Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

[Belz...]

You haven't yet covered any of them. All you do is keep listing them, then repeat your original claims, telling us we must not be understanding you. At some point you need to stop rearranging the table of contents and actually address the content.

Quoted for truth, Jabba.

 

[Belz...]

- The idea is to summarize the different arguments on both sides. I'll summarize my side; you guys will summarize your side.

There is NO NEED for summarization. We understand exactly what your claims are, and I'm sure you have a good grasp of what our arguments are.

There's no reason to go back to the first step for FIVE YEARS. The step's passed. You made the claim, you presented bad logic, math and anecdotes, alongside an admission of wishful thinking, bias and emotional involvement in the conclusion. We've countered all this and shown you why you were wrong. And endlessly you try to pretend that none of this happened and that repeating yourself will somehow "clarify" what you mean.

Again, there's no need. We know what you mean. You are wrong.

To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent.

It's been very effective: your claim has been evaluated and rejected for numerous, well-stated and explained reasons. You lost the debate years ago.

 

[jond]

- The idea is to summarize the different arguments on both sides. I'll summarize my side; you guys will summarize your side.
- I would like to have just one person represent your side. I know you guys won't do it, but you could elect a representative. Otherwise, someone could volunteer... I could suggest a particular representative or two. Or finally, I could just pick what I think is your best summary for each issue.
- This will be for the map.
- Otherwise, at least, at first, anyone will able to comment.

- To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent. But, is it impossible? If possibly not impossible, shouldn't we humans be bending over backwards to find out -- and, if not impossible, deliver? I see doom on every front if we don't.

Your history is why none of us will do what you ask. Everything has been dealt with and every time we've destroyed your position, you've run away and pretended nothing had ever been presented. Then, when you went off and made a "map" you dishonestly and deliberately misquoted and misrepresented. If you wanted a truly honest public debate, you would simply point people here, to this site, where everything has been laid bare.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

It's a curiosity of fringe argumentation. I wrote some days ago about the phenomenon of fringe claimants making all sorts of excuses not to have to deal with the most problematic rebuttals. The follow-on to that sentiment is that, in general, they legitimately believe they aren't responsible for content they've elected not to pay attention to. So when Jabba dismisses posts that are too long or complicated, or not friendly enough, he likely believes he's fully justified in doing so. They didn't follow his ground rules. And in that subjective sphere it means that the authors of those posts have relinquished all rights to be heard. It's probably not that Jabba doesn't think those posts contain operative criticism. It's more probably that Jabba believes that if those posters wanted their criticism heard, they should have followed his rules.

That is a good point, however I would like to point out the same dynamic exists whether fringe or not.

 

[carlitos]

- To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent. But, is it impossible? If possibly not impossible, shouldn't we humans be bending over backwards to find out -- and, if not impossible, deliver? I see doom on every front if we don't.

Here's one for your map. delusions of grandeur^WP

 

[Filippo Lippi]

- The idea is to summarize the different arguments on both sides. I'll summarize my side; you guys will summarize your side.
- I would like to have just one person represent your side. I know you guys won't do it, but you could elect a representative. Otherwise, someone could volunteer... I could suggest a particular representative or two. Or finally, I could just pick what I think is your best summary for each issue.
- This will be for the map.
- Otherwise, at least, at first, anyone will able to comment.

- To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent. But, is it impossible? If possibly not impossible, shouldn't we humans be bending over backwards to find out -- and, if not impossible, deliver? I see doom on every front if we don't.

Hubristic derail reported

 

[abaddon]

- The idea is to summarize the different arguments on both sides. I'll summarize my side; you guys will summarize your side.
- I would like to have just one person represent your side. I know you guys won't do it, but you could elect a representative. Otherwise, someone could volunteer... I could suggest a particular representative or two. Or finally, I could just pick what I think is your best summary for each issue.
- This will be for the map.
- Otherwise, at least, at first, anyone will able to comment.

- To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent. But, is it impossible? If possibly not impossible, shouldn't we humans be bending over backwards to find out -- and, if not impossible, deliver? I see doom on every front if we don't.

You seem to forget that we tried that before and you failed miserably to adhere to your own rules.

Everything was set up just as you demanded and you immediately tossed the rules in the bin.

 

[JayUtah]

The idea is to summarize the different arguments on both sides. I'll summarize my side; you guys will summarize your side.

This forum has already done that. You've presented your case as best you can, and your critics have presented their rebuttals, which you have almost completely ignored. There is no incentive to repeat the exercise with you at the helm, and certainly no discernible global benefit that cannot be had already by simply directing people here.

I would like to have just one person represent your side. I know you guys won't do it...

You've been trying to hobble your critics in one way or another since Day One. You propose one-on-one debates that you say will let you focus on one issue at a time. But history shows you don't move those debates along any better than you do this one. Further, your selection of the person here to whom you give attention is always the person who offers you the least challenge from moment to moment. That tells us the real reason you don't want to face all pertinent criticism. Since your performance doesn't change depending on the number of participants, there's no incentive to prevent anyone from participating who wants to. Once again you offer no advantage over directing people here.

This will be for the map.

Your critics are all too familiar with what you do with these "maps." The only past purpose to which you have put them is to lie about how your debates with others have gone. Even when you acknowledged the lies in your other "map," you removed it altogether rather than fix it. That tells us you would rather have it not be there at all than for it to be there and tell the truth. You have demonstrated yourself to be an untrustworthy editor.

To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent.

Oh, come down off your high horse. The only reason the debate here is stuck in a loop is that you don't listen. Keep in mind that you've had the opportunity elsewhere to present your case, where you can't fall back on blaming the ideological climate or the intelligence of the critics for your failure. It's very telling that wherever you go, the assessment of your performance is the same: you don't listen. It's absurd for you to pretend the problem lies elsewhere.

We're not interested in your pontification. You came here to attempt to prove immortality by mathematics, and after five years it's abundantly clear you can't do it. Effective public debate would have had you concede this four and a half years ago so as not to have wasted everyone's time dealing with your stubbornness.

I see doom on every front if we don't.

If there's a gloom-and-doom portrait to be painted, then you need to look to yourself to model for it, Jabba. It's not some imaginary bias in your critics. It's not some massive failure of The System. It's no more glamorous or profound than your personal inability to admit error and accept correction when the facts are against you. Your presentation is a rather unimpressive example of a broken rhetoric that fringe claimants have been deploying for decades. It's not new. It's not innovative. It's not incisive. You're not an unsung guru for using it. By all means keep retreating from reality, if a castle in the sky is what you crave. But don't ask your critics to help you build it.

 

[Pixel42]

To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent. But, is it impossible? If possibly not impossible, shouldn't we humans be bending over backwards to find out -- and, if not impossible, deliver? I see doom on every front if we don't.

I couldn't agree more.

All around me I see people whose sole criterion for believing something is whether or not they want it to be true. Compelling evidence and arguments against the belief are wilfully ignored, anything that can be adduced in its favour - even if it has to be dishonestly cherry picked and misinterpreted to do so - is eagerly seized on and embraced.

I use to think the internet posters who "debated" in this way (of whom you have long been the quintessential exemplar, Jabba) represented only a tiny percentage of an otherwise fairly rational populace. But in same few years in which you have been wasting everybody's time on this thread, this way of "debating" appears to have become the norm. You must be so pleased.

 

[Jabba]

- Accidentally posted. Deliberately deleted.

 

[JayUtah]

I have read the Shroud thread and this one in its entirety so I am aware of this tendency.

Ah, sorry to have insinuated otherwise.

It is like line numbers in a legal document so you can find your place.

Yes, exactly. Harmless, and moderately useful. Of all the idiosyncrasies Jabba's critics can note about him, his outline numbering is not something I pay much attention to.

Anyway I am not going to hold my breath waiting for Jabba to earn me a beverage...

If you've waded through both his sagas then you deserve a beverage just on principle. They're not easy reads, due to the constant reset-and-repetition cycle.

You would wouldn't happen to be an a central Atlantic US coast would you?

Nope, as my nick implies I'm baking in the deserts of the West.

 

[Hokulele]

- The idea is to summarize the different arguments on both sides. I'll summarize my side; you guys will summarize your side.
- I would like to have just one person represent your side. I know you guys won't do it, but you could elect a representative. Otherwise, someone could volunteer... I could suggest a particular representative or two. Or finally, I could just pick what I think is your best summary for each issue.
- This will be for the map.
- Otherwise, at least, at first, anyone will able to comment.

- To me, effective public debate is currently just about non-existent. But, is it impossible? If possibly not impossible, shouldn't we humans be bending over backwards to find out -- and, if not impossible, deliver? I see doom on every front if we don't.

If I were the one to set up the map using my rules, and summarizing the debate as I saw it, and invited you to make commentary on this map at my discretion, would you participate? Why or why not?

 

[Belz...]

- Accidentally posted. Deliberately deleted.

Wow, you made an actual funny.

 

[John Jones]

You seem to forget that we tried that before and you failed miserably to adhere to your own rules.

Everything was set up just as you demanded and you immediately tossed the rules in the bin.

Hey Jabba! We've been through all of that before, and you emerged as the continual liar every time.

 

[Waterman]

Ah, sorry to have insinuated otherwise.


If you've waded through both his sagas then you deserve a beverage just on principle. They're not easy reads, due to the constant reset-and-repetition cycle.


Nope, as my nick implies I'm baking in the deserts of the West.

No offense taken I could have put in a smilie. I do appreciate the fact that you do take the time to fill in extra details from time to time. To inform the potentially new readers who may not know the thread history.

I tend to gravitate to the long threads and have interacted with both DOC and yrreg who are equally stubborn in sticking to their positions regardless of any counter argument or explanation. But I do not have the time to participate as much as I would like. I am also reading your exchanges with Mr. Bethke and have nothing to contribute there.

I figured as much you never know the origin of peoples screen names.

 

[JoeMorgue]

It's a curiosity of fringe argumentation. I wrote some days ago about the phenomenon of fringe claimants making all sorts of excuses not to have to deal with the most problematic rebuttals. The follow-on to that sentiment is that, in general, they legitimately believe they aren't responsible for content they've elected not to pay attention to. So when Jabba dismisses posts that are too long or complicated, or not friendly enough, he likely believes he's fully justified in doing so. They didn't follow his ground rules. And in that subjective sphere it means that the authors of those posts have relinquished all rights to be heard. It's probably not that Jabba doesn't think those posts contain operative criticism. It's more probably that Jabba believes that if those posters wanted their criticism heard, they should have followed his rules.

I've actually taken a step back from the hard core individual fringe arguments in the last few weeks and I've been trying to look at the whole ongoing fringe movement, trying to notice underlying trends and shared traits.

One of the broad philosophical underpinnings I've started to recognize is this vague, broad, unspoken and undefined anti-intellectual idea that society in general and the skeptics/rationalists/atheist/whatever groups specifically put too much value in being factually correct. With a lot of Woo Slingers and even more often with Woo Apologist this is sort of the impression I get after talking to them a while, that they see us sacrificing some other value or quality in order to "be right" and we need to learn that "being right" isn't all that matters. It often comes from people who have a very narrow personal view of what they consider science and who, in their worldview, have some equally valid method for determining a worldview.

This is where, I think, a lot (but not all) of the tone policing, a lot of the "Oh you just want to 'win' the argument" style counter arguments, and it certainly at least shares a border if not some territory with the "Science and logic are cold and sterile and take all the color and joy out of life" crowd.

This is where we often get those weird performance art skits that act like they are trying to pass a moral onto instead of making anything resembling a valid or even coherent argument. This is one of many reasons that these arguments just so aggressively go nowhere. They aren't trying to win, they are trying to make us give up because to them that proves that being "right" isn't that important.

This motivation is one of the hardest ones to argue against because A) it's full of doublespeak because no can with a straight face actually directly argue against factual correctness as a quality and B) is often really hard to tell how far down the rabbit hole they are.

I honestly do think there is a statistically significant portion of the population that, whether they admit it to others or themselves, sorta don't value factual correctness. Maybe it's an after the fact rationalization for non-factual belief they hold and can't bring themselves to get rid of, maybe it's an actual base personality component they do indeed have, maybe a little of both but I do think it is there and does affect intellectual discourse.

I think this is a factor, one of many, in some not all of the Woo topics in which the Woo proponent becomes over-obsessed with arguments being "nice."

This thread, while an extreme example of it, is hardly the first time we've dealt with someone who falls back on trying to police the behavior of the thread as a way to distract, themselves as much as anyone IMO, from being unable to intellectually defend a position.

 

[Jabba]

If I were the one to set up the map using my rules, and summarizing the debate as I saw it, and invited you to make commentary on this map at my discretion, would you participate? Why or why not?

Hokulele,
- I won't be summarizing your side; the person representing your side will summarize your side. Anyone can comment.
- On the map, I'll summarize my own side.

 

[Hokulele]

Hokulele,
- I won't be summarizing your side; the person representing your side will summarize your side. Anyone can comment.
- On the map, I'll summarize my own side.

I do not believe you. After reading the farce that was the map of the Shroud debate, and the way commentary was "accidentally" deleted, I can't see why anyone would volunteer to do your work for you this time around, and risk being deceitfully edited.

Edit: Oh, and can you please link me an example from any forum where someone has successfully shown you to be wrong? I would like to know what sort of standards you use to accept when you state something that is incorrect.

 

[sackett]

Here’s a jump rope song:

Jabba went
To the doctor
Doctor said
Sorry Mr. Jabba
But you just
About dead.

Sackett went
To the doctor
Doctor scratchin’
His head
“Whatchoo got to worry ‘bout,
Once you be dead?”

 

[JayUtah]

I won't be summarizing your side; the person representing your side will summarize your side. Anyone can comment.
- On the map, I'll summarize my own side.

Given your past behavior, can you state a reason why anyone should trust you? Can you explain in what way this "map" of yours would be any different or better than this forum as it presently stands?