Skepticism and The Normal

[JonnyFive]

I would like to make the 3000th post in a thread...

Congratulation!

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Congratulation!

Just the one?

 

[JonnyFive]

Just the one?

I'm saving the rest for when we hit 4000.

 

[Z]

Here, you can have another from me, Prof. Congratulation!

There, that's two - so it's now congratulations.

 

[drkitten]

I've stated quite clearly that I am not Bubb (as well as, I admit, making jokes that I might be him).

Yeah. Some people simply don't believe you. Based on posting and "thinking" style.

Those jokes aren't funny anymore, and in my last post I freely volunteered to allow the moderators to compare my ISP address with Bubb's, and to announce that Bubb and I are in fact posting to this Forum from opposite sides of the globe.

Which would settle the matter.

That wouldn't settle the matter at all. The Internet runs everywhere, in case you weren't aware. In the next twenty minutes, if I cared to, I could post to this forum from hosts/ISPs in Japan, the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

I'm not going to bother to, since that sounds like more work than I care to put into it. And you/Bubblefish might not have the technical aptitude to do what I'm suggesting I could do.

But "settle it"? Hardly.

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Flim, you said :

Not to mention that the generally unpleasant feeling of this thread has left me, and maybe others, distinctly pissed-off when walking away from our computers.

Bubb has really got to you, hasn't he ? If you feel so bad about the whole thing, why join in ? and why come back again ?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you one of the badscience crowd who pursued Bubb over here ?

So, if he pisses you off so much, why follow him around the web to talk to him ?




(My guess: you're responding to Bubb's implicit challenge, and you want to win. You want Bubb to confess; you want him to admit he's wrong. It aggravates and frustrates you that you can't get him to do so).


All I've been doing is sharing my interpretation of Bubb as a producer of a TV-type show; I've admitted I'm guessing, so it's not a matter of right or wrong. But my interpretation affects my experience; perhaps if you experimented with a different interpretation, maybe your own experience might not be so entirely negative.

You're entitled to your opinion that :

that the actual informative content of this thread has been severely limited....

.... but Moby7 said :

In a strange way, this has actually been a quite informative thread, covering many topics and raising some interesting points. You don't usually get that when a troll starts a thread.

... and Jonny5 said :

I like to think of Bubblefish as a kind of catalyst for discussion.

So it's not just me that gets something from these shows; and as I said before, any thread that gets 30 replies every day for 3 months can hardly be described as uninteresting.

Yeah. Some people simply don't believe you. Based on posting and "thinking" style.

As I said, believe what you want to believe, DrK.

Personally I don't think the suspicions are based on 'style' of whatever kind. I think they're based on me admitting to finding Bubb entertaining, and viewing his threads positively (I certainly haven't supported OS012 at any point).

Whereas a large number of you appear to hate and despise him.

So you find my perception of him incomprehensible.

And so one solution to resolve this mis-match is that I must be Bubb.



Is there any truth in this analysis ?

In the next twenty minutes, if I cared to, I could post to this forum from hosts/ISPs in Japan, the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

Well, I couldn't, DrK.

I wouldn't know where to find my own ISP address, let alone establish a fake one.

But I suppose you're right, the addresses are inconclusive.

So unless anyone knows some way to prove that I'm not Bubb, you will just have to tolerate the uncertainty.




Gnu.


.

 

[Mobyseven]

Gnu:

It is however important to remember that, in lieu of Bubb ever gracing (demonising?) the forum here, interesting discussions still take place, and the most productive and informative ones often are the ones where there is no troll present.

Believe me, while interesting points have been raised in this thread, it doesn't excuse Bubb from being a troll.

 

[Mojo]

You want Bubb to confess; you want him to admit he's wrong. It aggravates and frustrates you that you can't get him to do so.

He already has, albeit tacitly. See his current sig: his criterion for success is that he is able to "advance his argument". In practice this appears to mean "continue to post": he's never managed to post much in the way of argument. For example his last two posts (12 days ago) were links to pages that entirely failed to support his position. He's failed to post much for quite some time now, relying on excuses such as his computer being broken (he managed to post a message to let us know about it though) or his being too busy to post because of work (but not too busy to post elsewhere - I guess his ego couldn't resist it when they'd posted his video).

 

[flimflam_machine]

Bubb has really got to you, hasn't he ?

Occasionally, I’m not very good at dealing with wildly irrational and unreasonable people. Now I just think he’s a bit of a git.

If you feel so bad about the whole thing, why join in ? and why come back again ?
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you one of the badscience crowd who pursued Bubb over here ?
So, if he pisses you off so much, why follow him around the web to talk to him ?

You’re not wrong. Partly because I wanted to give people here a heads-up as to what they were getting involved in. Partly because I find Bubb’s frankly pathological stubbornness interesting (in the same way that a twitcher would find bird flu interesting). Also because I wanted to have the chance to assess Bubb’s idea seriously. I did. It’s nonsense. He can’t/won’t accept or admit that.

(My guess: you're responding to Bubb's implicit challenge, and you want to win. You want Bubb to confess; you want him to admit he's wrong. It aggravates and frustrates you that you can't get him to do so).

You guess wrong. When I first replied to bubb at bs.net I was quite abusive, because I thought his ideas were tosh, and he was acting like an offensive little troll. When I came over here I didn’t want to “win” particularly because I didn’t really feel opposed to Bubb, just dismissive. If you read back through the thread (which you don’t need to because I think you are Bubb and you are now assessing the results of your little social experiment) you’ll notice that I did apply some serious thought to Bubb’s idea. The more perceptive and intelligent members of this forum provided some good insight and background which made this easier, Bubb refused to actually “explain” his idea which made it considerably harder and more irritating. Ultimately it became more apparent that Bubb was talking nonsense, just as I, and many, others had first guessed. It does frustrate me that Bubb won’t admit that he’s wrong, if he/you gets off on that then fine, he/you has my pity for being so sad. Bubb’s conduct, particularly his willingness to insult and belittle people because they disagree with him also offends me. As I said, I don’t deal well with wildly irrational people and Bubb has maintained his irrational grasp on his ideas in the face of overwhelming, well-argued, reasonable, fact-based refutation. I don’t think that anyone here particularly wants to “win” they just want Bubb to show some shred of logic or rationality in his conclusions or even his arguments.

:
that the actual informative content of this thread has been severely limited....

.... but Moby7 said :

Quote:
In a strange way, this has actually been a quite informative thread, covering many topics and raising some interesting points. You don't usually get that when a troll starts a thread.

... and Jonny5 said :

Quote:
I like to think of Bubblefish as a kind of catalyst for discussion.

So it's not just me that gets something from these shows; and as I said before, any thread that gets 30 replies every day for 3 months can hardly be described as uninteresting.

I didn’t say that I hadn’t got anything from this thread. But, as has been pointed out, you don’t need a troll to have a decent, interesting, entertaining discussion. It makes it more interesting to have differing points of view, but Bubb’s contribution hardly amounts to that: it’s not coherent enough.

If he is deliberately acting as a catalyst for discussion and not actually providing any useful content (which he hasn’t) then all he is inducing people to do is write basic level essays on various topics. Many will do this purely altruistically in order to share knowledge, but you don’t need to aggravate them into doing so and such essays already exist and can be easily found.

Regarding the information content of this thread: it’s now almost 80 pages long; I would guess that more than 2/3 of that has been spent trudging over the same pointless issues in which Bubb simply refuses, in the face of all evidence, to admit that he is wrong: “syncopation” does not mean “rhythm”, “subjective” does not mean “false”, beauty is subjective etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam. The thread would have been much more productive if someone with an ounce of brain had acted as devil’s advocate and explicitly stated that they were doing so. Instead it’s mostly dross with some interesting bits and a consistent seam of offensive childish behaviour from Bubb.

 

[flimflam_machine]

Personally I don't think the suspicions are based on 'style' of whatever kind. I think they're based on me admitting to finding Bubb entertaining, and viewing his threads positively (I certainly haven't supported OS012 at any point).

Whereas a large number of you appear to hate and despise him.

So you find my perception of him incomprehensible.

And so one solution to resolve this mis-match is that I must be Bubb.

Is there any truth in this analysis ?

Not really, because it's incomplete.

You turn up just as Bubb leaves amongst a flurry of excuses as to why he can't post. You write in quite a similar style. Not only do you restate many of his ideas in a slightly different form ("reality, my reality, our reality"), you also state that you find him "entertaining" and, uniquely among people who have posted here, are able to lightly dismiss his grossly offensive behaviour (his repeated, calculated direct insults to Z's religious beliefs being the prime example), in order to view his contribution as generally positive. You describe these threads as “his productions” which fits in well with what we know about Rome and what, for want of a better word, we will call his “career”. Then you post a summary which asks us to explain our behaviour, which, as I said, sounds very much like you/Bubb trying to get feedback or more data in your/his little social experiment.

Incidentally, we don't hate and despise Bubb, we hate and despise Rome. As Z said

Rome doesn't see himself as Bubblefish; Bubblefish is a character, distinct and separate from Rome.

That may be true, but we see him as exactly the same person. His hiding behind a character for his amateurish forays in sociology does not excuse his behaviour or make his comments any less offensive or his behaviour any less irritating. While I frankly can’t be bothered wasting the energy to wish him any real ill, I do hope he/you gets a sufficient kick up the arse to make him grow up.

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Flim, I said a month ago :

1. I am not Bubb

2. my argument is entirely separate to Bubb's, I have never made any reference to his model, and as I've already said, I don't understand his model anyway.

3. As far as I know, Bubb has never before done what you're suggesting (sock-puppet).

4. and anyway, how would it help him to have an alter-ego present and defend a completely different system ?

Only if SCO1260000000000 could be miraculously converted into OS012....

.... and I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

5. I'm not dyslexic.

Here's an idea, Flim. Do some textual analysis on the thread.

Hypothesis : If Bubb is American and I'm English, we'll spell certain words differently.

I just did an advanced search for 'colour' and 'color'.

Result : I use the English spelling, all the time. Bubb uses the American, all the time.

Choose your own test words. Repeat.

Let us know what you find.

(Conclusion : Either your suspicions are unfounded, or Bubb is incredibly, incredibly devious, possibly to the point of insanity. Apply Occam's razor).

(According my single-word search, you, Mojo, Professor Y and Jimbob are all English , whereas z and TheGline are American - is that correct so far ?)


Toodle-pip.


Gnu.

 

[Mojo]

According my single-word search, you, Mojo, Professor Y and Jimbob are all English...

If you were English, you might realise that not everyone who uses that spelling is English.

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Oh right, Mojo... you mean the Scots and Welsh and Irish.. and Aussies and Kiwis and so on...

Oh, and everyone else who's ever been taught English as a second language by an English speaker....

Sorry, I forgot.

(Typical English arrogance).





Does that mean I've mortally offended you as well ?

Oh dear.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Divvent forget us Geordies...

 

[Mojo]

Oh right, Mojo... you mean the Scots and Welsh and Irish.. and Aussies and Kiwis and so on...

Oh, and everyone else who's ever been taught English as a second language by an English speaker....

Sorry, I forgot.

(Typical English arrogance).

Or perhaps a typical mistake made by Americans (e.g. "Edinburgh, England", or sometimes even "Scotland, England").

 

[zooterkin]

(According my single-word search, you, Mojo, Professor Y and Jimbob are all English , whereas z and TheGline are American - is that correct so far ?)

I'm hurt you left me out of your word search. Having said that, that might confirm that you're not Bubb since he actually sent me money on a very rare occasion when he admitted he was wrong. For the record, I don't think you are Rome, unless he is a whole lot more intelligent than the BF persona, in which case the whole charade is even more pointless. I do question your aims in posting to this thread, especially if he's not an acquaintance of yours.

 

[flimflam_machine]

Gnu, I don't really care if you are Bubb. My comments are about him, if you and he are the same person, then they're directed at you. My purpose was to point out that our suspicions are based on more than the fact that you find Bubb "entertaining".

 

[Kahalachan]

i recently had a very long, funny, and interesting discussion over at badscience.com's forums regarding truth values, skepticism, Randi, qi, and a plethora of side topics that extended over a few threads.

The main point of my arguments was the 'third' value of truth, which could be defined as 'niether true and niether false', mystery, possibility, or what have you. I was amazed that so many 'critical' thinkers are not nearly as skeptical to the claims of reductionists or thier own claims as they are of the paranormal, and many of their arguments crumble into nothingness when confronted with this third value.

Many were offended when I mentioned we should be equally skeptical of James Randi as we are of any paranormal claim. For one, I dont trust magicians, especially one's who have an air of 'I can fool you but you can't fool me' about them. Secondly, james randi seems to suggest that we can't trust scientists to verify claims, that only a magician can properly determine these things.

So, should we trust a magician to guide our philosophy? James Randi made his career honestly tricking people, who is to say he is not still doing so? Why should james randi be held in the highest of standards for determining what is true, false or mystery?

For the record, I whole heartedly support james randi when he exposes frauds, and appreciate his work for doing so. I think he is perfect for exposing frauds, but I just dont think he is relevant for discovery the mystery.

Thoughts?

Randi's point isn't to say magicians are the only ones who can determine good science. He's saying (I assume) that scientists can be fooled and not study or examine the correct variables.

I'll say what one of my psychology teachers told me. College students can be just as scientific as any of the other professors with PhDs. They can see avenues that PhDs have missed. The only thing that differentiates us is our teachers have more education and experience.

I think that's the main point of Randi's assertions. That's the beauty of the scientific method. Even the most uneducated person is able to point out flaws in methodology of research.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Randi's point isn't to say magicians are the only ones who can determine good science. He's saying (I assume) that scientists can be fooled and not study or examine the correct variables.

I'll say what one of my psychology teachers told me. College students can be just as scientific as any of the other professors with PhDs. They can see avenues that PhDs have missed. The only thing that differentiates us is our teachers have more education and experience.

I think that's the main point of Randi's assertions. That's the beauty of the scientific method. Even the most uneducated person is able to point out flaws in methodology of research.

Something's telling me that you didn't read more than the first couple of posts before you wrote this.... To be honest, I had completely forgotten what was in the OP!

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Flim said :

As I said, I don’t deal well with wildly irrational people and Bubb has maintained his irrational grasp on his ideas in the face of overwhelming, well-argued, reasonable, fact-based refutation.

Zooterkin asked me why I'm posting to this thread, and the answer is that I'm curious about Bubb's agenda. (I'm also curious about the agenda of the people who talk to him).

I don't believe, as Flim says, that Bubb is irrational ie deluded/crazy.

My suggestion is that Bubb's agenda is to put on a show. And if that means arguing that black is white, or that true is false, he will do that.

Flim, if you believe that his agenda is to present a concept for examination and feedback in a rational manner, this belief leads you to frustration and anger, because none of his threads proceed on that basis....

... as you know, Flim, because you took part in the long badscience thread, and his other threads are there to be read; so it's hardly a surprise that this one went the way it did (with some interesting detours on the way, as usual).

So I don't understand your complaints, Flim. You've read previous episodes; you've already sparred with Bubb before; and now you complain he's unreasonable ? What did you expect ?

Can I ask the same question of the rest of you ? By my estimate 8 of you (flim, the professor, mojo, jimbob, pv+, jqh, zooterkin, and sinnikal - have I missed anyone ?), having successfully hounded Bubb out of badscience, chose to come here to continue the argument, and to complain about him some more.

Please tell me why you did this.

It's like you go to the fun-fair and have a ride on the Big Dipper. You then go to the fair manager and complain that you've been frightened. He asks you : Did you not see the height of the Dipper ? Did you not see the steepness of the incline ? Did you not hear the screams of the previous passengers ? Did you not realize that fear was part of the package ?

So what do you do ? You go to the back of the queue, and you have another ride. You get scared again.

And then you go and complain again.

What's that all about ?









Mojo warned everyone about Bubb at the beginning of the badscience thread, and he did it again on page 2 of this one. Didn't have any effect, did it, Mojo ?

People like rides.

Bubb designed the ride.





What alternative agendas have been proposed ?

Bubb's a troll ? Personally, I don't find that attaching that label has any explanatory function. I certainly don't think that having a hidden agenda should disqualify anyone from contributing to a Forum. We all have our own reasons for coming here, don't we ?

(Me, I'm looking for a girl-friend; so every post I read or write is filtered through that prism. Is that against the rules ? Am I going to be expelled because I didn't come here for 'Education' ? Does that agenda invalidate my ramblings on the nature of reality ?

Offers of dates received, so far : zero.

Death threats received, so far : 27.

Ho hum).



Is Bubb selling something ? No evidence for that.

Is he conducting a sociological experiment ? I don't think so.

Is he insane (or, does he suffer from an Anti-Social Personality Disorder)? I don't think so.

Is he just seeking atttention ? Well partly, yes, probably, but who isn't ? Being acknowledged is a fundamental human need (which is why Solitary Confinement is an illegal punishment in most countries).

Is he refining the concept of OS012 to eventually resolve world conflict ? er....

I suppose the correct answer might be some combination of these... but my guess seems to fit the facts fairly well...

I'm hurt you left me out of your word search

I only searched for me and Bubb, Zooterkin. All the others came out in the quotations in those posts.

But anyway, that's nothing. My long initial post, on my spin-off thread on consensus reality, was addressed directly to both you and z, and neither of you came over there to talk to me.

I cried myself to sleep for many nights because of that.

Gnu, I don't really care if you are Bubb.

Fair enough, Flim, but I've realised that I care if you think I'm Bubb. If I'm going to stick around here, I don't want to be under continual suspicion that I'm someone else (especially not Bubb). Can we have a truce ? If you keep your suspicions to yourself, I won't make any jokes about pretending to be him - is that OK ?


Kahalachan said :

College students can be just as scientific as any of the other professors with PhDs.

Hey, I think he's Bubb.



.