Chaos Magic

[annnnoid]

Well thanks there Pixy…I was just about to point out that rather obvious issue. Rather than present yet another un-parsable-post for dlorde’s sensitive digestion, perhaps dlorde could volunteer his opinion on the difference in emotional/intellectual impact between an afternoon spent on magic mushrooms/LSD and an afternoon spent being dead….and then discovering that you’re not.

 

[annnnoid]

Dead...that's a big word.

 

[Nonpareil]

But then all of a sudden we go from ‘everything’ to something orders of magnitude more vague.

No, we haven't.

Now we can only register ‘roughly something’, which…in fact, bears no resemblance to the point upon which I was accused of being staggeringly ignorant but, no doubt, I am still staggeringly ignorant.

In this situation, ignorant isn't the right word. "Deliberately obtuse" is much more fitting.

Yes, we can detect all those things. Can we figure out exactly which chemical reaction is that specific emotion? No. Our instruments aren't fine enough. But we can detect it all the same.

It's like early sound recording. We could record sounds, and we knew that they consisted of waves, but, if we were given a sound wave, we couldn't tell which peak or valley was which specific sound. Did that change the fact that we could still detect and record someone speaking? Of course not.

…and then we find out that we have no such ‘machine’ (singular or plural) capable of detecting everything

Wrong.

which was the basis for the accusation of staggering ignorance…

No, it wasn't. That was the basis for the accusation of constant strawmanning.

Which you are still doing, by the way.

…but just try asking for his holiness to provide some evidence to support this wild fantasy of detecting every single condition of human consciousness.

Neurological readings, dude. Look 'em up. They're not hard to find.

Oh, but I just realized, Argent may actually be looking ahead a few years…

Nope.

Bare assertions are perfectly acceptable when you’re dealing in utter fantasy…come to think of it, isn’t that exactly what woo-woos do?

Yep. But it's not what I'm doing, all your constant straw men to the contrary.

I quite clearly provided a list describing subjective states of human consciousness…(states which every psychologist on the planet [and just about any human being above the age of seven] would immediately associate with the condition referred to as: who I am)

<snip repetitive babble>

I don't give a crap how you define "self". It's irrelevant.

…and once again, things get murky. We no longer understand everything (upon which basis I was accused of being staggeringly ignorant), we only understand things ‘perfectly well’ (what-the-hell-ever that means). I guess it means well enough for skeptics who don't want to have to confront their own ignorance.

The meaning is incredibly obvious. I've explained it to you multiple times. Go back and read my posts again.

But take heart

<snip continual straw men>

Moving on...

Certain areas of the brain light up?....my god, what an insight. But something occurs to me, just how far is this from being able to detect everything…

That is detecting everything. That is the definition of detecting: being able to register when something is there.

Apparently, we can now only determine when certain areas of the brain light up (light up…I’ve never noticed my brain ‘lighting up’…and I don’t see that word on my list anywhere either, are you sure you’ve got the results correct there Argent?).

Your idiotic word games aside, yes, certain areas of the brain do light up when certain emotions are being experienced. In addition, stimulating certain areas of the brain, and placing certain chemicals into the bloodstream, can be shown to effect these emotions (resulting, of course, in the brain lighting up again).

So how many of those words can we reduce my list by Argent (…all of them actually, but I don’t expect you to understand that)?

None.

And does this mean that I am no longer staggeringly ignorant?

Nope. You still are. And you're still incredibly obtuse, willfully ignorant, and continually strawmanning.

<snip straw men and irrelevancy>

So what you’re saying (by way of a rather obvious analogy) is that if I quote, say, Richard Dawkins in relation to a question concerning evolutionary biology we can all assume Richard Dawkins is full of ****?

If he has no evidence backing his claim, yes.

As for evidence of Chomsky’s claim that our understanding of human nature is thin (since he’s obviously an idiot)

I didn't say that. And, again, you are both strawmanning Chomsky (who does not define "human nature" in the same way that you do) and relying on bare assertion (even if he is saying the same thing that you are, which is unlikely, he has no evidence).

we quite obviously can’t even reliably adjudicate that most basic of human conscious realities: a lie. Care to dispute that evidence Argent? Didn’t think so.

"Our understanding of metallurgy is thin and likely to remain so".

Fifty years later, steel is invented.

I produced a supporting conclusion from one of the most highly respected cognitive scientists in the world.

No. You produced a quote which only supports your statement if you assume that Chomsky shares your position on everything else - which is unlikely - and if you are able to present evidence backing his opinion.

I produced a clear example of the current state of the art in relation to detecting states of subjective consciousness.

And you are wrong.

<snip idiocy>

…and I think we’ve established quite clearly that you explicitly misrepresented the facts.

No. What we've established is that you are either incapable or unwilling to actually read what I have said or to be honest about others' arguments.

To put it bluntly Argent, you accused me of being staggeringly ignorant based on the bare assertion that we can detect the meaning of every word in that list.

No, I didn't. I accused you of being staggeringly ignorant for being unaware of the connection between activity in certain neurological centers of the brain and emotion.

Try again.

You subsequently changed your position all over the place

Nope.

Try again.

and then denied that you ever took that position in the first place

What position?

You’ve accused me of failing to provide any evidence to support my positions

You haven't.

and then blatantly ignored the evidence I did provide

You didn't provide any.

all the while taking endlessly vague positions yourself and arguing that you are under no obligation to substantiate a single one of them.

No. My position is perfectly clear. And I am under no obligation to support it to you. Even here on the JREF, I am under no obligation to prove anything to anyone on any topic.

However, I usually do, because I care about my image here. I simply don't care about what you think of me, and I don't feel any need to do your homework for you. The evidence for my claims is readily available. All you have to do is look up any of the hundreds of medical studies on emotion and brain activity.

As it is, I don't see any point in linking you to them. Odds are you wouldn't read them. Odds are even better that, if you read them, you wouldn't understand them, or you would reject them out of hand because they conflict with your position.

Which isn't surprising, really. Most facts tend to contradict you when you're so obviously wrong.

 

[PixyMisa]

But then all of a sudden we go from ‘everything’ to something orders of magnitude more vague.

Strawman.

Now we can only register ‘roughly something’

Strawman, paraphrase presented as quote.

which…in fact, bears no resemblance to the point upon which I was accused of being staggeringly ignorant but

Incorrect.

no doubt, I am still staggeringly ignorant.

No comment.

…and then we find out that we have no such ‘machine’ (singular or plural) capable of detecting everything, which was the basis for the accusation of staggering ignorance…

Strawman, strawman, strawman.

“We can detect everything on that list!!!!!

And we can.

...your ignorance is staggering!!!! )

No comment.

And, again, either paraphrase someone or quote them. Don't paraphrase someone and put it in quotes, that's dishonest.

[Large chunk of the post snipped because it was apparently just line noise.]

Certain areas of the brain light up?

Certain specific areas of the brain light up for each item on your list, yes, which makes them detectable and identifiable.

my god, what an insight.

When first discovered, it was.

But something occurs to me, just how far is this from being able to detect everything….which was the specific claim upon which you based your accusation of my staggering ignorance?

Strawman.

You presented a list of emotions, which you claimed we can't detect. In fact, we can detect all of them. You were wrong, and your responses are growing increasingly irrelevant and inflammatory.

Apparently, we can now only determine when certain areas of the brain light up

No, we can objectively detect emotional states. Emotions are broad patterns of neural activity, and different emotions involve different areas of the brain to different degrees. It's quite easy to detect them.

Much easier than, say, scanning your brain to produce an image of what you are seeing... Which we can also do.

(light up…I’ve never noticed my brain ‘lighting up’

Have you looked?

[More line noise snipped.]

 

[AkuManiMani]

If thats the case then you've never reached the starting line. How can you honestly assess if someone else if full of crap if you can't even recognize your own bull?

I'm sure it's an Angus.

It's a shame you're reduced to throwing out insults, that usually means you haven't got any arguments left.

Thats pretty funny coming from a person who hasn't contributed anything substantive to any discussions I've seen you in; everything I've seen you post consists of insults and banal one-liners with nothing in the way of actually challenging arguments or insight. Whats even funnier is that you've spent a lot of time trying to "debunk" me without even knowing what you're arguing against. Tell me:

What do you think my actual position is and what exact points do you disagree with?

I genuinely wanna see if you're capable of something other than the trite little skid marks you've been leaving on the thread so far. Judging from your response history so far, all I'm seeing of you is a foolish old man with the emotional maturity of a 14 year old, swinging blindly at arguments he hasn't even bothered to understand, and is too arrogant to even recognize his own shortcomings. All joking and facetiousness aside, I'm really hoping that you atleast try to bring something substantive to the table. With 66 years of experience you have to have something more challenging for me than the canned responses you've been giving. I wasn't kidding about what I said earlier; you really have been a disappointment -_-

 

[annnnoid]

You presented a list of emotions, which you claimed we can't detect. In fact, we can detect all of them. You were wrong, and your responses are growing increasingly irrelevant and inflammatory.

So what you’re saying Pixy, is that our instruments have the ability to not only conclusively adjudicate every minute variation in our consciousness (which, from what limited amount I know, would be an instrument most neurologists would kill for)…but also definitively determine the explicit subjective nature of those variations (which, from what I indisputably know, would be a procedure that would utterly redefine the entire psychological profession, not to mention the entire legal profession, and very likely the entirety of civilization as we know it).

In other words….we have some variety of procedure that can specifically produce the result: “patient ‘b’ is experiencing “I scintillate!...!@!!?..*!*# at 45.8%” …because that is every bit as subjective and explicit and nuanced as every single moment of our life is to each and every one of us (and if you dispute this, I’d just suggest you make enquires of any reputable psychologist). In other words, every single word on that list (…it may come as a bit of a surprise to you and Argent, but the words on that list are actually written by those who experience them, not by neurologists…this is called psychology 101).

…and yet, on the other hand, there indisputably does not yet exist a means of accurately determining even that most basic of human subjective conditions: a lie.

So on the one hand, we have your claim (and Argents drivel)…and on the other hand we have actual evidence. You claim we can detect anything related to human subjective conscious activity….and we have the entire legal profession (and every scientific resource it depends upon) telling us quite explicitly and definitively and conclusively that we can’t even detect one of the most basic of subjective human conditions: a lie.

Methinks someone is not telling the truth.

 

[PixyMisa]

What do you think my actual position is and what exact points do you disagree with?

As far as anyone can tell, your position is that you won't tell us what your position is, but anyone who disagrees with you is a big meanie.

 

[AkuManiMani]

What do you think my actual position is and what exact points do you disagree with?

As far as anyone can tell, your position is that you won't tell us what your position is, but anyone who disagrees with you is a big meanie.

[1] - I've explicitly stated what my position is repeatedly yet only a few of you have expressed any reasonable understanding of it. I actually bounced the very same arguments off some of my IRL friends this evening. A couple of them "got it" and found it interesting but expressed reservations, and another thought that it definitively "debunked" the possibly of magic in principle. I find it amusing and deeply ironic that the majority of the responders here prefer to interpret it as positing it's "reality". Neither interpretation quite expresses what I'm trying to get at here

[2] - You cannot disagree with, or adequately argue against, a position that you do not understand to begin with. To be perfectly frank, the fact that many of you try to do so is both silly and extremely stupid. Your folly is all the more apparent in that you so easily allow yourselves to be manipulated by trigger words. If I chose to word my arguments differently, I'm almost certain I'd have even gotten a few head nods of agreement from some of my most vehement detractors. However, contrary to popular opinion, I'm not really here for acceptance or validation. My wording and my manner are to deliberately filter those who will provide the challenging critical feedback I'm looking for from the fools and piss-ants who just wanna boost their pathetic egos.

[3] -

Removed breach.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LashL

 

[slingblade]

Well, someone's cranky.

 

[punshhh]

Well, someone's cranky.

I think their just sorting out their definitions.

 

[PixyMisa]

[1] - I've explicitly stated what my position is repeatedly

Really?

Please repeat this explicit statement once again in the little box below.

I actually bounced the very same arguments off some of my IRL friends this evening. A couple of them "got it" and found it interesting but expressed reservations, and another thought that it definitively "debunked" the possibly of magic in principle. I find it amusing and deeply ironic that the majority of the responders here prefer to interpret it as positing it's "reality". Neither interpretation quite expresses what I'm trying to get at here

That's nice.

What you post here generally falls into one of three categories: Factually false, logically incoherent, or semantically null. So what exactly were these "very same arguments" that your "IRL friends" thought "interesting"?

[2] - You cannot disagree with, or adequately argue against, a position that you do not understand to begin with.

Perhaps not. Which is why I restrict myself to pointing out that what you are actually saying is complete rubbish.

To be perfectly frank, the fact that many of you try to do so is both silly and extremely stupid. Your folly is all the more apparent in that you so easily allow yourselves to be manipulated by trigger words. If I chose to word my arguments differently, I'm almost certain I'd have even gotten a few head nods of agreement from some of my most vehement detractors. However, contrary to popular opinion, I'm not really here for acceptance or validation. My wording and my manner are to deliberately filter those who will provide the challenging critical feedback I'm looking for from the fools and piss-ants who just wanna boost their pathetic egos.

Well, no. None of that is true. You're just posting nonsense, and you get quite irritable when you're called on it.

[3] -

Edited by LashL: 

Removed quote of moderated content

.

Edited by LashL: 

Removed response to moderated content

 

[tsig]

Thats pretty funny coming from a person who hasn't contributed anything substantive to any discussions I've seen you in; everything I've seen you post consists of insults and banal one-liners with nothing in the way of actually challenging arguments or insight. Whats even funnier is that you've spent a lot of time trying to "debunk" me without even knowing what you're arguing against. Tell me:

What do you think my actual position is and what exact points do you disagree with?

I genuinely wanna see if you're capable of something other than the trite little skid marks you've been leaving on the thread so far. Judging from your response history so far, all I'm seeing of you is a foolish old man with the emotional maturity of a 14 year old, swinging blindly at arguments he hasn't even bothered to understand, and is too arrogant to even recognize his own shortcomings. All joking and facetiousness aside, I'm really hoping that you atleast try to bring something substantive to the table. With 66 years of experience you have to have something more challenging for me than the canned responses you've been giving. I wasn't kidding about what I said earlier; you really have been a disappointment -_-

As far as anyone can tell, your position is that you won't tell us what your position is, but anyone who disagrees with you is a big meanie.

There you go.

If you get disappointed so easily by anonymous posters on the internet then your life will be full of woe.


BTW: Your posts are a prime example of why it's unwise to put any personal info on the net.

 

[tsig]

Well, someone's cranky.

I'm so disappointed in him.

 

[annnnoid]

You could substitute 'LSD' or 'magic mushrooms' for 'NDEs' in that paragraph and it would apply equally - I happen to speak from personal experience, but there is also a raft of good experimental evidence to support it. You don't need undiscovered science or supra-normal events to experience out of body experiences and the like, that can change your perspective on life, etc. - it's redundant, an unnecessary multiplication of entities, as Occam could have told you.

I'm sorry annnnoid, this question makes no sense at all to me. You seem to have difficulty with the concept of 'normal', but you're not expressing it coherently.

Nope - can't parse that one either.

How about an example dlorde…an analogy to give you a bit of perspective (and perhaps inspire a response to my invitation for an opinion on the subject).

It would be something like the difference between looking at a picture of someone standing at the top of mount Everest…and actually being there after having begun at the bottom.

…like I said…the difference between spending an afternoon on LSD/mushrooms…or spending an afternoon being dead, then discovering that you’re not.

Perspective….it specifically relates to the point which you complained about. I hope that makes it a little clearer.

 

[Hellbound]

Originally Posted by AkuManiMani
My core point is an anathema to you: The known is inherently a bounded subset of the unbounded unknown. This is an inescapable epistemological fact.

If a fool hears an argument and doesn't understand, is the argument incoherent? Could a fool discern the difference between incoherence and his/her own incomprehension?


"If this forum were a friendly environment to begin with it wouldn't be a problem. Even absent my own posts, its painfully obvious that a good portion of the participants here are mean spirited".

Wise words

Almost. Except that the unknown is not completely unbounded (it must, logically, be bounded byt he known...if I know 'X', then 'not X' cannot be true). And the judgement of fool can only be applied if the argument is coherent, which is the issue at hand (this is simply a logical error of assuming the consequent: "Is your argument coherent?" "If it was, and you didn't think so, you'd be a fool." "Duh, but that doesn't answer the question"). And friendliness has nothing to do with provability...a logical argument stands or falls regardless of personalities.

These are "wise words" in the same way fortune cookies present wisdom....they sound good, but don't say a lot.

 

[Resume]

like I said…the difference between spending an afternoon on LSD/mushrooms…or spending an afternoon being dead, then discovering that you’re not.
QUOTE]

An afternoon being dead . . . are you sure?

 

[Hellbound]

An afternoon being dead . . . are you sure?

"I got better..."

 

[dafydd]

"If this forum were a friendly environment to begin with it wouldn't be a problem. Even absent my own posts, its painfully obvious that a good portion of the participants here are mean spirited".

Wise words

This is a skeptics forum,we need proof. When a delusionaut persists in flinging woo at us,it does tend to get on our nerves because we've heard it all before. What does ''even absent my own posts'' mean?

 

[PixyMisa]

"If this forum were a friendly environment to begin with it wouldn't be a problem. Even absent my own posts, its painfully obvious that a good portion of the participants here are mean spirited".

Wise words

What about me? It isn't fair.
I've had enough, now I want my share.
Can't you see? I wanna live.
But you just take more than you give.

 

[punshhh]

What about me? It isn't fair.
I've had enough, now I want my share.
Can't you see? I wanna live.
But you just take more than you give.

You want wisdom? its free, to those who can accept it.

To a wise man there are three sets here;

(reality,( those who are open to all experiences( those who are skeptics))).