Delusions

[archytas]

Delusions have interested me over the years because I don't fit well with society.  I don't really want to as I see it is delusional to fit in to delusions.  Watching other people eat, a current internet fixation some people are making money from, seems chronically delusional to me.  Jenkins should be working harder to sequester any such cash to ArchJenko Offworld.  Sadly, the boy is not gross enough chomping through burgers and prawns whilst swilling craft ale.  The competition has vile, loud, gawky teenagers slobbering through vast plates of Klingon gark pasta.  Only the wassup conversation and machine musak has more intellectual content than the Jenko offerings.  We need to understand the delusion in which people pay good money for this rather obviously tasteless fodder.  Satisfying delusions is they key to economic success.

The content of a delusion can be mundane, and does not even need to be false: one can have the delusion that one's spouse is unfaithful or that one's neighbour is a terrorist, and these may turn out to be true beliefs. In such as the Cotard delusion, in which the delusionist thinks she is dead, the content of a delusion can be bizarre. In mirrored self misidentification the person in the mirror is not one's reflection but a stranger, and the Capgras delusion is the delusion that the spouse or a relative has been replaced by an impostor. All types of delusions are rigid to some extent, not easily given up because they tend to resist counterevidence. All delusions are reported sincerely and with conviction, although the behaviour of people with delusions is not always perfectly consistent with the content of their delusions. People who have delusions of persecution and believe that they are followed by malevolent others live in a state of great anxiety and can give up their jobs and move cities as a result. Other delusions do not significantly impact on people's behaviour: hospital patients may say that the nurses are trying to poison them, but do not stop eating their meals.

The world has many more delusions than we find in 'mad people'.  Should we exploit them as in 'ArchJenko' or try sanity?  How are delusions maintained, as in creationism, democracy, free trade, markets, the wars on drugs, terrorism and amongst cops, social workers and politicians taking money for protecting children while thousands go unprotected?

[archytas]

One can think about delusions in terms of science and religion.  It is easy at the level of gross delusions in the following to see the delusion.

How can we square people's apparent strong conviction in the content of the delusion with their failure to act on it? One hypothesis is that the content of the delusion is not genuinely believed. Another hypothesis is that the content of the delusion is genuinely believed but not converted into action, because the person fails to acquire or maintain the motivation to act (this would be consistent with negative symptoms of schizophrenia).  One might think here how peaceful religions are involved in wars.

One should not be too impressed by ‘behavioural inertia’ in people with delusions, as there are many examples of people acting on their delusions. Affected by perceptual delusional bicephaly, the delusion that one has two heads, a man who believed that the second head belonged to his wife's gynaecologist attempted to attack it with an axe. When the attack failed he attempted it to shoot it down – as a consequence he was hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Cases of Cotard delusion have been reported where people stop eating and bathing themselves as a consequence of believing that they are dead.  We are prepared to be on the same page regarding a religion of peace and mutual respect, yet the world goes on otherwise, our actions clearly inadequate.

Both science and religion make the other side delusional, refusing to admit each other's evidence.  The key delusion, for me, is believing we really get into reviewing the evidence at all.  I would recommend delusional bicephaly to cops and social workers believing thirteen year old kids choose a prostitute lifestyle and hand them an axe.  This is not the real delusion though.  I think it concerns our inability to see much wider evidence of what is going on.  This is a delusion about what argument is.

[facilitator]

Wouldn't a foundation of delusion be part of the brains ability to calculate, predict, surmise and therefore be necessary?  Competitiveness would drive this as well.  Knowing the odds against oneself and under some form of delusion, proceeding.  A team that has no chance of winning, a political campaign, a war?   Delusions are maintained because people have hope beyond reason.  It is a driving factor.  

 

[archytas]

I agree Tony - it's a point missing from the literature.  Joan of Arc, if she was ever real.  Whatever delusion systems are, there are positive and negative sides.  In some models delusion is the correct adaptation to circumstances.  Stimulus is difficult to work out though - hit me with a brick and I might start to produce great sculptures - same for you might stop you.

[allan...@gmail.com]

Delusions is something I have little understanding of..

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

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[archytas]

That could be a true delusion in your case Allan.  In your permanently deluded state you know everything about delusion, but are deluded into thinking you don't.  My recommendations as the therapist you think is your second head are:

1. drop the axe and the gun

2. look in the mirror and ask that guy you see as someone else to fix the injuries if you didn't do 1.

3, get the coffee ready as I'm deluded too and coming round to discuss whether knowing our delusory incompetence puts us on a better footing in recovery than the rest of the group, who are deluded into thinking themselves sane and above this discussion ...

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[RP Singh]

The test of delusion is that you think it is real , if you are doubtful then you don't have it. When a person doesn't believe his thinking to be true he is normal , it is only when abnormal thinking is considered to be real and true then it is delusion.

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[allan...@gmail.com]

What an excuse .. To avoid responsibility.

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[Gabby]

Oh come on, Allan! I am still waiting for your excuse back in the religion thread! Don't avoid your responsibility there! And you better don't expect any responsibility talking from the ModGods here...

[Gabby]

...responsibility taking ...

[archytas]

Actually Allan, what RP said is part of the definition of delusion.  And elsewhere, he is apt to insist on responsibility.

The DSM defines:

Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.

DSM definitions are notoriously inadequate:

1. Couldn't a true belief be a delusion, as long as the believer had no good reason for holding the belief? 2. Do delusions really have to be beliefs — might they not instead be imaginings that are mistaken for beliefs by the imaginer? 3. Must all delusions be based on inference? 4. Aren't there delusions that are not about external reality? ‘I have no bodily organs’ or ‘my thoughts are not mine but are inserted into my mind by others’ are beliefs expressed by some people with schizophrenia, yet are not about external reality; aren't these nevertheless still delusional beliefs? 5. Couldn't a belief held by all members of one's community still be delusional? (Coltheart 2007, p. 1043)  (2007). “Cognitive neuropsychiatry and delusional belief” (The 33rd Sir Frederick Bartlett Lecture), The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60 (8): 1041–1062.

Tony got in much quicker with his statement that delusions might be a good, motivational thing.

I ask myself whether I would want to be the kind of person who thinks, say, RP, Molly or Gabby's religious beliefs are delusional.  I would not want to be such a person, and actually don't evaluate others much anyway.  Nor would I want to be so non-evaluatory as to not take an axe of a poor soul thinking he had two heads and attacking the real one with it.  I do think religion is mostly wrong and has delusional content.   

[allan...@gmail.com]

Gabby. You need to be honest with yourself ..  This mess started when I loaded my Sig line and your intense did like and insulting behavior ... At that point when you did not get me to withdraw it..  Any point you can attack me on is fair game to you..  Anything that points away from your poor behavior standards.

Don't really matter to me. How your Soul responds when you go through your transition matters to you though.

The problem with delusion is you can not hide from your own soul. I ended up going down a lot of rat holes and my department took mental health very seriously..

There is something about my sigline that really pushes your moral buttons.. People that avoid murder, rape and enslavement of others have no problem with it at all. People that are involved with those type of activities will have a problem though. The other problem is 1984 is closer than you realize,,  but I might be delusional there do you think so?

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, 08 Feb 2015 1:30 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

[allan...@gmail.com]

What responsibility are you talking about Gabby?

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, 08 Feb 2015 1:30 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

[allan...@gmail.com]

Just what is it you want to take responsibility for Gabby?

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, 08 Feb 2015 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

...responsibility taking ...

[allan...@gmail.com]

Very good points all of them RP has excellent insight. Perhaps another aspect needs to be examined.
My profession required me to create the illusion that I was a bad guy. The legal system required me to maintain legal integrity.
The people who thought I was a bad guy, you got it they were very delisional. Definitely my fault as I was very effective at my employment. (",)

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[archytas]

In the Mollygon, there is only one ModGod.  Gabby, as one might expect, is a Mollygon denier and ModGod entity multiplier.  We will all be in trouble at the time of second coming.  You two could be more discreet and get a room.  Can't you follow those gingerbread crumbs to it Allan?

On Sunday, 8 February 2015 13:08:44 UTC, Allan Heretic wrote:

Just what is it you want to take responsibility for Gabby?

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, 08 Feb 2015 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

...responsibility taking ...

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Okay..  I will ignore Gabby, 

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[archytas]

You are so much better when your hands are warm Allan.  Why not knit another pair of mittens and send them to Gabbs?  She obviously lost hers on a night out with the kittens, trying to find the non-existent Sperrbezirke on a cold night in Berlin.  Delusions can have practical necessity.

[archytas]

I'll have to run a book on how long that promise lasts!

The issue is whether we put other members off.

[allan...@gmail.com]

How long are you going to run that wager for?

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[gabbydott]

Allan, I suggest we look at each thread seperately to get some sanity into this.

So please go back to the religion thread to your posting that I still demand an apology for. The posting where you introduced the HATE to the religion thread. See how you jumped into a beginning conversation between ME and POL's original posting. Instead of adding something to the conversation that you find is missing, you impose your hate view upon me. That's how I see it and demand an apology.

Your sig lines do contain a message that cannot be addressed the way they deserve it. Also they do not align with the human rights laws. Murder, rape and slavery are NO NO NO!

I'm not sure you can handle a fourth paragraph, I'll try nevertheless: your soul view does not correspond with my soul view. Embrace the paradox that we both embrace the soul view.

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[archytas]

Never got pen to paper Allan.  I'd have needed high frequency trading kit.

On Sunday, February 8, 2015 at 2:44:32 PM UTC, Gabby wrote:

Allan, I suggest we look at each thread seperately to get some sanity into this.

So please go back to the religion thread to your posting that I still demand an apology for. The posting where you introduced the HATE to the religion thread. See how you jumped into a beginning conversation between ME and POL's original posting. Instead of adding something to the conversation that you find is missing, you impose your hate view upon me. That's how I see it and demand an apology.

Your sig lines do contain a message that cannot be addressed the way they deserve it. Also they do not align with the human rights laws. Murder, rape and slavery are NO NO NO!

I'm not sure you can handle a fourth paragraph, I'll try nevertheless: your soul view does not correspond with my soul view. Embrace the paradox that we both embrace the soul view.

Am Sonntag, 8. Februar 2015 schrieb :

Gabby. You need to be honest with yourself ..  This mess started when I loaded my Sig line and your intense did like and insulting behavior ... At that point when you did not get me to withdraw it..  Any point you can attack me on is fair game to you..  Anything that points away from your poor behavior standards.

Don't really matter to me. How your Soul responds when you go through your transition matters to you though.

The problem with delusion is you can not hide from your own soul. I ended up going down a lot of rat holes and my department took mental health very seriously..

There is something about my sigline that really pushes your moral buttons.. People that avoid murder, rape and enslavement of others have no problem with it at all. People that are involved with those type of activities will have a problem though. The other problem is 1984 is closer than you realize,,  but I might be delusional there do you think so?

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, 08 Feb 2015 1:30 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

Oh come on, Allan! I am still waiting for your excuse back in the religion thread! Don't avoid your responsibility there! And you better don't expect any responsibility talking from the ModGods here...

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Understand.

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[archytas]

"Here in Europe we usually speak of the three book religions, meaning Jews, Christians, Muslims. I guess we all more or less know that the religion we were born into did not come into effect with the book being read to us but with a life style that can be explained by our long history described in the books. Of course there was meaningful life before and after the fixation of certain narratives in the books, but controlling the other or excercising power over the other is easier when you can define what the same page is you want others to be on. What about religion is you don't like?"

Hmm.  Fairly delusional I would have thought.  Would any military strategist want to be drawn onto the same page to have power exercised over her?  Or any sensible person to the lifestyle of the minority described in them, given biology, physics, chemistry, real history and the lifestyle of the vast majority of people who have lived is missing?  Let alone want to be taught to learn the genocides and sexism so adoringly described are not to be taken literally?

Allan's response was a bit tame really.  

[gabbydott]

ALLAN, THIS IS YOUR BALL! GO AND GET IT, GOOD BOY!

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[archytas]

"¿book? The Gita and Vedas are not books? They have been around a lot longer than the tora has been. 
Hate to inform you Gabby but the history you have been reading is a great deal of fantasy. Modern archeology is not being able to verify the stories told.  To the point I am wondering what really when on with the Jews in Egypt?  It was not building pyramids because it turns out they were built by labor unions with health care."

Chris pointed out you were missing the point Allan and you refused at this first fence.  The false history of various Semite peoples are usually referred to as religions of the book.  Yet there are other religions with books.  Some kindly Mormon chaps once left one at our house with a can of foul corn-based coffee.  Hindu material can now be bought in books.  The tradition here is to insult Chris by pondering on him stressing he is not gay so often, not to no comment him.  What were you thinking, Allan?

"Archeology" (I had no idea I had a follower) or even archaeology and real history make a much stronger case that ancient text in general is unreliable than what you 'hated' to point out to Gabby.  I thought it rather over-polite, rather than hatred.  I think her apology demanding is rather Inquisitional and thuggish, but you have your pellet gun handy.

Doubts on the Jewish slavery in Egypt can be found here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/the-jewish-thinker/were-jews-ever-really-slaves-in-egypt-or-is-passover-a-myth-1.420844

There are records of Jews being freed by Cyrus the Great later in history - but many such exiles were rather like Idi Amin's treatment of Asians or the Turkish treatment of the Armenians and the German managerial following of Numbers 31.

Delusory  'same page' exclude the real evidence gewarting is common in religion and economics.  It takes a long time to write the real critique and quite considerable knowledge.  Should Allan thus apologise for his brief growl and go on to write a far more devastating critique on what is wrong with religion?

Gabby, in my delusions she promises to allow me to handle myself, has demonstrated both a delusory aspect of religion and that of its bully-boy demands on others in over-reaction to the nay-sayer.  Quite splendid irony, if intentionally written so.  The word hate is there Gabbs, yet to turn it into an insult is quite hard.  I guess, if Allan felt he had to 'hate to tell you', he may have implied you are thick and soft-skinned (I tend to the opposite), though 'soft' can also mean daft in English and I had no such intention.  Surely everyone with an active brain knows religious books and scripts are not our history at all.  And 'thiede bears' know how to bite back, if lacking a Christian sense of kindness in the unlikely event you have no sense of humour.  

[archytas]

Gabbs - it is against international convention to give Allan 'good boy' drops.  No doubt we are all panting on your page now, expecting our balls to be thrown.  I rushed past the talking serpent to get here.  It ate Tony, to secure a future timeline in which artists don't depict it as a snake.  We must have gone up in your expectations to be treated as dogs.

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[facilitator]

Sorry to get back on topic but this interests me.

"How are delusions maintained, as in creationism, democracy, free trade, markets, the wars on drugs, terrorism and amongst cops, social workers and …."

Best way to maintain a delusion:

1)  Numerically.  Easier to maintain a delusion when it is held by a majority.

2)  Chronoligically.   It has been this way for….  Why would it be different now?

3)  Embellishment.   Add a bit of gravitas by associating the delusion with prominent figures, scientists, heads of religious orders etc.

4)  Hide its toxic nature.  Keep the poison palatable by mixing with enough truth in order to change its color or palatability.

5)  Multiplicity. Add a delusion to the delusion so the first delusion becomes less deniable.  

6)  Serial encryption.   Pack the delusion with a series of undeniable facts.

7)  Geographic lamination.   Move the context of the delusion so that it becomes difficult to challenge.  Example:  "Finish your vegetables there are children starving in China"

8)  Terminology disassociation.  When the government wants to hide it's killing of innocent civilians (example: Waco,TX) the name of the living quarters changes from school to "compound".

[archytas]

People generally don't talk about what is happening to them like that Tony.  The academic language get so high falutin as to be part of the deception itself as a weird abstraction.  There are some obvious experiments we do, yet people go away imagining they saw through the illusion even though we make it plain they didn't.  Goffman was quite good in 'presentation of self' but the real trick would be getting people to talk about their own experience.  My excuse for seeing newsroom women as 'sex objects' is because they never deliver any news.  Some would see this as an old man's delusion, but I think an entirely different illusion is created.

I agree all your points and wonder how long the list would be.

[Molly]

I've been wondering about this whole measles outbreak frenzy and am appalled at the seemingly intelligent people impassioned about it and missing so many of the important points in their arguments:

1. History shows us occasional outbreaks of disease that populations have been inoculated against

2. In researching numbers beyond the CDC accounts, there appears to be many more cases of measles last year than the current outbreak

3. We give our children three times the number of vaccinations that we did a generation ago and standard protocol is to give them some on the day they are born

4. My son was given the measles vaccine at age two and a half. Now it is administered before age one in the recommended schedule

5. No one is talking about the know side effects to each vaccine or cases where vaccines are directly  related to health problems

It seems to me that delusions can be not only originated but perpetuated by groups that look away for all of the info, focusing instead on a few facts that provide the spin of the agenda and the fear that carries it through the crowd. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating "no vaccines" for children, but do think the current hysteria in the US delusional.

On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 5:41:40 AM UTC-5, archytas wrote:

People generally don't talk about what is happening to them like that Tony.  The academic language get so high falutin as to be part of the deception itself as a weird abstraction.  There are some obvious experiments we do, yet people go away imagining they saw through the illusion even though we make it plain they didn't.  Goffman was quite good in 'presentation of self' but the real trick would be getting people to talk about their own experience.  My excuse for seeing newsroom women as 'sex objects' is because they never deliver any news.  Some would see this as an old man's delusion, but I think an entirely different illusion is created

[gabbydott]

I can also see the women's perspective. As a prostitute you get payed for delivering a presentational self and not a representation of or for self.

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[archytas]

Obviously true for any sex worker I would think Gabby.  An old gay friend told me his act started when he unlocked the bedroom door in the morning. There are matters of degree, but even I prostitute myself wearing a suit in the job market.  Often there is a delusion behind the illusion, sitting in the ethics committee blathering on about student provision while we all live comfortably on the debt they are amassing to be taught old chestnuts. 

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[archytas]

The epidemiology is probably quite clear to epidemiologists Molly.  And there lies the rub.  How do the rest of us cope with the statistics involved and understand the risks and benefits?  We had measles parties far more dangerous than inoculation, but safer than getting the disease as adults.  The public debate or lack of it is very worrying.  Duck and cover!

The role of ignorance in delusion is complex.  Authorities assume the masses are ignorant and patronise a simplified positive case and various others then get in with crank and actual critique.  Similar issues can be found in the 3-parent baby debate. The classic delusion is that we vote on the economy, knowing no economics (let alone it is a dud deception), even at the level of newsroom punditry that plays to the delusion.

[archytas]

There's an attempt to describe the California measles 'epidemic' here -http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.8096 

I feel like Molly though.  I'm a scientist convinced by the general vaccine case.  Yet we have been misled by public information before and we rarely get sane presentation of the anti-cases.  Perhaps the most interesting moral issues concern not immunising your own baby on grounds of a religion of goodwill towards others or in selfish protection of one's own once the 92-4% thresh-hold for community protection is passed.

[Chris Jenkins]

It should be noted that I make absolutely no money whatsoever from catering to the food voyeurs; the competition in this industry is heavy, and the #BBQBOYS syndicate has quite a stranglehold on the corporate exhibitionist consumption ad market. Profits have been down since 2018, when McTacoKing International workers went on strike demanding a fair wage, a concept most found entirely delusional given that 80% of the work force had been replaced by machines, who required no wage whatsoever, fair or not. 

Pardon me, remembering backwards again. The peculiarities of this fixed quantum dimension sometimes make pinpointing one's current superposition difficult. 

I would posit that delusions are all we humans have, in that our individual experiences are derived from a great jumbled mass of organic sensory input, and our collective experiences solely fairy tales spun by story tellers. 

No surprise then that the simple magic of calling some vague concept into life by giving it a Big Scary Name, and associating negative traits with it, is the most effective spell around today. The War on Terror spreads fear across the population; the War on Drugs spreads insanity and death. The charming illusion of the free market keeps flesh based automatons working merrily around the clock. 

If we removed all delusion, madness would ensue, because all that would be left is truth, and lord knows we higher level simians have no truck with that sort of thing. 

On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 1:14 PM, archytas <nwt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Delusions have interested me over the years because I don't fit well with society.  I don't really want to as I see it is delusional to fit in to delusions.  Watching other people eat, a current internet fixation some people are making money from, seems chronically delusional to me.  Jenkins should be working harder to sequester any such cash to ArchJenko Offworld.  Sadly, the boy is not gross enough chomping through burgers and prawns whilst swilling craft ale.  The competition has vile, loud, gawky teenagers slobbering through vast plates of Klingon gark pasta.  Only the wassup conversation and machine musak has more intellectual content than the Jenko offerings.  We need to understand the delusion in which people pay good money for this rather obviously tasteless fodder.  Satisfying delusions is they key to economic success.

The content of a delusion can be mundane, and does not even need to be false: one can have the delusion that one's spouse is unfaithful or that one's neighbour is a terrorist, and these may turn out to be true beliefs. In such as the Cotard delusion, in which the delusionist thinks she is dead, the content of a delusion can be bizarre. In mirrored self misidentification the person in the mirror is not one's reflection but a stranger, and the Capgras delusion is the delusion that the spouse or a relative has been replaced by an impostor. All types of delusions are rigid to some extent, not easily given up because they tend to resist counterevidence. All delusions are reported sincerely and with conviction, although the behaviour of people with delusions is not always perfectly consistent with the content of their delusions. People who have delusions of persecution and believe that they are followed by malevolent others live in a state of great anxiety and can give up their jobs and move cities as a result. Other delusions do not significantly impact on people's behaviour: hospital patients may say that the nurses are trying to poison them, but do not stop eating their meals.

The world has many more delusions than we find in 'mad people'.  Should we exploit them as in 'ArchJenko' or try sanity?  How are delusions maintained, as in creationism, democracy, free trade, markets, the wars on drugs, terrorism and amongst cops, social workers and politicians taking money for protecting children while thousands go unprotected?

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[Chris Jenkins]

It's times like this I'm quite glad I shook off the ModGod mantle. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. 

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 7:30 AM, Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh come on, Allan! I am still waiting for your excuse back in the religion thread! Don't avoid your responsibility there! And you better don't expect any responsibility talking from the ModGods here...

[gabbydott]

Hahaha, definitely sells better than the how many headaches can I take?! ;)

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[archytas]

Brilliant Chris.  'Truth is an arete', I once read.  I looked up 'arete' in a French dictionary (the first e had a circumflex accent) finding the useful word 'fish-hook'.  I tried Greek and realised it meant 'value'.  Having read 100,000 words to discover this, the idea academics knew anything about this stuff disappeared.

There is no crown.  Gabby stole the jewels in some campaign to raise Allan to common dust, apparently.  

On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 6:48:45 PM UTC, Chris Jenkins wrote:

It's times like this I'm quite glad I shook off the ModGod mantle. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. 

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 7:30 AM, Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh come on, Allan! I am still waiting for your excuse back in the religion thread! Don't avoid your responsibility there! And you better don't expect any responsibility talking from the ModGods here...

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[archytas]

Gabbs?  Are you that woman Sherlock Holmes never quite arrested?  The head is probably not where the pain is, though I am still taking the tablets.  Should we tune into Twenty Questions like a respectable middle-aged couple?

Two delusions that fascinated for a while were the Satanic Abuse Scandal (all untrue) and the Nico Bento trial and conviction for a murder that never happened and with CCTV evidence used to convict that actually showed his version of events was true,  What these had in common were:

1: overseas experts who were loonies

2. various professionals who got hooked into the delusion

3. no sensible public scrutiny

4. no prosecution of the incompetent experts or professionals.

Whilst cops and social workers raced on ferries to make dawn raids in the Orkneys to arrest a priest with angina and the nearest foreigner, they were covering up thousands of actual abuse cases as 'kids choosing prostitute lifestyles'.  We have a big delusion concerning our legal systems.

On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 7:21:01 PM UTC, Gabby wrote:

Hahaha, definitely sells better than the how many headaches can I take?! ;)

Am Montag, 9. Februar 2015 schrieb Chris Jenkins :

It's times like this I'm quite glad I shook off the ModGod mantle. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. 

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 7:30 AM, Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh come on, Allan! I am still waiting for your excuse back in the religion thread! Don't avoid your responsibility there! And you better don't expect any responsibility talking from the ModGods here...

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Ah delusion,  norm & money..  Oddly say a science program  today.
Money is a commonly agreed upon delusion  with agreed upon rules.  Alter the rules the system crashes..   :-P
Left me wondering  at what is going happen because of the continued manipulation of the rules of money .. Greed is a strange delusion.
It was a fasinating.
Then moved on to different  realities.. :-D

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----

From: archytas <nwt...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Mon, 09 Feb 2015 8:35 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

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[archytas]

I'm not quite so absurdist as Chris in his story above on truth, though I've had plenty of exasperations on it.  Koro and kuru might be interesting.  The first is a delusory affliction, sometimes in mass hysteria, that genital organs (the penis or female nipples) are disappearing into the body, the second a real disease that emerges from former cannibal practices (it has a long incubation period - the cannibalism is supposed to have stopped in 1960).  One of the 'cures' for koro is to get someone else to hang onto the actually non-receding bit.  So you see Chris, there is some truth.  If you think you have koro, no point in calling me.  Kuru is incurable, so the truth there is it ain't good to eat people.

Human susceptibility to delusion seems plain enough.  Quite a few students over the years have deluded themselves into thinking my story about koro isn't true.  Amazingly, on reference to Wikipedia, they believe it.  This, of course, is part of a longer strategy to get them to understand what 'credibility' is - like the credibility of someone teaching from management textbooks as though they are true.  Managers, in these books, have responsibility to create reality for others.  If this is true, we can at least ask why they choose to inflict such a lousy one.

I guess most of us can spot that the guy chopping at his second head, believing it is me, yet putting himself in hospital, is deluded.  Gabby might be tempted to applaud, but I'm pretty sure she would try to take the axe away, if she had the chance.  This sort of delusion seems easy to spot, even though we don't have direct access to the deluded mind.  Yet if we can spot delusions such as this and the action of ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the ant deluding fungus (known as the zombie fungus) - should be not think on our susceptibility to delusions we are not spotting?  The deluded ants do not make a pretty picture in death - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

Tony's sculptures (are we there yet on the next batch, I ask as progress chaser on the production line?) have an illusory aspect - but any delusion created does seem facilitatory.  This great link he put up the other day gets closer to the kind of delusion that bugs me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEi9ZQrEjr8 - and I can easily imagine doing something like this on economics as the que sera sera bit.  You can imagine a burned-out village in the Congo and dead bodies, with a talk-over by some ghastly PR from Glencore on 'maximising profit opportunities', Greek kids going hungry as Christine Lagarde does standard IMF austerity-speak 5 years after the 'cure' has failed.  Groups of teenagers with their neat mobile phones in quasi-orgasmic rituals around them, cut with some poor sod trying to dig his child out of a landslide in the tin resource chain.  Various politicians with jawbs-groaf promises against a burning world.  The delusion is presumably that we can keep on as we are - but how it has come about and is spreading look intractable.  Musak might be a cut up version of Monty Python's 'Bright Side of Life'.

Delusions deny evidence (in the Nico Bento case there is a fascinating example of a supposedly 'sane' British court not believing their eyes and instead an 'expert' telling them what they were seeing in CCTV footage was illusory - though much more scary is the real experts were excluded), but this is actually fairly standard human reasoning.  We fit evidence in a world-view.  CSI is a great example - there are more clues in one episode than I had in a career.

The insanesteam economists have finally admitted they don't do science, but still claim they act like objective scientists - frankly a total delusion.  Yet they still hold sway.  Of course, I still know how to pretend to be a Christian.

And there are big questions on whether one's own objectivity is merely another delusion.  Evidence seems to be the answer, yet evidence systems turn out to be rhetorical, often with conflicting root metaphors and hidden drives.  Remember, most people fail school - so what faith should we have in the general capacity for argument?  It's tough - but what is our own delusion as a discussion group?   

[gabbydott]

Here is something on deluded scientific objectification successfully being said NO to:

http://www.bbs.uni-bremen.de/ 

Being white I could feel Gutmensch-like laughing about the typical white's stupid whitewashing of black's interests in the white man's industry, right? 

Am Dienstag, 10. Februar 2015 schrieb archytas :

I'm not quite so absurdist as Chris in his story above on truth, though I've had plenty of exasperations on it.  Koro and kuru might be interesting.  The first is a delusory affliction, sometimes in mass hysteria, that genital organs (the penis or female nipples) are disappearing into the body, the second a real disease that emerges from former cannibal practices (it has a long incubation period - the cannibalism is supposed to have stopped in 1960).  One of the 'cures' for koro is to get someone else to hang onto the actually non-receding bit.  So you see Chris, there is some truth.  If you think you have koro, no point in calling me.  Kuru is incurable, so the truth there is it ain't good to eat people.

Human susceptibility to delusion seems plain enough.  Quite a few students over the years have deluded themselves into thinking my story about koro isn't true.  Amazingly, on reference to Wikipedia, they believe it.  This, of course, is part of a longer strategy to get them to understand what 'credibility' is - like the credibility of someone teaching from management textbooks as though they are true.  Managers, in these books, have responsibility to create reality for others.  If this is true, we can at least ask why they choose to inflict such a lousy one.

I guess most of us can spot that the guy chopping at his second head, believing it is me, yet putting himself in hospital, is deluded.  Gabby might be tempted to applaud, but I'm pretty sure she would try to take the axe away, if she had the chance.  This sort of delusion seems easy to spot, even though we don't have direct access to the deluded mind.  Yet if we can spot delusions such as this and the action of ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the ant deluding fungus (known as the zombie fungus) - should be not think on our susceptibility to delusions we are not spotting?  The deluded ants do not make a pretty picture in death - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

Tony's sculptures (are we there yet on the next batch, I ask as progress chaser on the production line?) have an illusory aspect - but any delusion created does seem facilitatory.  This great link he put up the other day gets closer to the kind of delusion that bugs me - Que Sera - Wax Tailor - and I can easily imagine doing something like this on economics as the que sera sera bit.  You can imagine a burned-out village in the Congo and dead bodies, with a talk-over by some ghastly PR from Glencore on 'maximising profit opportunities', Greek kids going hungry as Christine Lagarde does standard IMF austerity-speak 5 years after the 'cure' has failed.  Groups of teenagers with their neat mobile phones in quasi-orgasmic rituals around them, cut with some poor sod trying to dig his child out of a landslide in the tin resource chain.  Various politicians with jawbs-groaf promises against a burning world.  The delusion is presumably that we can keep on as we are - but how it has come about and is spreading look intractable.  Musak might be a cut up version of Monty Python's 'Bright Side of Life'.

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[archytas]

Potentially brilliant opportunities to study delusions with this lot Gabby.  Do you hang about with them by any chance?  I'd need an informant to explain their ritual dances on pin heads, and how they do this without cutting their feet.  Ethnomethodologists are almost exclusively white, though there is the occasional Australian of the non-aboriginal variety.

In fact, there seem to be no scientists doing or resisting scientific objectivication in this group, an interesting delusion in-itself.  One imagines this group rather too dumb to look round at their first meeting on 'black culture from the inside' and utter a 'collective bugger' or even blame the company they got to print the invitation cards.

Your point is excellent, though having read some of the links I am not sure 'NO' was shouted at anything.  Eventually, they conclude their work should be done by an exclusive group with the right skin tones and expertise they have now been able to decide on, assuming the fantasy that academe is some kind of meritocracy, along with some essentialist notions on ethnicity.  Pegida should have Pegidian scholars on this logic.  There was once a German, Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, Jewish and 'also rans' version of science.  I would rather shout 'NO' at that.  The Bremener solution requires people to gain qualifications in order to speak authoritatively on others.  I find people are usually pretty good at explaining what matters to them.

The delusion of social scientists like this lot is they do any science at all.  Anyway, I prefer the Gabby of my interpretation to some chortling gutmenscher.

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[archytas]

Delusions can be characterized, roughly, as belief-like mental representations that manifest an unusual degree of disconnectedness from reality, and cover a range of phenomena. I have mentioned Capgras and Cotard delusions. More mundane examples might include cases that are closer to what would typically be called self-deceit—thinking of oneself as a great friend or a great beauty, when all evidence points to the contrary.

From the inside, I don't believe science objectivises anything, but scientists, just like everyone else, do a lot of objectivising.  The lay-populist stuff on science as a value-free, utterly rational process is a nonsense.  Of course, we write the stuff up as if we were rational robots.  When scientists write on other topics (Fred Soddy on economics is good), they tend to write third-person polemic.  We are taught these tricks of rhetoric by grammar teachers who know no better.  I was once told we shouldn't do reification because this made people and social stuff into 'things'.  At the time, I knew what commodity reification was from Lukacs, but when I asked what a thing was I was told 'like protons in science'.  With nothing to learn, I reified the teacher as an idiot.  Protons are only things in short-hand or labelling in context.

Gabby's example may be one of a deluded bunch of academics in Bremen.  They have some kind of audience.  Vanity press mostly.  My own guess is they are trapped in an Idol of the Theatre - some scholastic liturgy.  Academe has long been part of the means of suppression of people in general and the delusion for me is that they assume fine-tuning can fix the essential problem.  The non-delusional state would be to open fair shares and education up to all, without ranking on such small components of life as maths, verbal and spatial reasoning and the ability to sit in classrooms and copy answers onto paper or screen.

Implicit in the Bremen reasoning are assumptions on elitism and that one must be schooled to be able to say anything with any authority or do research.  The evidence for this outside science and craft skills is extremely poor.  Indeed the vast content of academic outpour is drivel.  There is always a self-justifying audience though, feigning peer-review.  I take 'inner-light philosophies' to be much the same thing.

I am sure people trying to hang on to their land in Africa don't give a damn about who does African studies in Germany.  And that Gabby almost said all of this in one line. An unusual degree of disconnectedness from reality in Bremen for sure. 

[facilitator]

 "It's tough - but what is our own delusion as a discussion group?"

Our delusion is that we claim to be what we project.

[gabbydott]

The "Minds Eye" project. :)

2015-02-10 18:43 GMT+01:00 'facilitator' via "Minds Eye" <mind...@googlegroups.com>:

 "It's tough - but what is our own delusion as a discussion group?"

Our delusion is that we claim to be what we project.

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Speak for yourself.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: "'facilitator' via \"Minds Eye\"" <mind...@googlegroups.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 6:43 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

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[gabbydott]

Go to your Zombie thread, Allan! Right now! Hear me!

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[facilitator]

The question was directed to a "group".

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 12:55:49 PM UTC-5, Allan Heretic wrote:

Speak for yourself.

[allan...@gmail.com]

We live in a world of delusions, more so within civilization, few ever experience life outside of modern reality.

[gabbydott]

Okay, is that the reason you seem to be advocating the Zombie lifestyle?

--

[archytas]

Now.now children!  I am just back after an very extended walk due to Max falling in love with a police horse in the woods and refusing to leave its side.  My foot is sore and  my work laptop (that's the one with the battery) has been corrupted by the latest Windows update and refuses to reload my backup.  Daddy is unlikely to view any further spats with normal patience.  Thick of the world's starving while you waste all those buns.

I do some Saturday morning sessions in the flesh that are a lot more productive than ME.  I'd like to do something 'internet' but have to admit I have never seen a format I like.  I do video conferencing with colleagues abroad and we share work ideas in a closed group chat room with translation.

We live in many delusions, some small, some very large.  almost anyone who stands in front of a class expecting that they want to be there and  will listen with much attention is sadly deluded.  Soon the teacher trainers say you need enthusiasm, so you feign that and get more feigned attention back.  We act in these delusions within delusions.  

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 5:57:49 PM UTC, Gabby wrote:

Go to your Zombie thread, Allan! Right now! Hear me!

2015-02-10 18:55 GMT+01:00 <allan...@gmail.com>:

Speak for yourself.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: "'facilitator' via \"Minds Eye\"" <mind...@googlegroups.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 6:43 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

 "It's tough - but what is our own delusion as a discussion group?"

Our delusion is that we claim to be what we project.

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Sounds like fun..

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[archytas]

The delusion that we are what we project is interesting Tony.  The standard fascist approach (Fox, BBC, entertainment) is that people have little memory, get confused in real argument and need repeated slogans.  Psychologists generally demonstrate we can't tell a liar from a truth teller better than a toss of the coin.  Before we project there ate all kinds of 'directions' on what can be presented.  None of us watch porn, yet its business model seems to survive.  What then are we not projecting?  And how is what is projected received?  Many people don't want factual discussion and just want hygge (Danish word for that cosiness of drinking the same beer with the same people in the same place every week).

Imagine if we could see yhe spin doctors making a speech as well as what gets projected at us.

[archytas]

The police lady was very nice Allan.  She even said I looked quite presentable with my teeth in.

[gabbydott]

I just bought a new webcam and I can tell you it's no fun! Skyping is fine, but Zombie pictures via the Google stream in hangouts!

Am Dienstag, 10. Februar 2015 schrieb :

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Walks can be very pleasant Max is a beautiful dog..

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[facilitator]

 On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 2:11:33 PM UTC-5, archytas wrote:

The delusion that we are what we project is interesting Tony. 

"We claim to be what we project".  Your version allows for reality mine allows for dishonesty. I think most people want to project a filtered image of themselves enough so that if we ever meet people who we've only conversed with online we become slightly astonished how different they appear and act in "real life".  

 

[archytas]

We have some posh EU-provided equipment but end up chatting without the video unless graphs and such are needed.  It's been good on idea exchange, but we all had to upgrade to W8.1 for home links and keep having disasters when it upgrades.  In the end there isn't much we couldn't just email to each other.  Skype works well.  Nothing public seems to beat the zombies.  

[archytas]

My foot hurts and I barely got home.  Max wants to go to the police stables.  

[archytas]

The only people I meet like that tend to be online students Tony.  We use Skype video conferencing for a few sessions, so have actually seen each other.  I'm quieter than people imagine, though none have yet said 'uglier'.  I'm very prone to catch whatever bugs go around university environments too, so rather like electronic distance.  With colleagues, the situation is we know a lot more about each other than most in online encounters.

My version has 'confusion' written through it.  I say something, Gabby takes it another way, or knows what I intended and chooses another slant for whatever reason.  Online, I assume she has a sense of humour and a good turn with words.  Deception is not part of this in the first place.  Just guesses with less risk than so called reality.  I suppose the classic online deceiver is the groomer - where the intent is to set up and image and then meet the victim.

[gabbydott]

Facil picked up your question and gave his answer, I agreed and then came Allan barking at Facil and I told Allan to watch his tongue or leave to his own thread. Only then did you enter the group timeline to start your big daddy has come home show. Now tell me what my deceitful intent was ... Or better, tell me tomorrow, I'm off for today.

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[archytas]

In Starwarp one assumes we would quickly clone Data and a few holograms, let them get on with the work and retire to the holosuite tp enjoy ourselves in 'real adventures'.

[archytas]

That seems to run to form Gabby.  

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[archytas]

At least with my knowledge of delusions I can imagine certain people growing a second head overnight and shooting the wrong spare.  

[archytas]

Francis Bacon classified the intellectual fallacies of his time under four headings which he called idols. He distinguished them as idols of the Tribe, idols of the e, idols of the Marketplace and idols of the Theatre. An idol is an image, in this case held in the mind, which receives veneration but is without substance in itself. Bacon did not regard idols as symbols, but rather as fixations.  They expand a bit like this:

1. Tribe

The example of desiring to see more order in the universe than is actually there is one of his examples of an idol of the tribe. He thinks that we all suffer from that one.

2. Cave

An example of an idol of the cave (one of Bacon's examples) is that some minds are more drawn to new things and new ideas than they are to what has been around for a long time, while other minds are more drawn to "tradition" and "old school" ideas and ways than they are to newness. Bacon thinks we should become aware what our own tendency is so that we can make corrections for it. He hopes that by becoming aware of our own mind's tendencies toward loving novelty or tradition that we might be able to "correct" for them and then hopefully see things more clearly and truly.

3. Marketplace

We often use words very loosely in common discourse. Bacon sees nothing wrong with that when we are just speaking ordinary language with friends and family. But, when it comes to trying to describe the world accurately and precisely, we should be aware of our tendency to use words loosely and should try to correct for it. When we are trying to speak precisely we should probably not say things like "The mountain is out today" (anyone outside of the Puget Sound area wouldn't have a clue what this means); or "The sun went under a cloud" (the sun did not go anywhere, let along underneath something); or "The sun came up this morning" (the earth actually just rotated). None of those sentences is precisely true, and if we use language imprecisely like this it can sometimes accidentally lead to huge misapprehensions about the world. Bacon thinks this misuse of words and language causes far more problems than we realize.

4. Theatre

If you can think of someone you know who has recently bought into a whole new religion or philosophy or psychology, you can probably see how they have suddenly come to interpret everything in the universe according to their new world view. That world view has become the new lens through which they perceive and interpret everything in their world. What Bacon says, though, is that we all do this. We all interpret the world through the lens of our own little world view. It's just easier to see other people doing it than it is to see ourselves doing it. Bacon thinks we should become aware of how these world views shape and distort our own perceptions of the world so that we might be able to correct for it a bit.

This is old work.  My questions are about how we recognise the 'second head' as a delusion yet move hardly at all on obvious political delusions like economics, votes counting, social care, public ignorance and the making invisible of many social issues.  For me, deep questions on self are involved.  The internet self is unlikely to be, as Tony says, the same as the 'real'one - but then we have know for much longer than the internet people don't say the same things in different contexts.  In fact the man or woman in the bar often looks totally different the morning after, let alone what the politician says in a speech compared with when she is with her backroom boys in the spin room.

.

[facilitator]

Yes to all exactly.

This partly how I question terminology used and often ask for clarification of words and meanings.  I don't really want to know what a person has said. I can hear that. I want to know what a person means.

A woman once said of, I believe, Winston Churchill: "Sir I believe you are drunk" "Yes Madam, I am". "But you are ugly and in the morning I will be sober".

[Molly]

recognizing and examining our self delusions requires that we look within us for answers, something most of us are not hardwired for as most are extroverts. Most cultures do not support introspection and offer mandates for action and group acceptance. Understanding our own delusions means understanding our inner workings and we seem trained from the beginning to turn away from such shenanigans. Understanding how our communication patterns are used to force our will or view on others, how our agendas are more important than relationships, how trust in the world, ourselves, life (or lack of) effects us can all clear up delusion but I rarely see anyone having a breakthrough like this.  Instead, I see everyone grinding away on the same old tracks.

For me, chaos and struggle around me sometimes builds to such a head that I find myself needing to let go of any expectation or even vision of what is to come next, take a deep breath, and continue. It has been a long time since I entered the dark night of the soul, but find it eventually comes if I don't do this as needed. In my life there is a harmony that I feel more or less strongly depending on the day or sometimes the moment. If I can find my way back to this simple harmony, my experience in the world is peaceful.  I get weary of struggle, angst, anger, opposition although have learned not to avoid any of it either. Delusion can come from a lack of information or understanding, or incorrect info and understanding.  So what is the "correct" standard? The best answer for me has always come internally. I've stopped expecting order in experience, but have notice a coherence in its elements that mean more than cultural or group or historic norms or patterns. I define it in poetic terms and describe it as simple harmony. You may call it delusion. For me it is quite clear.

[archytas]

There is more 'cut and paste' on that Tony.  Johari's Window was a classic.  Roughly, hundreds of models collapse to:

1. There is the person you see and know as yourself

2. There is the person others see and know

3. There is what you don't know about yourself.

4. There is what others don't know about you.

All this tends to have a therapy-personal-growth context.

What has interested me is why we don't (generally) live in a therapy-growth world and find it so hard to communicate with each other.  This has long had a kind of detective context for me, in that the barriers extend way beyond what group therapy reveals.  Even in such you get the person others can think if nothing positive to say about and such as transference and counter-transference.  There is that point too, when personal development becomes the que sera chant in Wax Tailor or simply about the psychopath manipulating others.  Classic language conflict might be:

1. he fancies me and wants to be all over me

2. not with someone else's.

This is only the start, as both may be very confused on what they are really feeling, in denial, lying and so on.  .And what might a person mean given what is differently said in different contexts, on different positions on the delusion scale?

1. I see the light.

2. (interpretation) 'you are using the oldest religious sales dodge on me.

3. No - the light bulb over there is on

1. we will use quantitative easing to rejuvenate the world economy

2. (interpretation) bullshit, you are going to give more money to the rich and have no idea what a rejuvenated economy would be for ordinary folk

3. (interpretation) you are a commie

Getting at what is really meant also includes the attempts by speakers to appeal to audiences, persuade, coerce, speak in a context of fear of instruments of terror.

1. of course I am a Christian

2. please put the red hot poker away

3. we won't know if you are telling the truth until we use the poker

4. how very Christian of you old chap

One can wonder whether (Labov was a classic) education does much more than form 'language drones' too.  Gabby unearthed some in Bremen yesterday.  Goffman found classics in the British Civil Service.

Today is yesterday's tomorrow, so I should be bullied in responding to "Gabby".  This is tough because I am well bored with Big Sister and the policewoman from yesterday's horse is coming round with her dog for a walk up Hutton Roofs.  So if I did say anything, would I mean it?  Is there an actual "Gabby" to receive the pearls?  One of the ones I construct, would already know I have meant.  I would love to see her deconstruction of "Bremen", but she pulls apart an (admittedly distractively grouchy at times) old man.  Did I mean that on Bremen?  Or do I really not want to know and have boxed off the topic forever, knowing I have given "Gabby" something she can deprive me of and hence be sure we will never see what I didn't want but lied that I did?

It's tough Tony.  I think you would know I'm genuinely grateful for introducing me to Wax tailor with none of the above stuff attached.  Such gems are perhaps all we can extract from much "conversation", yet think on my interpretation of Wax.  I felt it as a statistical language.  It would be interesting (to me) if you could explain this "meaning".  I have a vague understanding I can flesh out a bit.  The police lady is here.  She has taken rather a lot of trouble with her appearance for a dog walk.  What could it all mean!

[allan...@gmail.com]

Delusions  are easy to come by.  In my life time I have Experienced the Reality of God and the effect of one drop of water.

No Tony I will not explain or expand.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: Molly <moll...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 12:54 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

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[archytas]

{{{Molly}}} - the struggle is indeed tough and some kind of 'simple' peace is required.  In philosophy one finds that any state supposedly free of pre-supposition has - er - pre-suppositions.  The line from Frege, Husserl, Russell and to Heidegger is a classic.  One learns more in some ways by hugging a tree or you in my heart.

The problem with a correct standard from the inner turn is delusion (connected with self deception) and the obvious fascism of much 'leadership'.  This isn't a case of delusion interpretation against poetic harmony - neither of us is deluded enough to go skinny dipping in volcano lava or be harvested by Quatermas' aliens.

The struggle is such that many are turning to another inner route - cyberspace.  This strikes me as connected with just how horrible standard relations are perceived by many.  

My own interest is in another form of reasoning - I think this may overlap with Molly's, though my 'pre-base' is the machine and spreadsheet-database thinking.  It is difficult to express this in language.  Most people associate terms like 'spreadsheet-thinking' with heartless accounting decisions and so on.  It is common in German work to contrast some kind of 'system-science-technology' with a much more 'human' life-world (Heidegger, Adrono, Habermas).  I tend more towards Veblen and that the problem is business control, not technology and what we can do with it.  Of course, I chose "statistics" over poetics long ago - but here is another term one can hardly use without guileless interpretation based in political misuse.  For me, actual statistical thinking has a certain poetics, though mobile phones will be left behind on this afternoon's walk.

The machines (don't confuse this with your PC) think across a much broader spectrum than we can at the moment.  They can cope with more history, run more simulations to find what is a dead end and what is not.  They are much less interested in the words in a politician's promises than the historic incidence of politicians making false promises.  In principle they can juxtapose huge amounts of material that changes "meaning".

Of course, I can see how such "meaning" needs to fit into some kind of Molygon (think geometry) and the reasons it might be worth being here at all.

[archytas]

So why say this in a discussion group Allan?  Why should the rest of us expand anything?

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[allan...@gmail.com]

Nothing more than a point of reference. Life is far beyond delusion yet it would seem there is nothing but delusion.
People can discuss it all they want.  I am not adding more or going to explain my views on reality.

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[archytas]

Like a solicitor refusing to explain her bill.perhaps.

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[gabbydott]

Fair enough for me at the moment, Allan.

May I suggest we went back to the point before we got interrupted by Neil?

Take a look: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/minds-eye/2_ICOWzarWY/r1tWlFGsEjUJ 

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[gabbydott]

You could help to clarify the state of the arts here by telling us in plain English prose, what the real power relations here on "Minds Eye" are at the moment. Who is the owner? Who is/are the moderator(s)?

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[gabbydott]

My current hypothesis is that the information that my star sign is Gemini, is somehow reoccurring in the shape of the two heads, of which one needs to be cut off with an ax. Gemini are said to be two faced. What I find interesting about this is that the ax or sword are not my preferred killing weapons, I see them more as typical male murder weapons, no, I, like many women, prefer scissors with two sharp "faces" in the inside doing the job I need them for.

As for ridiculously unsharp faces, I read most of the stuff here via gmail and therefore see you and Allan present themselves with dog images! Not really what you'd expect two elderly gentlemen to look like and not to be mistaken for pedophiles trying to impress young kids with looking cute. I remember you once had a picture uploaded on gravity, the platform that needed social data for the development of their commercial social graph. That was long time ago, so when I see the picture of Strauss-Kahn in the media these days, I find more and more he looks like you.

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[facilitator]

I vaguely remember a lawyer from Chicago starting "Mind's Eye".

[archytas]

Molly is the owner.  I think I was once, until some tired night when I was footling about.  Now I list as manager.

[gabbydott]

Kierkecraig, yes.

2015-02-11 15:39 GMT+01:00 'facilitator' via "Minds Eye" <mind...@googlegroups.com>:

I vaguely remember a lawyer from Chicago starting "Mind's Eye".

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[facilitator]

And of course Allan no one here is ever obligated to respond to anything.  Non est ad astra mollis via e terris!

[facilitator]

Yes Gabby ! Craig.

On Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at 9:41:53 AM UTC-5, Gabby wrote:

Kierkecraig, yes.

Hey peeps just a reminder it is quite easy to erase previous entries so each post can be more succinct. 

Just left click, highlight, delete.

[gabbydott]

Why are you insulting Molly by saying she is gone then?

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[gabbydott]

This here is my real lesson. You have been bringing up and pushing this idol model so many times that I have forgotten what the one was that I found better. All that I remember is that it was either located in the alchemy or in the metaphysical poetry context. It was a perfect four is all that is left. It has been overwritten by your four idols.

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[archytas]

Whilst I can construct a 'molygon' - no doubt with a spiral dynamic, embraced paradox manifold' lots of warmth and tolerance curves - and even fit it to myself in some degree - inner experience trust does not work for me on its own.  This has nothing to do with me thinking Molly deluded - she comes over as anything but.  I sat with a Mullah last year, contemplating the wrecked Turkish town of Gumbet - full of British and German lager louts and the environmental pollution they call music and various counterfeit traders.  We were in accord.  He has a superb singing voice.  He asked me to join in and we discovered I croak like an old frog, amongst various other, more similar traits.  His son and daughter came to university here and stayed with us until their flat was ready.

I don't think we are up to speed with what the modern external bit may be.  When we enter term definition we forget definition takes place in use, and what it is to bring history (personal and general) to meaning.  Machines I use, broadly in the big data context, work on a statistical reasoning basis.  If you think of big data in the government-commercial spying context you won't get what it means to me and an increasing number of colleagues.  We think machines are changing abilities with language because they can handle far more history than we can.  It is very difficult to speak of this with people with only Frankenstein views.  The turmoil may be 'without' because we are not equipped to receive it in a way manageable to us.

[Chris Jenkins]

Idaho, actually. Boise, to be precise. I still talk with Craig regularly. 

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 9:40 AM, 'facilitator' via "Minds Eye" <mind...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I vaguely remember a lawyer from Chicago starting "Mind's Eye".

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[archytas]

Such charm as ever Gabby.  The term paedophile is not well taken here and may really insult Allan and make him sad.  Molly was gone, in the sense of 'gone fishin'.  Craig was becoming a lawyer.  Hope he made it. He was a Mormon too.

It would have been nice to hear updates on Bacon.  There were eleven Idols.  I expect your superior model incorporates them, or perhaps spits spleen.  We can only be sure of never seeing it.

We model defeasibly now and use a lot of geometry because a lot of us think in shape.  The idea is to make natural language usable by the machine.  It has even more difficulty making sense of just what humans say than a pair of paranoid-schizoid positionists.  We do consider 'shapes' like the molygon as underliers in our logic and they are instructive.  A gabbygon is on the horizon - some no doubt thinking this is the best place.  The general theory is called 'bag of words' - we look for shapes in text to give context meaning and identify root metaphors.  You probably know how the SNERT stands out like a sore thumb?  Maybe accusing old men and their dogs kind of thing?  We are trying to find much more routine issues in word use to get at some of Tony has described as dishonesty  from 'bag of words' samples taken from the 'marketplace' and other Idol conversations.  What the machine establishes from metadata - considering we often haven't - is fascinating because we are not sure what it i doing at all.  We have it working on the self-justification of psychopaths at the moment.

Gravity obviously collapses on seeing a photograph of me.  Thanks for the memory.  

[Chris Jenkins]

Yep, he passed the bar some time ago, which is a big part of why he no longer had time for these conversations. 

He's not alone in that, apparently. Over a thousand members, 5 actually post?

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[archytas]

More than that Chris - new members other than Jihadis and such come and go without much posting.  I speak to a few on email.  Good to hear about Craig.  Student intranets rarely take off either, despite apparent common interests (very difficult to convince lecturers students have any subject interest).  The bullies soon rule, making sex threats or using what I now call Dottactics.  There is a lot of religious silencing too.  Much of what reaches me as subject advice call is really pastoral.  I have had better conversations recently in a rugby league chatroom offshoot.  We had classic examples of ME at university discussion groups, typically attracting a few lonely people who didn't read the material to discuss.  I used to do academic conferences to meet the people who didn't go to the sessions.  We seemed to be the only ones who had done the pre-reading

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[archytas]

On the net it is difficult to find out who is in the bar or has a stash of cans in her hotel room fridge.

[facilitator]

On Wax Tailor.

I find his brainwashing of the audience most comforting.  They don't even know it!

[gabbydott]

 Over a thousand members, 5 actually post?

 

This question coming from you? YOU! Oh come on, Chrissy baby! This is an outdated format here that doesn't generate much traffic anymore. You know that, that`s your job to know that, that`s why you quit the mod job here! No one is blaming you for that but don´t play the innocent here! You introduced no transparent polling as to who should become your successor, but lay down your crown to the one who threw his hat in the ring, a method acceptable for the queen also. Nice try, dear.

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[archytas]

Brainwashing is a problem in any language.  I guess the one we're using could be doing this.  I know people who can lecture for two hours and leave everyone thinking they were great, but have no recall on content at all.  In a way, our machines hear and process in a different time frame, much faster and in with much more information than humans.  The potential for brainwashing, even without a slim, cool Frenchman is severe.

[archytas]

Orn also took on this crown from which you stole the jewels to feed your raising-Allan-to-dust laser-tarot.  I was asked so suggested you, already doing enough paid moderation for my needs.  The crown was known to be empty.  We could all have moved on, though the negativity of non-enthusiasm was entirely in positive decline.  We could try the new Gabbywit format with its underlying moaning minnie architecture and stuck-in-the-mud operating system.  I do know of formats we could have tried, but the essence, beyond smiling pussies in gif and Chris holding up a beer. is content and supervision of the nasties.  Let me read you a bedtime story, with at least 4 policewomen standing by, from the Book of Management.  That's what you get once people void themselves of responsibility for content and can only turn up with gossip, small talk and wassup sexism.ageism and control fetish.  One almost misses the American exceptionalists and their use of the world socialist as a pejorative like an old spinster muttering 'sex'.  

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[allan...@gmail.com]

It may not be fancy new format,  but I personally  like it.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Évitez; assassiner, le viol et l'esclavage des autres
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: archytas <nwt...@gmail.com>
To: mind...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 8:13 PM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: Delusions

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[Chris Jenkins]

Oh, how quickly time muddles the recollection...perhaps you should go back and review some of those posts before I left. It was for the same reason Craig did, and had nothing to do with the legacy nature of an email list. I was overloaded between job and family, and simply couldn't keep up with the volume of communication (a strike against your assertion I left because I knew it was an outdated format). There were hundreds of posts, some of them quite combative (*ahem*), and any action taken by mods to keep the list adhering to its original intent was met with a hearty round of "fuck you matey". It was draining. 

My goodbye: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/minds-eye/by$20chris/minds-eye/ZQB5vLJ2rSI/0GbRK-9nz-AJ

Note that I put it to the group to decide, specifically because there was no other way to effectively determine any sort of self governance, and I didn't feel I had the right to make an arbitrary decision without input. 

You promptly attacked every facet of my decision (and I expected no less). There was a long and robust conversation with a ton of familiar faces (most missing now). Your first vote was for a natural death. Have you gotten your wish?

[archytas]

As trolls Allan, we could live under this damp bridge together forever, shoring it up against google unsupport in the last days.  Then, in a final Zimmer-movement, we will outflank the slave-ant queen.

The internet is pretty dire.  We are like people who want there to be a theatre in town, but never go, preferring to moan about the paucity of television.

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[archytas]

I actually don't remember Chris.  I'd been away at the time (Middle East).  People who could have a good barney and still invite you for a beer had largely gone.  I got a lot of emails about helping Allan from people who pissed off quick.  I always considered the rules rather fatuous undergrad-uppity-cupidity - a bit like that Rebecca Watson broad - half-read and not worth the fuss of a coffee offer.  I had made a lot of contribution here, but it was a good spot to write to myself and see if anyone else had a clue.  I liked Allan, so hung around.  Orn (who I really like) had it in for Allan for some reason never disclosed.  I never recovered from Chaz being banned and meant to leave in protest.  I always found the notion of rational debate amongst people who can't outline argument interesting.  Academics do it all the time.  The line 'so what's this to do with the price of fish?' rather kills all.

Of course, I spend hours watching bees and ants.  My fluency in their communication and consensus languages is much greater than with humans, though the models are not much different.  Hygiene, for which you can substitute human manners, is one of the keys.  People rarely listen to anything beyond the buzz.  I would say a dozen people actually contributing ideas and feedback might form an expanding core, much as in a group of 100 undergraduates - but they get smart quick the core, amongst the free-riders.  Why should they put the effort in for the others?  Chris, Craig, Ian and Pottsie, Molly, Francis, James, Chaz, Vam - plenty I wouldn't have missed - Tony now.  I wonder how many of the members really even said much though?

The question is really whether there is any viable business model that might support the admin.  Porn was 98% of the original commercial traffic.  Thanks for the old efforts Chris.  By the way, did I ever say 'fuck you matey'?  If not take one free now ...

On Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at 7:17:00 PM UTC, Allan Heretic wrote:

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