
builder. It was extremely difficult for me to read. I was 41 at the
time. Nearly every page revealed to me errors in my thoughts and
actions that were profoundly embarrassing. I would have to lay it
aside and creep back a few days later to again confront myself. I am a
Buddhist. The book seems to reveal fundamental Buddhist truths
discovered independently by an European with no previous exposure to
the Dharma. The book powerfully enunciates the proposition that there
is no "essence" of ourselves and our personality - but that all life
is a performance - all too often, poorly written, produced, directed
and acted. In today's politically correct world - this book could
never be published."
I was 19 or 20 when I read it and had the advantage of having a hip
professor discuss it in class. I remember it as a little technical
with some big words I don't know, but a piece of cake compared to
Heidegger or a Tang or Leebert post! And I really remember the book
making me think and connecting it to so many things. Didn't at the
time think of it as Buddhist, since I was just getting into Buddhism,
but it was one of the main 'pieces of the puzzle' in my quest to know
everything about everything and put it all together into "The Big
Picture". I've wanted to go back and read his later book, _Frame
Analysis_, but I never got around to it while I was in my Goffman
phase. Maybe I'll read it sometime. Anybody around here read it?
And yeah, I don't go for 'soft' social science really being science
either, because is isn't rigorously quantifiable (which if you can get
quantifiability gives you a good reason that you're actually finding
the natural structure of nature rather than artificially cutting it up
and bagging it the way Tang talks about). But Goffman's small book was
a great example of well done insightful social psych. Go get it out of
your library and take a look.
--DharmaTroll
"The self is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose
fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic
effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented."
-Erving Goffman
Jigme Dorje
>
> - Show quoted text -
I think you've just told me all I need to know about it, DT. You just
gave me a recommendation, synopsis and review all for the mere price
of the electricity. I've been a little busy, but I'm glad that you
took the time to read it for me; it saved a lot of time.
Charles E Hardwidge
> On Oct 30, 4:33 pm, D�j� Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Geez, guys. Try reading Erving Goffman's
> _The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_.
> http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/0844670170
> I read it in two different sociology classes and put it in my "Top 10
> books" of non-fiction to read. It's short and brilliant.
...
> I was 19 or 20 when I read it and had the advantage of having a hip
> professor discuss it in class. I remember it as a little technical
> with some big words I don't know, but a piece of cake compared to
> Heidegger or a Tang or Leebert post!
I had a draft post pointing out this stuff was old and I'm bored shitless
reading the crap around here. If it's not garbled autistic waffle it's
bollocks about the brain and physics. Christ, I'd hate to be on the bus to
work with you lot in the morning.
I watch movies, take photos, and *do* stuff. There's as much or more
Buddhism in that and it's a damn sight less b-o-r-i-n-g. Hells teeth, I quit
following politics and the media because of that *and* it's a damn sight
better written and more relevant.
I've commented on leaders setting bad examples the herd emulate because they
think it makes them look powerful, and how an aggressive media actually
undermines good governance. That led a couple of articles in the media - and
you guys in here are no different.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Lee Rudolph
...
> And yeah, I don't go for 'soft' social science really being science
> either, because is isn't rigorously quantifiable (which if you can get
> quantifiability gives you a good reason that you're actually finding
> the natural structure of nature rather than artificially cutting it up
> and bagging it the way Tang talks about).
...
I'm all in favor of requiring of a "science" that it be *mathematizable*
in a (more or less) "rigorous" way. But your rationale for requiring,
not mathematizable, but "quantifiable", namely, that "quantifiability
gives you a good reason that you're actually finding the natural structure
of nature", is spectacularly unconvincing to me: first because in itself
"quantifiability" is not "structure" (much less, "structure" with such a
strong claim to being "natural structure" that no argument for its
"natural"ity need be given), and second because there are a *lot* of
good, honest, mathematical "structure"s that are not (or not principally)
"quantitative"--and although not much has yet been done with such
structures in the way of mathematical modeling for the "'soft' social
science"s, it's hardly evident that nothing *can* be done (although
it is surely unlikely that very many of the current crop of "'soft'
social science" practitioners can do it, given their general lack
of mathematical sophistication). I will probably rant at greater
length about this later, whether or not you have any comments in
reply, but I'm about to log off for the night.
Lee Rudolph
Charles E Hardwidge
"Lee Rudolph" <lrud...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:hcfvjp$b9l$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> I'm all in favor of requiring of a "science" that it be *mathematizable*
> in a (more or less) "rigorous" way. But your rationale for requiring,
> not mathematizable, but "quantifiable", namely, that "quantifiability
> gives you a good reason that you're actually finding the natural structure
> of nature", is spectacularly unconvincing to me: first because in itself
> "quantifiability" is not "structure" (much less, "structure" with such a
> strong claim to being "natural structure" that no argument for its
> "natural"ity need be given), and second because there are a *lot* of
> good, honest, mathematical "structure"s that are not (or not principally)
> "quantitative"--and although not much has yet been done with such
> structures in the way of mathematical modeling for the "'soft' social
> science"s, it's hardly evident that nothing *can* be done (although
> it is surely unlikely that very many of the current crop of "'soft'
> social science" practitioners can do it, given their general lack
> of mathematical sophistication). I will probably rant at greater
> length about this later, whether or not you have any comments in
> reply, but I'm about to log off for the night.
WTF??? B-O-R-I-N-G. Leedolph==EPIC FAIL
Log off? *snort*
--
Charles E Hardwidge
DharmaTroll
What the #$%^&*?????
Jigme, you're supposed to read that quote and my enthusiasm and then
want to go read the damned thing cover to cover, not to say "you're
just told me all I need to know about it."
Indeed, I think getting your hands dirty in the interesting details
and writings of folks, be it philosophical or sociological, or sci-fi,
is a way to delve deeply into many different ways of seeing things.
And that, in return, will vaccinate one for taking the all too simple
shortcut into woo-woo and dogmatism.
(Sigh). Well, at the hopes I can get you to want to read the entire
book, here's another review that might spark your interest.
--DharmaTroll
http://www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/time-management/roles.htm
<<In as much as behaviour is the process of living life, the
development of behaviour sets, which can be thought of as roles, may
be employed for the purpose of simplifying the task: the idea was
first proposed by William James (1890). 'Some roles, James believed,
we choose for ourselves ... Other roles are prescribed for us by
virtue of our position in life'.
The ideas of James have been further developed by a number of
sociologists; notably Merton (1957), Mead (1934), Parsons (1951) and
Goffman (1959).
There is wonderful economy in the process of role-play which is a key
to why this behaviour has evolved: the mechanism exists simply because
it provides a survival edge. Its advantage may lie in rendering the
procedure of reviewing all possible responses to a given situation
obsolete. Once a particular role is initiated, the task is simplified
to that of reacting within character. It follows that the effect of
this is to reduce the active processing time required by the brain to
produce a solution. The brain is therefore far less taxed during role-
play than it would otherwise be if role-play was not involved.
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman's main
contribution to the discussion concerns the analysis of
characterisation. His suggestion that the performer attempts to
present an idealised version of the character (page 45) which reflects
the values of society - since the notion of the ideal is one which is
derived from society - is somewhat reminiscent of the Freudian concept
of super-ego.
Goffman suggests that belief in a particular role by an individual
performer, is related to perceived reality. (page 28) Hence there is
considerable importance attached to the clothing worn by the performer
whilst in character, which primarily serves to increase belief in the
role. The wearing of an appropriate costume enables the character to
be donned more readily which, in turn, contributes to the definition
of the situation: 'the more the individual is concerned with the
reality which is not available to perception, the more must he
concentrate his attention on appearances.' (page 241)
This aspect of 'appearance' is part of what Goffman identifies as
'front'; and, in performance terms, it is closely related to 'manner'.
The appearance and manner of the performer serve to enrich the quality
of performance, and they will normally operate in harmony. 'We often
expect, of course, a confirming consistency between appearance and
manner'. (page 35) Front distinguishes between the public part of the
performance and backstage, or off-stage, action which is still carried
out within the scope of the role: it is 'that part of the performance
which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the
situation'. (page 32) It also encompasses 'setting'; the furniture and
props that make up the set for a particular act.
Non-verbal communication in the form of gestures which are made by the
performer 'during the interaction' (page 40) serve to add a
confirmatory emphasis: Goffman uses the example of a baseball umpire
who's body language is actually communicating his decision whilst he
is in the act of processing the information upon which it is to be
based. Related to this, there is a possibility of accidentally
misleading an audience with unintended body language. For this reason,
it is suggested, the performer keeps non-relevant gestures to a bare
minimum. (page 59)
It is rather disappointing that, in this book, the broader parallel
with theatre was not fully exploited; for example, there is no mention
of scriptwriter, director, make-up or wardrobe roles. Director and
script writer roles, for the purpose of reviewing and refining future
performance, might be linked with existing work on 'schemas', whereas
make-up and wardrobe roles could be incorporated into Goffman's own
discussion of 'front'. There appears to be plenty of scope for the
further integration of psychological theory into this approach.
In terms of characterisation, Goffman provides a thorough analysis but
ultimately, he refuses to expand this interesting line of thinking
'Now it should be admitted that this attempt to press a mere analogy
so far was in part a rhetoric and a manoeuvre.' (page 246) - my
italics. This comment perhaps indicates his awareness of the criticism
that role-play theory has attracted from certain quarters, 'in many
respects it is diametrically opposed to most psychological theories of
personality'; and may even cast doubt on his own full acceptance of
the validity of the theory.>>
DharmaTroll
You make a reasonable enough point. I don't mean this too strictly.
More in terms of a cheap and dirty bullshit detector. People who
peddle bullshit, or just arbitrary cling to woo-woo stories, have no
math to back it up. Yeah, it doesn't have to be strictly quantifiable,
but when you can repeat for everyone that during the eclipse light
from stars behind the sun bends and is visible due to your theory of
relativity and curvature of space-time, and don't act as Newton had
predicted, then I'd say you're on to something, and you've uncovered
something real and deeply true about the objective structure of the
universe.
On the other hand, if your some dude who claims that they had a dream
or extraordinary experience and then you start talking about your
"direct experience" to Transcendental Oneness some other capital-
lettered non-mathematical blather with Capital Letters, then chances
are you ain't on par with Einstein -- you're more on par with
UFOlogists, jihadists, acupuncturists, and other assorted whack jobs.
--DharmaTroll
"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the
testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more
miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."
-David Hume
Déjà Flu
"What is it, Jamal?"
-- Slumdog
"I think you're in a wee spot of trouble."
-- Ronin
Charles E Hardwidge
> That's exactly what Rush Limbaugh does in his personal attacks, btw.
> Hell, he gets, what, $25 million bucks a year slandering others. Take
> a look at this:
http://inotify.blogspot.com/2009/10/infamous-charles-hardwidge.html
Apparently, I'm a target for the Libertarian right. I'm taking a low profile
for now but someone coughed up this link earlier today. This blog article is
mostly echo chamber bullshit from the usual suspects.
I've taken a leading position on a lot of issues and kept to a reasonable
attitude for a long time. Contrast this to the lurid claims and nasty mob
attacks this bunch routinely indulged in.
Makes you think they're writing about themselves, eh?
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> "DharmaTroll" <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
Does makes one chuckle being loathed so.... oh, sure, they hit on your
weak spots but what of the salient points that earned you such enmity.
I know your bad side when yer on a tear ye hellion.
Anybody who posts extensively OL will find how much everyone else OL
is also utterly full of sh**. Kettle, meet pot & all that rot.
We're all fools here of our own device.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> "DharmaTroll" <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
>
> news:8db73357-be23-403b...@l33g2000vbi.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Oct 30, 4:33 pm, Déjà Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Geez, guys. Try reading Erving Goffman's
> > _The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_.
> >http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/0844670170
> > I read it in two different sociology classes and put it in my "Top 10
> > books" of non-fiction to read. It's short and brilliant.
>
> ...
>
> > I was 19 or 20 when I read it and had the advantage of having a hip
> > professor discuss it in class. I remember it as a little technical
> > with some big words I don't know, but a piece of cake compared to
> > Heidegger or a Tang or Leebert post!
> I watch movies, take photos, and *do* stuff. There's as much or more
> Buddhism in that and it's a damn sight less b-o-r-i-n-g.
Once or twice a year I write one of my treatises. About the same
period for playing a flame war. I'm learning to write a symphony in my
real spare time. I spent almost a year and a half away from the keybd
(a mid-line kurzweil pc2x). I'm all thumbs & all I can do is 1
enharmonic key & one harmonic key but I'm trying to compose like
Tchiakovsky & Schumann with cerebral palsy.
There are real people behind our droll banter. Some post more than
others. Many of the denizens of absfg tend to have serious and
interesting pursuits IRL.
I use the fora as a mental exercise & morning wake up routine.
Formulate some manner of cogent thought, but I have a career to reboot
& kids to rear.
DT & I go back a ways & I haven't had an opportunity to roll him in a
few years. But now there's really just not enough time for me to play
like we used to.
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
>
> news:8db73357-be23-403b...@l33g2000vbi.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Oct 30, 4:33 pm, Déjà Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Geez, guys. Try reading Erving Goffman's
> > _The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_.
> >http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/0844670170
> > I read it in two different sociology classes and put it in my "Top 10
> > books" of non-fiction to read. It's short and brilliant.
>
> ...
>
> > I was 19 or 20 when I read it and had the advantage of having a hip
> > professor discuss it in class. I remember it as a little technical
> > with some big words I don't know, but a piece of cake compared to
> > Heidegger or a Tang or Leebert post!
>
> I had a draft post pointing out this stuff was old and I'm bored shitless
> reading the crap around here. If it's not garbled autistic waffle it's
> bollocks about the brain and physics. Christ, I'd hate to be on the bus to
> work with you lot in the morning.
>
> I watch movies, take photos, and *do* stuff. There's as much or more
> Buddhism in that and it's a damn sight less b-o-r-i-n-g. Hells teeth, I quit
> following politics and the media because of that *and* it's a damn sight
> better written and more relevant.
>
> I've commented on leaders setting bad examples the herd emulate because they
> think it makes them look powerful, and how an aggressive media actually
> undermines good governance. That led a couple of articles in the media - and
> you guys in here are no different.
Escapists.
/l
Charles E Hardwidge
news:772d08e9-c4b5-4b7a...@c3g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
The right wing hate anyone who has power or isn't in their tribe. This is
one reason why the left-right split is bullshit. The real issue is the
mentality of someone. What party they're in is, mostly, a road not the
destination. More people could benefit from seeing this.
I commented on new politics, the nature of change, and who we are but
that never got much traction or positive attention. When everyone was
claiming it without being convincing or demanding it without fully
understanding what they wanted it didn't leave much space to pay attention.
Matthew Taylor, CEO of the RSA published an extract of his annual lecture
that fills in a few blanks.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6894497.ece
--
Charles E Hardwidge
halfawake
I studied and co-wrote a book with one of his students, a
phenomenological micro-sociologist named David Sudnow, who also was a
disciple of Harold Garfinkel at UCLA.
Sudnow:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE1D6113AF935A2575AC0A9619C8B63
Garfinkel:
http://www.soc.ucla.edu/people/faculty?lid=1308
My name's not on the book except for the acknowledgment page in the
first edition, "Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised
Conduct." Worked on a couple of his other books as well.
Robert
= = = = = = = =
halfawake
Thanks for describing how it feels to have your head up your own ass.
Robert
= = = = = = = = = = =
herbzet
halfawake wrote:
> DharmaTroll wrote:
Just btw, I said "social psychology" not "sociology". I presume
there is a distinction (I'm talking through my, um, hat here).
> >>Likewise, I'm sure.
> >>"Social psychology" became a science?
> >>I must have blinked...
> >>
> >>--
> >>Ubi dubium ibi libertas
> >
> >
> > Geez, guys. Try reading Erving Goffman's
> > _The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_.
> > http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/0844670170
> > I read it in two different sociology classes and put it in my "Top 10
> > books" of non-fiction to read. It's short and brilliant.
>
> I studied and co-wrote a book with one of his students, a
> phenomenological micro-sociologist named David Sudnow, who also was a
> disciple of Harold Garfinkel at UCLA.
A phenomenological micro-sociologist! Zowie!
A fantasy of mine for many years has been: If I were rich like
Bill Gates, I'd found an Institute of Micro-Behavior. They would
have labs with visible and hidden cameras, and study small groups
of people, initially strangers, given tasks to perform. Their
(micro)behavior would be studied to see stuff like how social
heirarchy comes into being and is enforced, how co-operation
and competition evolve -- stuff like that. I'd also and especially
have them study school-age children, both elementary and high school
students, to observe, again, how spontaneous social organization arises,
how people seek to create a social dynamic propitious to themselves ...
or not.
Like -- where do little Rush Limburgers come from? Why don't they
just get strangled in elementary school? Etc.
Of course, if I were rich, I'd do a lot of other stuff, too.
> Sudnow:
> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=990CE1D6113AF935A2575AC0A9619C8B63
>
> Garfinkel:
> http://www.soc.ucla.edu/people/faculty?lid=1308
>
> My name's not on the book except for the acknowledgment page in the
> first edition, "Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised
> Conduct." Worked on a couple of his other books as well.
You co-wrote the book, and all you got was a mention on the
acknowledgement page? What a rip-off!
--
hz
Beerlet Dhiblang
> On Oct 29, 9:38 pm, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Oct 29, 5:55 pm, Déjà Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > DharmaTroll wrote:
> > > > On Oct 29, 9:22 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > ...
> > > > Their surroundings aren't anything as complex as brains.
>
> > > I don't agree, but that's immaterial to the rest of this
> > > "conversation". I've had something like this with leebert
> > > before and couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.
>
> > Let me know when you do. I'm still working on it myself.
>
> > Mostly just bemused musings on the limits of materialist rubrics that
> > try to constrain spirituality strictly on evidence, putting empiricism
> > on a pedestal while precluding any atheist universalism.
>
> > > Seems like some kind of apologist position while trying
> > > to avoid out-and-out woo.
>
> > I might be guilty of that. But it's not a surreptitious theist
> > apologetics ... er, more of a metaphysics for romantic
> > omphaloskeptics.
>
> unadvocated nonoumenal clature?
Yeh, like that.
Sadly I thought my language was perfectly clear when I wrote it.
Well, OK, it helped wake me up when I wrote it.
Both DejaFlip & DamnaTroll found their waders filling up so I must be
doing something wrong.
And I thought a materialist metaphysics would appeal to them !!
<sniff>
The Tangster posted something parallel to what I was on about. Tangism
is yet another different dept in my head.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> > I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
> > about it all.
>
> > But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
> > years.
>
> > Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo, but his
> > utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics strikes me as
> > position, whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
>
> > Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
> > everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian woo-
> > woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
>
> > Having been there, done that, I know what it's like.
>
> The Christians who revolt against Christianity
> (which they carry in their head) like Fu and DT
> are so incredibly funny to me. They seem stuck
> in a time warp of around eighty or ninety years
> ago. I went to French secondary school in
> Vietnam, and my French teachers (who
> presumably came from a Catholic background)
> taught me a modern, secular worldview, and
> coming to these boards, I fell over laughing when
> Fu keeps saying that antibiotics, especially
> penicillin, save more lives than prayers (he means
> to the Christian God, that he carries in his head).
> Of course, that is a settled issue, and it was settled
> around eighty or ninety years ago or more. So Fu
> and DT waste the major part of their time and
> energy fighting a long-since settled war against
> Jewish mythology, though both are walking
> relicts of Jewish mythology. They have never
> learnt to become calm and equable in front of
> Christianity (which they carry in their head), even
> less to think outside of its box. They are totally
> framed by it, and they think in its terms, so when
> they revolt against it, they revolt against it in its
> terms. It keeps them tightly tethered to it, whether
> they are for or against it. And Fu (or at least one
> part of him) is still a Christian of good faith, even
> as he (or at least another part of him) revolts
> against it, but the latter is still Christian to the core,
> only the values are turned upside down, e. g.,
> positive is turned into negative, and vice versa, but
> he is locked into the Christian worldview, so that
> the part of him that revolts against Christianity is
> Christian of bad faith. Still Christian, only of bad
> faith.
>
> <<Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter
> inside your head is superior to an animate object
> that records information?
>
> And what differentiates a human brain from a
> dynamic, animate physical recording medium?
> Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
>
> On the one hand you want to point to the physical
> basis of the human mind and remove the spook.
> Good, fine.
>
> But then because of those additional dynamic
> properties you now want to put the physical media
> of human experience above the physical media
> of other animate things that record information.
> This is the same argument for God in religious
> tomes, that man is qualitatively *better* or
> superior to everything else.
>
> That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist
> argument to put a ghost back into the machine.
>
> Which is awfully sweet of you, really, you closet
> romantic you.>>
>
> Likewisse, Fu still thinks in the magical worldview
> that Christianity inculcated in him sixty years ago.
> Now the two parts that are exact mirror images
> of each other -- Christian of good faith versus
> Christian of bad faith -- tend to share much in
> common, as concave to convex, but both also share
> some things *in the same direction* (i. e., not as
> concave to convex), like magical thinking, and the
> militant anti-Christian part that totally rebels against
> Christianity is shrilly physicalist yet thinks magically,
> as with Gene Roddenberry's ash falling from the sky
> but carrying with it Gene's "godless" quality to
> stupefy Christians who take Christ as their saviour,
> and the part of Fu that is Christian of good faith falls
> into the class of such unwitting recipients. The two
> parts differ in content but share the same structure,
> here magical thinking that Fu normally damns as
> "woo". So Fu carries on this internal war, with one
> part of him fighting another part of him, back and
> forth, recursively. Christianity has him locked up
> solid.
>
> Tang Huyen
Oh, c'mon Tang, let the fellow have his many minds in piece.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> If you stopped waving absolutes around and bitching you'd find time to write
> something readable and relate to people better. But you can't do that so are
> still locked in the same 10 year old pattern of smug I-told-you-so.
He can't say you didn't tell him so.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> What is unexpected is that when one so suspends belief and disbelief, iow when one
> does not believe in anything any more, Mother Nature comes in and fills one up
> with serenity and wonderment, all unasked. Not only does what happens not vanish, but
> it happens in the company of serenity and wonderment, none of which is actively
> produced by one. It merely happens that way (and one hasn't to believe in it). Any
> belief or disbelief would instantly block it Such state of release is at antipodes with
> what one can observe day in day out with the locked-up people, like DharmaTroll
> and Fu, with their incredible tension.
Tension is built in, not just for ardent materialists. I'm not sure
Trollpa's position is as locked in as you say it is, nor DF for that
matter. I think you've framed them in yet another of your usenet
models of where someone fits in an idealized framework... you're
wouldn't be guilty of that would you Tang? Doing cheap psychologizing
on your nemeses?
> But a metaphysical question that is a favourite with some philosophers is: you
> can point to a cat, but you cannot point to its existence. You can say that a ghost
> does not exist, in that you cannot point to something and say that it is a ghost, but
> you cannot point to its non-existence, either. Heh! Woo in full!
Two nulls make a null, just the same as one non-null & one null. Only
more so.
The problem is the constraints created by pointing, it hardens limits
and boundaries that might be fuzzier. Attention and focus are error
prone that way.
OTOH leveling everything to lose all boundaries and definition is too
facile, the beginnings of woo, c.f. Immanence in Everything,
Interconnectedness with ghosts and spooks.
It's not that we can't conceive of essential material, existential
models for immanence or interconnectedness that satisfy the spiritual
quest for openness, that's what I've been going on about. Just b/c
most of the people championing immanence or interconnectedness take
the model & run with it to their theistic goal line doesn't mean that
a baseline can't be shared between the spiritualists and the
materialists.
The gross materialists erect the same barriers as the spiritualists,
the one of mental blocks where pigeon-holing the opposition becomes an
end to itself. I've lost materialists & non-materialists just the
same.
I see the hazard along those lines in my abstract example of atomic
clocks and experience. I think Trollpa's anticipating everything
coming his way in two categories (woo, non-woo). The game becomes
catching every error in an ad hom stratagem, a priori. Not that DT
should be shocked by the accusation since he's a proud rhetorician,
but his dialectics sometimes get the best of him.
I admit my example is not well framed and might even be a bit off the
wall, but a little reflection would yield some understanding, perhaps
with some rephrasing. I have covered similar territory with better
results playing with you, Keynes & others.
Heck, I didn't even get into the quantum mech. problem of an observer
reifying its own system. I find that amusing considering how Trollpa
went on about how the human mind is the smartest thing going in the
known universe.
The constant rising and falling cusp of the moment is only observed by
the essential flux of phenomena. That is essence (not Xian essence).
In the Buddhist sense I see Mind and existential essence to be almost
synonymous.
To reiterate, the interpretation I'm playing with is that that mind is
is a near-realtime reflection of the constant flux that surrounds a
conscious organism (sentience is neither required nor superior) and
conscious sentient mind brings with its yet more unique properties and
interior flux. Mind is flux. And experience is not unique to either
consciousness nor sentience. Experience is a record, a record of past
events.
With that the Buddhist model of projecting flux-mind onto the exterior
world is a way to beat solipsism (Trollpa should know this), to the
extent of saying "Mind is flux and flux, mind." Attention OTOH does
not follow to atomic clocks. But attention is a property of
consciousness, and it comes and goes with the intrinsic foci of
conscious mind.
It appears to me that my nemeses stopped short of following the
analogy by crying "Woo!"
/l
zenworm
after the coments on their inability to read you well
this little commentary blurbed out as a comment to
you in appreciation of your wonderful style
reading to absorb what is being read to receive
is different from the grasping evidence collecting
data sorting mentationally fermenting ongoing
agenda relating pro/con evaluating debational
fueling egoic structure defining seeking
advantage/disadvantage kind of reading that
monkey mind likes to engage with.
Leeberts linguistic fluidity and deeply profound
sharing are resistant to monkey-minds immediate
gratification grasping needful evaluate and spin
competition agendas.
Wonderfully profound.
Read his words like you imbibe strong drink..
read a few phrases and coast allowing the impact of the words their
strength and subtlety to hit you as an after effect.
Exquisite!
thanks /l
Lee Rudolph
Misapplication of so-called "quantitative methods" (nearly always
cargo-cult statistics) is rife in social studies. That's intellectually
offensive to me. Since you've occasionally let drop hints of various of
your beliefs (in the value of "personality profiles", etc.) that are
very likely based on such mumbo-jumbo, you are probably not offended
by that situation. Luckily for you, you have no shortage of other
situations available to cause you the offense you apparently thrive on.
Lee Rudolph
DharmaTroll
>
> Garfinkel:http://www.soc.ucla.edu/people/faculty?lid=1308
>
> My name's not on the book except for the acknowledgment page in the
> first edition, "Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised
> Conduct." Worked on a couple of his other books as well.
>
> Robert
>
> = = = = = = = =
Cool. But doesn't that suck helping someone write a book and then only
being acknowledged in the first edition?
--DharmaTroll
norbu_tragri
> On Oct 29, 7:22 pm, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]>
> wrote:
>
> > DharmaTroll wrote:
>
> > > Actually, Tang acts as if his bios of me or fu or sphere or jigme are
> > > real. My comments about people's personal lives are all barbs and just
> > > to get a reaction, on the other hand. Whereas I do try to talk about
> > > what is, in the real world and don't behind talk of closed-loop
> > > masturbatory idealism. Tang may say all is fluff, but I say that if
> > > you step out into the highway, the truck will crush you.
>
> > My bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you can be
> > all wrong factually, but their factuality (or
> > lack thereof) is not the point. The point is
> > that they make their intended recipients jump.
>
> In other words, you're saying, "I just make up false bullshit about
> Fu, Jigme, Sphere, or DT just to get a reaction out of them and piss
> them off."
i think Tang tries out posts that suggest reactions to see what
happens. As a usenet
game it'd called "Here, Fishy Fishy", or "Tar-Baby". If you take the
bait you buy into the
script and enter into a struggle. If you don't take the bait, let it
go, the story is over.
>
> Fair enough.
>
> > And if they make their intended recipients
> > jump, then they are real. Who knows what
> > the truth is with regard to such people?
>
> Now that's an interesting leap you now make: "If I make up bullshit
> about people and they get on my case for being a jerk, then I turn
> around and say, 'see, my bullshit must be true, or else you wouldn't
> get on my case'."
>
> But that doesn't make sense, Tang. Is it that folks get on your case
> because the lies you make up about them are actually true, or does it
> have nothing to do with the content of your nonsense, and they are
> only getting on your case because you are being, as Charles puts it,
> such a prick? I strongly suspect the latter in just about every
> single case.
The bait is just bait. How anyone reacts to it is Tang's point. "hi,
no,
you have misunderstood me, i'm not like that. my life has been..." is
the
non-chomping on the bait, calm reply. "Tang, you are so fucked-up, you
asshole,
you 're fucking nuts!!! -etc etc" is the angry arms stuck in the tar-
baby reaction.
Tang admitted years ago that he does this little bit of theater to see
how
people react. It's not a mystery - he laid out that is was a game.
Anyone can blow
off his fluff with a laugh or take it to mortal combat.
>
> > Factual truth is perhaps inaccessible, even to
> > such people themselves. But with mere
> > words on the screen, if they can be made to
> > jump, then what makes them jump is real.
>
> That's exactly what Rush Limbaugh does in his personal attacks, btw.
No, Rush believes his BS will make him rich and powerful, maybe lead
him to preside over WWIII,
new witch burnings, nuke-war, etc. Rush is sick.
> Hell, he gets, what, $25 million bucks a year slandering others. Take
> a look at this:
>
> First, El Rushbo quoted a hoax, a piece of satire, which Rush thought
> was real and that he was getting the scoop on by first exposing:
>
> "So here is who we have as our president of the United States: an anti-
> constitutionalist man who finds it an obstacle and is finding ways
> around it on purpose, unconstitutionally," Limbaugh said on his show.
>
> "Much of what he's doing is unconstitutional, and I'm waiting for the
> lawsuits to be filed by some of these people at some point," Limbaugh
> added. "How is that hope and change working out for ya, folks?"
>
> Later in the same program, when Limbaugh learned the report was a
> hoax, he corrected the record, alerting listeners that the quotes from
> the thesis had been fabricated. But he insisted the fabricated thesis
> was still in line with what the president thinks.
>
> "So I shout from the mountaintops: 'It was satire!'" Limbaugh said on
> the program. "But we know he (Obama) thinks it. Good comedy, to be
> comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels
> about distribution of wealth."
>
> Limbaugh said he has license to go with the fabrication because other
> members of the media have done this to him.
> "So, I can say, "I don't care if these quotes are made up," he said.
> "I know Obama thinks it!"
>
> That's exactly what you do, Tang, isn't it?
no, Tang posts a jibe or two to see how folks react. If they fight
instead of calmly saying,
no that isn't me, he pursues the fish on the line. The more the fish
fights, the more he reels them in. He thinks this will eventually
reveal their hypocrisy to them, lead them to re-examine their lives. i
don't know if this works or not...it is one of many traditional ch'an
teaching
styles, not something he invented. i don't think it's always useful, i
have posted about that
before. but is my approach of being simple and honest useful for
everyone? No, i've seen folks
go just as ape shit, your post have prolly had similar reactions. End
result: Some folks will
freak out if you say "Hi!".......
Here El Rushbo, while
> having a little more honor than our list nutter Keynes, because Rush
> at least admitted he was wrong and had repeated a hoax, then did a
> Tang move. He said that it wouldn't be funny if there wasn't truth to
> it, and besides, "I know Obama thinks it!" So Rush ends up trying to
> reify his fabrication into a claim of fact. Isn't that what you do?
> "If a poster responds to my slander, then I can turn around and say
> 'see, what I say about you must be true!"
>
> > As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by
> > you):
>
> > “If men define situations as real, they are
> > real in their consequences.”
>
> Yes, that is one of my favorite quotes. I was hinting at it in my
> answer to Possum, when she asked how something that didn't exist could
> be meaningful, and I responded that the poker hand I don't have, but
> which I get you to believe I have, gets you to fold. That's exactly an
> example of W.I. Thomas' claim. We react to our beliefs and fears,
> regardless of whether they are justified.
Yep. We have these stories and dramas...that's samsara. Just-look,
mindfulness...
>
> > If Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you take my mere
> > words on the screen for real -- as something
> > real, to be reacted to accordingly -- then
> > they are real. No further requirement is
> > needed.
>
> Um, no. Again, we're most likely to be reacting to the -form- ("Tang
> made up rude lies about me") than the content ("Fu is suffering from X
> because of Y in his childhood") of what you're saying. It's like you
> think you have this loophole that you've created with your Tangled
> logic. Here are the steps:
>
> (1) Tang makes up slander about an adversary poster
> (2) Tang claims closed-loop ('everything I say is fluff, means
> nothing")
> (3) Poster responds ("No Tang, that's not true, that's mere slander")
This is key: "No Tang, that's not true." wins. (4) - (6) doesn't
follow.
Going on to " -that's mere slander" chomps on the bait - now it's a
contest,
resentment, etc etc. (4) - (6) then follows.
> (4) Tang responds, "Aha, the poster reacted to my fluff"
> (5) Tang rejects (2), concluding, "My lies must really be objectively
> true, because the poster responded to my lies!"
> (6) Tang says, "see, I am serene in closed loop, whereas you are
> reactive, so I'm more enlightened than you. I'm laughing my teeth out.
> Hahahahah!"
>
> It's step (5) that is nonsensical, as you arbitrarily attribute a
> motivation for the poster to call you out on lying about him, and your
> arbitrary attribution tends to be of the form "my lie must be true".
If you get to (5) the whole thing has already gone too far...the joke
happens
early on, and you laugh before planting getting caught in the tar-
baby.
Capice? None of it's about what is said, it's about reactions or
some space between merely reacting, so to speak...
> But you have no reason to conclude that. Again, the more simple and
> reasonable explanation is that they are simply responding to your
> lying, and not to the specific content of your fabrications.
>
> > <<We can test the DNA of the cat to see if
> > we are referring to the same cat. 'Justice'
> > has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
> > exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of
> > organizing our thinking; it doesn't refer to
> > something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.>>
>
> > My mere words on the screen -- which
> > pretend to be bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or
> > you -- represent just a way of organizing the
> > thinking of said people in such a provocative
> > way as to make them jump; it doesn't refer
> > to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
>
> Right. That's your step (2).
>
> > If they make them jump,
> > they have served their intended purpose
> > (sorry for the pleonasm)
> > and are therefore real.
>
> And that's step (5), which is an invalid step of reasoning.
Yes, but it's not about valid reasons - it's about if you buy into a
dramatic story and
conflict or laugh it off...
Not my approach here, trying to explain what i sort of "get" is one of
Tang's plays...
...one of...not his only approach or way of relating at all...
>
> No, they aren't real. And W.I. Thomas' quote doesn't apply here, as
> none of us believe the fabrications you make about us.
>
> > They, mere words on
> > the screen, have transmitted an intention, and
> > the latter is received and acted on, from mind
> > to mind.
>
> You are attempting to 'cheat' and jump out of your closed-loop by
> making the claim "I can turn my lies into reality if I can piss people
> off by lying about them." And that doesn't make sense at all.
If Tang said "norbu kills kittens", that wouldn't "piss me off". i'd
say,
"nope, i don't". end of story. It's "Here Fishy Fishy..." the arrow
missed,
so why pick it up and jab it in your eye?
>
> > You can't point to an intention like
> > you can point to a cat, but an intention is
> > nevertheless transmitted and acted on.
> > It is woo and it works.
>
> > Tang Huyen
>
> It's woo, alright, but it doesn't 'work'. You don't end up magically
> turning your lies into facts, Tang. You can't magically turn your
> fluff into fact any more than Keynes can magically turn a truck coming
> at him into an mere dualistic illusion or turn neuroscience into
> phrenology. (You're doing the opposite, trying to magically turn your
> made-up fluff into reality.)
Tang posts hunches and theater, if someone chomps down on such slim
bait
he reels them in if he can as an abject lesson...
i have posted that i don't know if that helps that much...
>
> Anyway, I just wanted to mention this because of the coincidence that
> I heard about El Rushbo's misquoting a hoax as a fact, and then trying
> to magically claim that it was true anyway, and that El Rushbo even
> has mindreading abilities to allow him to assert, "I don't care if
> these quotes are made up," he said. "I know Obama thinks it!"
>
> And then I read your post, and it hit me,
> "Hey, that's the Tangster's game!"
>
> And, of course, as it is my SuperHero duty to call out and tenaciously
> take the battle to woo-woo and magic on this list, I feel compelled to
> explain this to you.
Tang's game might be posting bait like that...but who chomps down on
it? Why?
Does Tang really believe any ogf the stuff he posts about other
posters?
He has said before that it's tar-baby, bait, etc...but really?
It's left to the reader to laugh or fight...
>
> Too bad you don't also get $25 million bucks a year for making up
> fluff, eh?
yep, he get's no reward for being a speed-bump...
or, if he really is nuts for being here while everyone tells him he's
a creepy lunatic.
life is like that some days
other days....
DharmaTroll
> halfawake wrote:
> > DharmaTroll wrote:
On this list, they are all lumped together and called 'scientism' or
'objectivism' or 'materialism' -- take your pick.
--DharmaTroll
^@%>---*=#**
"halfawake" <epste...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:hcglgg$bda$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
i have the book and it lists you as co-author.
it's very well done and i learned some new piano
moves from it. thanks.
Bodhidumba
On Oct 28, 10:22 am, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
[...]
>> No, you came in defending the nutters on the list, so I'm assuming
>> you're defending nutter views in general.
>No, just their right to be nuts without being mocked for their guilty
>pleasures.
>"If we don't stand up for the kooks, who will?" -- Dean McCoppin, Iron
>Giant
============================================
Surprisingly, a month ago DharmaTroll officially certified me as being "not
a nutter" (without me changing anything) - but it wasn't long before I was
tossed back into the nutter gutter (again, without me changing anything).
It seems that it's OK for Roshi Philip Kapleau, for example, to spew woo-woo
about absolute, undifferentiated Reality in his book, and exclaim "I am
everything, and everything is nothing!", and to DT that doesn't mean he's a
"nutter" - however when I quote / parrot Kapleau saying just that, and that
I accept it, I am a "nutter". When I pointed this discrepancy out to DT, it
seems that rather than put Kapleau into the "nutter" category, he preferred
to take me out of it, but only temporarily, it appears. Looks like it's
time for me to re-establish my nutter-free status by pointing out that
discrepancy to DT... again.... :-)
My official nutter-free certification (who wouldn't be proud of this? :-):
"No, you're not a nutter" - DharmaTroll, Oct. 2, 2009.
http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.buddha.short.fat.guy/msg/705586199f69dc4a?hl=en
- Bodhidumba
Lee Rudolph
>Surprisingly, a month ago DharmaTroll officially certified me as being "not
>a nutter" (without me changing anything) - but it wasn't long before I was
>tossed back into the nutter gutter (again, without me changing anything).
>It seems that it's OK for Roshi Philip Kapleau, for example, to spew woo-woo
>about absolute, undifferentiated Reality in his book, and exclaim "I am
>everything, and everything is nothing!", and to DT that doesn't mean he's a
>"nutter" - however when I quote / parrot Kapleau saying just that, and that
>I accept it, I am a "nutter". When I pointed this discrepancy out to DT, it
>seems that rather than put Kapleau into the "nutter" category, he preferred
>to take me out of it, but only temporarily, it appears. Looks like it's
>time for me to re-establish my nutter-free status by pointing out that
>discrepancy to DT... again.... :-)
>
>My official nutter-free certification (who wouldn't be proud of this? :-):
>"No, you're not a nutter" - DharmaTroll, Oct. 2, 2009.
You are, however, processed in a facility that also processes nutters.
Lee Rudolph
Bodhidumba
=================================
Aha, never thought of that.... DT really should consider having his chronic
nutter hypersensitivity treated by a competent professional, eh? :-)
- Bodhidumba
Charles E Hardwidge
> Thanks for describing how it feels to have your head up your own ass.
After that eyeful of random bullshit you spend the next burst of posts
claiming credit on some books. Your fake outrage has always been a power
play. B-O-R-I-N-G.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
Well, hot dog. Your comments are still convoluted B-O-R-I-N-G. It's not much
good if nobody reads it, eh? But we're getting back into bullshit and
overlong topics so I'll just "Right Click->Catch Up" from this point.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Appledog
>
> i think Tang tries out posts that suggest reactions to see what
> happens. As a usenet
> game it'd called "Here, Fishy Fishy", or "Tar-Baby". If you take the
> bait you buy into the
> script and enter into a struggle. If you don't take the bait, let it
> go, the story is over.
Unfortunately that isn't quite true - the game continues because Tang
exists.
> The bait is just bait. How anyone reacts to it is Tang's point. "hi,
> no,
> you have misunderstood me, i'm not like that. my life has been..." is
> the
> non-chomping on the bait, calm reply. "Tang, you are so fucked-up, you
> asshole,
> you 're fucking nuts!!! -etc etc" is the angry arms stuck in the tar-
> baby reaction.
Of course, there is a third reaction, which is what we're doing now,
discussing the actual thing. In your example above both responses were
based on the belief that Tang was not playing a game. In the full
knowledge that he is baiting, we are allowed a third option. In this
third option, discussing the correctness or incorrectness of tang's
approach is perfectly acceptable.
> Tang admitted years ago that he does this little bit of theater to see
> how people react. It's not a mystery - he laid out that is was a game.
> Anyone can blow off his fluff with a laugh or take it to mortal combat.
> No, Rush believes his BS will make him rich and powerful, maybe lead
> him to preside over WWIII,
> new witch burnings, nuke-war, etc. Rush is sick.
Maybe Rush is Tang?
If we allow for Tang, we must allow for Rush - we can't assume in our
ignorance that Rush is being honest, knowing that people like Tang
exist. I'm just proposing that in the same way we know Tang is playing
a game, we do not know if Rush is playing a game - and we cannot
assume he isn't just because he hasn't told us. Not with any degree of
certanity at any rate.
> > That's exactly what you do, Tang, isn't it?
>
> no, Tang posts a jibe or two to see how folks react. If they fight instead of calmly saying,
> no that isn't me, he pursues the fish on the line. The more the fish
> fights, the more he reels them in. He thinks this will eventually
> reveal their hypocrisy to them, lead them to re-examine their lives. i
> don't know if this works or not...it is one of many traditional ch'an teaching
> styles, not something he invented. i don't think it's always useful, i
> have posted about that
> before. but is my approach of being simple and honest useful for
> everyone? No, i've seen folks
> go just as ape shit, your post have prolly had similar reactions. End
> result: Some folks will freak out if you say "Hi!".......
Again, one could treat Rush as you propose one treats Tang. But that
aside, making people angry will never calm them down. If it really is
a traditional chan teaching I've never encountered it from a credible
source... there's probably a reason for that - using such a method
discredits you as being dishonest. Ultimately, one can't trust Tang
because one can never be sure if he is acting in good faith or if
there is some sort of game to what he is saying and doing. It's best
to avoid people like that. It's quite sad really. They will never
learn of the mysteries because the people who have the real power will
avoid them. Which brings me to another point. Remember all that stuff
I was talking about norbu? it's now an order of magnitude closer.
> > > If Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you take my mere
> > > words on the screen for real -- as something
> > > real, to be reacted to accordingly -- then
> > > they are real. No further requirement is
> > > needed.
if one, in that knowledge, creates "real" evil - the karma is theirs
alone.
> > (1) Tang makes up slander about an adversary poster
> > (2) Tang claims closed-loop ('everything I say is fluff, means
> > nothing")
> > (3) Poster responds ("No Tang, that's not true, that's mere slander")
>
> This is key: "No Tang, that's not true." wins. (4) - (6) doesn't
> follow.
>
> Going on to " -that's mere slander" chomps on the bait - now it's a
> contest,
> resentment, etc etc. (4) - (6) then follows.
>
> > (4) Tang responds, "Aha, the poster reacted to my fluff"
> > (5) Tang rejects (2), concluding, "My lies must really be objectively
> > true, because the poster responded to my lies!"
> > (6) Tang says, "see, I am serene in closed loop, whereas you are
> > reactive, so I'm more enlightened than you. I'm laughing my teeth out.
> > Hahahahah!"
>
> > It's step (5) that is nonsensical, as you arbitrarily attribute a
> > motivation for the poster to call you out on lying about him, and your
> > arbitrary attribution tends to be of the form "my lie must be true".
>
> If you get to (5) the whole thing has already gone too far...the joke
> happens early on, and you laugh before planting getting caught in the tar-
> baby. Capice? None of it's about what is said, it's about reactions or
> some space between merely reacting, so to speak...
The sad fact is that as Tang had planned this all out in advance, he
has already gotten to 5 long before anyone else. He has already gone
too far before he even meets someone. That *isn't* normal. He lays
traps, he deceives people. It is on him, no one else. Most people you
meet aren't enlightened. It is easy to cheat them and make them upset.
That isn't right and that isn't what someone who had the real power to
help someone would do. Tang is a fraud. It needs to be said because
this is a war, norbu - a war to protect the innocent from people like
Tang. Unless you would rather everyone become upset and angry. Rather
I would see the opposite.
One should never do what Tang does here.
> If Tang said "norbu kills kittens", that wouldn't "piss me off". i'd
> say,
> "nope, i don't". end of story. It's "Here Fishy Fishy..." the arrow
> missed,
> so why pick it up and jab it in your eye?
Because words have meaning. I can cause you to occurr a thought
pattern, and you will experience it, merely through words. This can be
invasive. It is communication. Unfortunately some here have gone too
far in playing games with thought and understanding and may have
become permanently damaged. Essentially if there is a barrier created,
say, by Tang, which prevents, say Tang, from ever engaging in
meaningful discussion, then TANG has cut HIMSELF off from the source -
not the people he victimizes.
If one was really interested in helping people, one should probably
start with sources of suffering such as Tang.
-
Julian
It's a bit difficult as long as you keep sqeaking "Me, me, me!"
DharmaTroll
> On Oct 29, 6:28 pm, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> > On Oct 29, 7:22 pm, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]>
> > wrote:
> > > DharmaTroll wrote:
>
>
> Tang admitted years ago that he does this
> little bit of theater to see how
> people react. It's not a mystery - he laid out
> that is was a game. Anyone can blow
> off his fluff with a laugh or take it to mortal combat.
That's what Tang says, and you simply buy into it.
> > > Factual truth is perhaps inaccessible, even to
> > > such people themselves. But with mere
> > > words on the screen, if they can be made to
> > > jump, then what makes them jump is real.
>
> > That's exactly what Rush Limbaugh does in his personal attacks, btw.
>
> No, Rush believes his BS will make him rich and powerful, maybe lead
> him to preside over WWIII,
> new witch burnings, nuke-war, etc. Rush is sick.
Not at all. That's your projection. Probably more healthy than Tang. I
don't like Rush at all, but I respect him for what he does. He's
smart, and he can take complex issues and simplify views down to
simple, easy to understand axioms, and he can give concrete examples.
That way, if you're confused about the complexity of an issue, Rush
can get down to the most salient aspects and tell you what the key
point is, and who the bad guy is for you to hate. He does a really
good job of it. And he's funny and spontaneous, a good entertainer.
He's been able to resonate with millions of folks to make his $25
million buck salary a year. And he doesn't believe his BS will make
him rich and powerful -- it already has. He's amazingly influential,
and he's pretty much the leader of the conservative movement these
days. He isn't interesting in nuking anyone or burning any witches. He
wants to restore traditional values, and have a small, limited
government that serves mainly to maintain a strong military for
defense. And he's great at demonizing people the way you just
demonized him, and get them to fear progressives. His combination of
explaining issues very well in simplified terms that support a
conservative view, plus his entertaining style and humor, plus his
demonizing opponents and giving folks a 'them' to hate, makes him
really good at what he does.
Doesn't matter if they pursue or not. You blindly defend the Tang-
banger because he is useful, and is one of the few posters that
contributes a lot of interesting Buddhist thought to think about on
these boards. Remember that James-Lange theory? Perhaps Tang can't
help himself, and he goes into these kind of trances where he makes up
this stuff, because it's how his mind works. And then he comes up with
the 'fishing' explanation after the fact to explain his bizarre
behavior. That would explain why he babbles about people years after
they're gone and still is making up stories about them.
> i don't think it's always useful, i have posted about that
> before. but is my approach of being simple and honest
> useful for everyone? No, i've seen folks go just as ape shit,
> your post have prolly had similar reactions. End result:
> Some folks will freak out if you say "Hi!".......
That's because it's a religious list, and in general religious folks
tend to be assholes, except when they share the same superstitions,
and then they bond by hating the same out-group together. I went on a
computer-geek usenet group when I was trying to help a friend out,
whose drive had crashed and had no backup, and on it was her Ph.D.
dissertation. I titled the post, "Calling all FAT geeks!", FAT being a
pun meaning file allocation table, of course. I was amazed at the
responses and the hoards of folks who offered tons of practical
advice. I sorted through, tried the one the sounded the least effort
and most reasonable, and I recovered her dissertation. None of the
responders flamed me or called the other responders names for giving
different advice, and there were no nutters that claimed that the hard
drive was really an illusion and that only Nondualistic
Undifferentiated Fairy Dust existed. Completely opposite of lists like
this full of neurotic whack jobs.
How wrong you are, Norbu. Calmly saying, "No Tang, that's not true,
that's mere slander" has led Tang to double his efforts and just go on
and on, just as he does with posters who have been gone for years. (4)
- (6) are the key to Tang's worldview, how he thinks he can create
reality. For us it's nonsense, for Tang, it's his loophole out of his
'closed-loop'.
> Going on to " -that's mere slander" chomps on the bait - now it's a
> contest, resentment, etc etc. (4) - (6) then follows.
Nah, Tang always applies (4) - (6), no matter what they tell Tang.
> > (4) Tang responds, "Aha, the poster reacted to my fluff"
> > (5) Tang rejects (2), concluding, "My lies must really be objectively
> > true, because the poster responded to my lies!"
> > (6) Tang says, "see, I am serene in closed loop, whereas you are
> > reactive, so I'm more enlightened than you. I'm laughing my teeth out.
> > Hahahahah!"
>
> > It's step (5) that is nonsensical, as you arbitrarily attribute a
> > motivation for the poster to call you out on lying about him, and your
> > arbitrary attribution tends to be of the form "my lie must be true".
>
> If you get to (5) the whole thing has already gone too far...
Well, Tang takes it there no matter what the other does. Tang says
he's testing people, but that's just a cover story. Tang has no clue
what he's doing or why, and he simply searches after the fact for some
explanation that makes him seem to be in control. After 10 years, I'm
sure you suspect this as well.
> > > <<We can test the DNA of the cat to see if
> > > we are referring to the same cat. 'Justice'
> > > has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
> > > exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of
> > > organizing our thinking; it doesn't refer to
> > > something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.>>
>
> > > My mere words on the screen -- which
> > > pretend to be bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or
> > > you -- represent just a way of organizing the
> > > thinking of said people in such a provocative
> > > way as to make them jump; it doesn't refer
> > > to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
>
> > Right. That's your step (2).
>
> > > If they make them jump,
> > > they have served their intended purpose
> > > (sorry for the pleonasm)
> > > and are therefore real.
>
> > And that's step (5), which is an invalid step of reasoning.
>
> Yes, but it's not about valid reasons
Sure it is. Tang thinks he is immune and shuts himself off to others
(which he succeeds at) and then creates fantasies about others in his
closed-loop (which he's also good at) and takes them for reality, as
he never really gets to know or listens to others as genuine people
(something he's bad at).
> - it's about if you buy into a dramatic story and
> conflict or laugh it off...
Well, that's the way to deal with Tang's neurosis, yes. I'm just
saying that Tang isn't in control of his bizarre behavior. But he's
made use of the latent positive effects of his madness as best he can.
>
> Not my approach here, trying to explain what i sort of "get" is one of
> Tang's plays...one of...not his only approach or way of relating at all...
Yeah, sometimes he snaps out of it and is sane again, and he posts
interesting stuff sometimes, and I admire his reading so much and such
diverse stuff (more than I have) and trying to find overarching
patterns. That stuff is great, when Tang snaps out of his trances.
> > > They, mere words on
> > > the screen, have transmitted an intention, and
> > > the latter is received and acted on, from mind
> > > to mind.
>
> > You are attempting to 'cheat' and jump out of your closed-loop by
> > making the claim "I can turn my lies into reality if I can piss people
> > off by lying about them." And that doesn't make sense at all.
>
> If Tang said "norbu kills kittens", that wouldn't "piss me off". i'd
> say, "nope, i don't". end of story.
And then Tang might tell stories about your aversion to cats as a
child and on and on. The story would probably go on for years.
> > > You can't point to an intention like
> > > you can point to a cat, but an intention is
> > > nevertheless transmitted and acted on.
> > > It is woo and it works.
>
> > > Tang Huyen
>
> > It's woo, alright, but it doesn't 'work'. You don't end up magically
> > turning your lies into facts, Tang. You can't magically turn your
> > fluff into fact any more than Keynes can magically turn a truck coming
> > at him into an mere dualistic illusion or turn neuroscience into
> > phrenology. (You're doing the opposite, trying to magically turn your
> > made-up fluff into reality.)
>
> Tang posts hunches and theater, if someone chomps down on
> such slim bait he reels them in if he can as an abject lesson...
>
> i have posted that i don't know if that helps that much...
I think this is how Shamans work as well. They also have unique
nonstandard abilities (e.g., psychoses, schizophrenia) which are
interpreted as being possessed by gods or the ability to exorcise
demons, or whatever.
> > Anyway, I just wanted to mention this because of the coincidence that
> > I heard about El Rushbo's misquoting a hoax as a fact, and then trying
> > to magically claim that it was true anyway, and that El Rushbo even
> > has mindreading abilities to allow him to assert, "I don't care if
> > these quotes are made up," he said. "I know Obama thinks it!"
>
> > And then I read your post, and it hit me,
> > "Hey, that's the Tangster's game!"
>
> > And, of course, as it is my SuperHero duty to call out and tenaciously
> > take the battle to woo-woo and magic on this list, I feel compelled to
> > explain this to you.
>
> Tang's game might be posting bait like that...
> but who chomps down on it? Why?
>
> Does Tang really believe any ogf the stuff he posts about other
> posters? He has said before that it's tar-baby, bait, etc...but really?
I think he believes it. Or he goes into a solipsism mode, where he
doesn't believe people exist and that they are only "words on a
screen" so that he can make up any story he wishes, and no story will
be less true than others. That way he can convince himself he isn't
even dealing with real people. Does he believe that? Perhaps, when he
goes into his closed-loop trances.
> It's left to the reader to laugh or fight...
Why not laugh while kicking his butt?
But I do like Tang, and his contributions, when he's able to actually
do Buddhism.
> > Too bad you don't also get $25 million bucks a year for making up
> > fluff, eh?
>
> yep, he get's no reward for being a speed-bump...
>
> or, if he really is nuts for being here while everyone tells him he's
> a creepy lunatic.
Not if they are only words on a screen and all is fluff...
> life is like that some days
>
> other days....
>
--DharmaTroll
"Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
-Flannery O'Connor
DharmaTroll
I pretty much agree with most of that. Except I don't think people
have been permanently damaged, just pissed off enough to leave and not
feel like they were getting enough reward for their contributions,
that's all.
--DharmaTroll
^@%>---*=#**
"Julian" <Julia...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hchtgm$lq$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
damn. i thought this thread was
going to be about how to become
an astronaut.
^@%>---*=#**
>I pretty much agree with most of that.
those old feelings culled from memory
in a great need to satisfy genetic heritage
security and safety addictions wherein it
appears that being agreeable would tribal
herding strategy-ily alleviate any necessarily
coat-tailed yanking aggravations by the payoff
reward packagings of that narcissistic core
of the ego to the tune of convincing itself of
its inherently faux-misapprehended god-ness
are simply new-agey moon-age daydreamingly
self sabotagings and cheap parlor tricks of that
misidentificationing aspects of the awareness
divine.
> Except
whoa ! stop the presses ! resaddle
the horses in mid-stream !
> I don't think
well in some schools of thought this
can be said to be a beneficial thing.
it certainly would liven up politics as
well as the volley-wrenchings here
on uselessnet.
> people
>have been permanently damaged,
define "people". oh never mind. i
already know what you think people
"are".
> just pissed off enough
i hear that being pissed off is still
a share better than being pissed on.
> to leave and not
>feel like they were getting enough reward for their contributions,
ah, so it's a reward and punishment
scheme is it ? what prizes can i win ?
>that's all.
you forgot, "b'de b'de b'de folks" .
DharmaTroll
> "DharmaTroll" <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
>
> news:e3281dcd-b72f-4834...@j9g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
>
> >I pretty much agree with most of that.
>
> those old feelings culled from memory
> in a great need to satisfy genetic heritage
> security and safety addictions wherein it
> appears that being agreeable would tribal
> herding strategy-ily alleviate any necessarily
> coat-tailed yanking aggravations by the payoff
> reward packagings of that narcissistic core
> of the ego to the tune of convincing itself of
> its inherently faux-misapprehended god-ness
> are simply new-agey moon-age daydreamingly
> self sabotagings and cheap parlor tricks of that
> misidentificationing aspects of the awareness
> divine.
I wonder if you tend to say things like that in one big breath.
--DharmaTroll
Déjà Flu
Since I was married on the same day, though, it took on
a different perspective - a day of celebration. We don't
trick-or-treat anymore, but we still have fun.
Well, Tang's certainly not a "source of suffering" (unless you
suffer amateur pseudopsychologists poorly). The DSM might lead
(not that I put much stock in the DSM) to some kind of diagnosis,
but it's pointless (just another way of labeling) to do that.
There are s lot of true things said up there^ but the only ones
that seem to stand as evidence for serious mental aberration are:
1. The continued slander.
2. The many autistic markers.
3. The many OCD markers.
If I recall correctly, Tang came to the USA when he was ~6,
so it leaves his story about his secular Vietnamese education
in some doubt. (Correct me, Tang, if I misremembered). I have
many emails and marked posts about his interactions with Hal,
who he visited (and so did our long-gone Shiva).
After he pronounced me "crashed" because I had flamed a UK
woo-ster who tried to piss on science, hoping to reunite us,
Shiva invited me to Boston (which was my last trip there,
shortly after Hal ended himself) and Tang was remarkably civil
(though obviously startled and repulsed when I gave him a hug)
- we talked trivial metaphysics overa meal of peanut butter curry
and that was the last time I saw him.
After that, he seemed to turn more bitter and obsessive as though
his last hope of finding a real guru had been dashed. I not
only hadn't made his dream come true, but I had broken a few
precious soap bubbles in the process. I was sad to understand
later that it was my "scientism" and especially my insistence
that Boodhism is simply practical science, was the turning point.
Someday, this whole tale may make a Boodhist bestseller, but Tang
is just another monkey, like all of us. We should realize that
fussing about him is pointless. Though what he does is defective,
and he will continue, he was nonetheless a good lesson for me.
What was it? That dogma can supercede friendship, trust, love,
reason, investigation, communication, and many other human qualities
and abilities. That memes and primal instincts can destroy not
only relationships, but worlds. That clear thinking needs to be
free of self, free of ownership, free of memetic junk, and that
these things and primal tendencies are still very much with us.
It's a good day to look for your own demons.
Cheers, all,
Flu
Déjà Flu
you wonder "if", I'll wonder "how".
maybe we can come up with a hypothesis. ;)
Charles E Hardwidge
news:e3281dcd-b72f-4834...@j9g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
> I pretty much agree with most of that. Except I don't think people
> have been permanently damaged, just pissed off enough to leave and not
> feel like they were getting enough reward for their contributions,
> that's all.
That's about the shape of it. We're not talking anything big or complicated
here but the crudest of game theory a child of 12 gets. When it gets bad you
can see people dropping to the 3-5 year old range. Again, this is all
consistent with theory and doesn't need arcane knowledge or magic powers, or
a microscopic knowledge of physics or neurology.
Personally, I'm bored shitless with topics in here and the group mentality
but I get the sense that's not as firm as it was.
--
Charles E Hardwidge