Skepticism and The Normal

[Katana]

Oh you had to deal with kilik too?

We have a support group for that...

On another forum, having exhausted his supplies there, kilik was looking for suggestions about new forums that he could flood with "the stockpile of threads" that he has stored up.

I gave him some suggestions:

http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/discussion_list.asp?boardID=82704

http://www.hpathy.com/homeopathyforums/default.asp

http://ehealthforum.com/health/alternative_medicine.html

http://www.chiroweb.com/cgi-bin/ubb/open/Ultimate.cgi

http://www.psychicguild.com/forum/

I can only hope that he takes me up on them.

 

[Ducky]

I think it's works just fine, you appear unable to go into any of the detail, rather, you pick superficially from the top. If you alter your strategy here, I will retract that statement and apologize.

I will not retract my statement and see no point for you to apologise. That would require me to be offended by you. I'm not.

ahhh, close enough, eh? Still have to make me wrong again....

Yet you are the wone saying you were right.

the third value defines unknown. that is what you are missing.

Yet, you again demonstrate that you don't really understand what I am trying to tell you. Either that or you are purposefully trying to force a logical premise where it does not fit.

no, three responses are the LIMIT of the possible outcome.

Wrong again. The possible outcomes are one of the three responses. Not binary. There's three outcomes possible.

'm not asking for them, I am limiting them down down to the two most reasonable outcomes inside of the limit.

Which throws out one of your three possible outcomes. QED.

yes, pages back, your trying to bring up programming to make me wrong. Your trying to link my argument to programming, then define the argument in terms only a programmer could verify, and then use my answer deceptivly to show how three values dont function rationally inside of a dialectic.

I have done nothing deceptive. But you still miss the point. There is a distinct usage of fuzzy logic that would make it clearer to you if you understood the use in programming.

then if what your saying is true, then those that understand ternary logic would not be able to understand the importance of the proposition "We cannot determine for any certainty that WMD are being manufactored and stored in Iraq, therefore we need to allow the UN Inspectors more time, there is no rush for war" in 2003.

Non-Sequitur.

And I'm sorry, I just dont think that those who understand ternary logic are that thoughtless and stupid.

They are not, but nice try.

Now this is most likely true! I am working from a very very conservative understanding of critical thinking, and i dont think many of you are, hence, my opening post.

If by conservative you mean "uneducated" I would agree.

yes, the problem is your assuming I am using ternary logic as the basis of the dialectic.

I assume nothing. You brought it up with your third value.

your not considering my arguments, your not even responding directly to questions like you request I do. You're still cherry picking one or two phrases and trying to highlight them with your claimed understanding of logic, and your simply misapplying your knowledge because you apparently lack understanding.

Please understand the difference between "your" and "you're" before posting in the future. I have cherry picked nothing. I am asking you to clarify and you are still skirting the issue. How do you get a binary answer from a ternary system of logic?

Wasnt it the first prototype internet search engine from the late 19th century?

You demonstrate your ignorance yet again. Please go look up the words you can't spell when you use them next. You may even learn the meaning.

 

[WWHP]

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Attributed to Shopenhauer

 

[Ducky]

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Attributed to Shopenhauer

I am now of the opinion that you are not here to learn anything, nor to discuss anything on any level other than to have someone bow to your self-perceived genius.

I see no interest in further trying to educate you on the things you clearly have no grasp of.

Troll away.

 

[pv+]

Dunno about that pv. Seem to recall you came up with some superb insults for killik without swearing once.

I haven't sworn here once! Have I!
As I recall, back in the mists of time, I think one or two profanities were hurled in the direction of kilik too. Incidentally, I think he also graced the pages of this forum at one time.

However, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, I think the saying goes. While kilik was a prolific cutter and paster and a voracious bandwidth thief, he never directly insulted the forum members. He never once got involved in a discussion of any kind because it was impossible to engage him. He never posted his own thoughts and never responded to anyone else's.
TM/Bubblebreath is a different and altogether nastier piece of work imo; someone who deliberately sets out to provoke, prevaricate, misrepresent and generally be as annoying as he can. It's very difficult to believe he isn't being deliberately obfuscatory. As the good Lord Russell once said, "lack of facts promote an argument", and here at Jref, as when he was at Badscience, we have no facts presented or forthcoming, but plenty of argument (as opposed to debate or discussion). It's interesting that Bubblebath likes to dignify his argumentative exploits by calling them "debates". Is that another of his wind-up tactics? Or is he really that thick?

Maybe the best way to regard the "third value" is to pronounce it with a Southern Irish accent, and we can take the discussion from there.

 

[Buckaroo]

Blah, blah, blah....

Let's go back and look at the main point of your original post, which I take to be :

Why should james randi be held in the highest of standards for determining what is true, false or mystery?

The implication being, of course, that he should not be. See, here's the thing -- while it might apply in the rarefied air of logical formalism, mystery, the third value, whatever you want to call it, DOES NOT APPLY WITHIN THE REALM OF EXISTENCE CLAIMS. These claims are what Randi deals with -- "There exists X." Here's why they don't apply.

This "third value" from your ternary logic system is an imutable category that doesn't exist in the real nut-and-bolts world that Randi and other skeptics deal with. It would require that we cannot, even in principle, verify claims of existence that would possess this value. Otherwise, it is clear that they would actually possess the first or second values. But in the history of human experience there has been no physical phenomenon whose existence we cannot in principle either verify, or say "we don't know." This "we don't know," you would call the third value. But it is not, in that it is not an imutable formal logical category -- it is contingent, and can be overturned at any time. This is why your third value, as I and others have repeatedly pointed out, is only trivially true. Do you understand what this phase means? It means not that I personally don't find it interesting -- it means that it is uninteresting in a broad academic sense. It has no profound ramifications, no matter how you dress it up in highfalutin' language.

And since your premise is that this third value DOES apply, your argument is incorrect.

Are you going to be dishonest here and say that you werent assigning that experience as a similarity?

No, that's NOT a rhetorical question, i would like an honest answer.

OK, I'll bite -- when did YOU stop beating your wife? Seriously, dude, even if that were true, it still wouldn't be a metaphor. It wouldn't even strictly be a simile. You really shouldn't use words you don't understand.

 

[WWHP]

Wow! What's all this 'win-win' woo-woo? Sounds like a Sheldrakian universe... A nice, fluffy fantasyland where nothing is really right or wrong, or true or false, where nondescript beings float in the smug, self-righteous glow of their 'perfect love' and play futile word-games, as they playfully evade attempts to get them to give sound reasons or evidence for their spurious claims. Nice place, just let it wash over you without trying to think about it too much.

Dr Aardwolf,


This discussion is meant to be a critical discussion. If I introduce 'win win' into the discussion, I can assure you I am painting no picture of an alice in wonderland universe like you are suggesting, rather, the win win of the game theorist, Robert Wright, and Buckminster Fuller.

If you wish to personally identify Robert Wright, Bucky Fuller, and Game Theory was woo woo, that is surely your decision to make, however I challenge you that it's not rational.

Things undiscovered are not 'supranatural' or beyond nature but just natural things yet undiscovered,

agreed, what does this have to do with anything and how is this contradictory to what I have written?

"mystery as a value of truth" is by definition always indeterminate and therefore always useless.

I don't think your on the cutting edge of modern scientific and philosophical thought, but if you wish to have it be personally meaningless, that's your choice, I simply argue it's an irrational one.

Richard Dawkins strongly considers the third value

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4676751.stm

And he's obviously no Rupert Sheldrake, eh?

But then, as Randi was accused once, I am somewhat obssessed by reality. That's the stuff that doesn't go away once you stop believing in it, as Philip K Dick once said.

If you are so like you claim, then a big chunk of your reality is pure 'queerness' as Dawkins would mention, yet you fail to aknowledge a rational value for it to i nclude in your integration!

Highly irrational good doctor, highly irrational!

BF

 

[pv+]

Let's go back and look at the main point of your original post...

Or, maybe not.

 

[Dean Morrison]

Let the record state that no evidence has yet to be fully presented inside of the time framegiven. Let the record state that DM as asserted that there is no evidence or testimony that can verify my claim,which has been countered in written argument in a place of public media, and that I shall refrain from making a full retraction until the evidence has been verified to my satisfaction reasonably.

Ah! the old 'obfuscation' ploy.

Or are you going for an 'insanity' defence?

I'd suggest you don't opt to defend yourself since you can't argue your way out of a paper bag old chum...

Incidentally I note this wasn't a promise you could keep for long...

well thank god I'm not in the UK, I stand by my last statement, and i wont come back here til I have this cleared up, what ever the hell that means.

JQH wrote:

Oh and hi PV & Dean. Nice to bump into you here.

nice to see you too JQH...

 

[WWHP]

I am now of the opinion that you are not here to learn anything, nor to discuss anything on any level other than to have someone bow to your self-perceived genius.

I see no interest in further trying to educate you on the things you clearly have no grasp of.

Troll away.

yet another argument crumbles into nothingness. By nothingness I mean absence, as in there is an argument absent in response to my rebuttal.

And as usual, there is complete dishonesty given by my opponent whose argument crumbles, there is the repeated claim of my behavior affecting the absence of the argument.

 

[pv+]

Dr Aardwolf,
This discussion is meant to be a critical discussion. If I introduce 'win win' into the discussion, I can assure you I am painting no picture of an alice in wonderland universe like you are suggesting, rather, the win win of the game theorist, Robert Wright, and Buckminster Fuller.

If you wish to personally identify Robert Wright, Bucky Fuller, and Game Theory was woo woo, that is surely your decision to make, however I challenge you that it's not rational.

Blobbypoo, pretentious name dropping of people you've just looked up on Wikipedia, and whose ideas you can't even spell never mind understand, isn't a substitute for having a brain of your own. It's just more irrelevant drivel.

 

[Dean Morrison]

TM wrote:

I don't think your on the cutting edge of modern scientific and philosophical thought, but if you wish to have it be personally meaningless, that's your choice, I simply argue it's an irrational one.

Richard Dawkins strongly considers the third value

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4676751.stm

And he's obviously no Rupert Sheldrake, eh?

Dawkins was talking about our own limitations in our ability to perceive and understand reality -

seems that some are more challenged than others -

 

[WWHP]

fowlsound, your arguments and responses are getting what appears to me to be more irrational and emotional

For example, I said, in response to you 'cherry picking' your arguments with me;

I think it works [cherry picking] just fine, you appear unable to go into any of the detail, rather, you pick superficially from the top. If you alter your strategy here, I will retract that statement and apologize.

and you irrationally said:

I will not retract my statement and see no point for you to apologise. That would require me to be offended by you. I'm not.

Do you see the confusion there?

If you continue to cherry pick, I am going to continue to bring it to your attention, how's that?

For example, many others, including you, cherry pick where I am wrong all the time when it comes to spelling errors, but you wrote:

Yet you are the wone saying you were right.

So let's say my entire rebuttal, or at least a significant portion of it, focused on your gaffe here spelling 'one'?

That's what I mean by cherry picking. I am going to use this example again at the end of this post.

Yet, you again demonstrate that you don't really understand what I am trying to tell you. Either that or you are purposefully trying to force a logical premise where it does not fit.

I understand perfectly what you're trying to tell me. You're trying to tell me that my arguments don't follow the form of ternary logic, and therefore I am contradictory.

I'm trying to tell you that my arguments follow the rational ternary structure of truth values that are relevant and meaningful to all points of view, all the time, in all environments, and no one has provided with me with contradiction in my arguments, only some vague princaple non related to my argument.

Wrong again. The possible outcomes are one of the three responses. Not binary. There's three outcomes possible.

huh? in a ternary form, you're truth values are limited to true, false, and unknown. in binary form, they are limited to true and false.

please correct me where i am mistaken.

Which throws out one of your three possible outcomes. QED.

yes, for consideration, not existence! can you be a bit more rational please! really, this is absurdity your trying to argue here.

I have done nothing deceptive.

that's not the way it looks to me, but I will reconsider

But you still miss the point. There is a distinct usage of fuzzy logic that would make it clearer to you if you understood the use in programming.

OS 0 1 2 is not fuzzy logic, it's dialectic. I dont understand how this statement of yours is relevant, please explain.

Non-Sequitur.

that was NOT an non-sequitor, it was a CONTRADICTION to your claim!

If by conservative you mean "uneducated" I would agree.

by conservative I mean conserving, conserving the usage of truth to exactly where it applies, without personal opinion or imaginiation subverting it.

I assume nothing. You brought it up with your third value.

You're arguments, if taken at face value, most certainly assume that what I am proposing must be ternary logic, it's how you are trying to refute me!

Do you really wish me to accept your not being deceptive here?

Please understand the difference between "your" and "you're" before posting in the future. I have cherry picked nothing. I am asking you to clarify and you are still skirting the issue.

How am I skirting the issue? I am directly confronting your claims!

How do you get a binary answer from a ternary system of logic?

boolean!

You demonstrate your ignorance yet again. Please go look up the words you can't spell when you use them next. You may even learn the meaning.

like the 'wone' spelling error you made, eh? cherry picking indeed!


BF

 

[WWHP]

Dawkins was talking about our own limitations in our ability to perceive and understand reality -
-

duh! AND SO AM I, and that is what this framework does, it forces us to BE HONEST ABOUT OUR LIMITATIONS CRITICALLY

 

[pv+]

yet another argument crumbles into nothingness. By nothingness I mean absence, as in there is an argument absent in response to my rebuttal.

And as usual, there is complete dishonesty given by my opponent whose argument crumbles, there is the repeated claim of my behavior affecting the absence of the argument.

Blobbrain, thanks for yet another first class example of your rudeness and idiocy, and mindless trolling of your own stupid thread.

JHQ wants to know why I was articulate in my approach to kilik but not to you. Could it be that you just aren't worthy of articulate thought or expression? You are a time-wasting shambolic imbecile, hauling your fraudulent ideas around the Internet just so you can have the pleasure of starting a fight. This buffoonery is the apex of your intellectual achievement, the sum total of your ambition. Once again this forum is reminded of who you are and what you are.

 

[WWHP]

also, my arguments regarding supranatural and supernatural are better defined as 'perinormal' and 'paranormal'

I may be using supranatural inappropiatly and not in the strict sense as my meaning intends.


I state this because I am introducing Richard Dawkins as a critical thinker who to me shows strong evidence of the neccesity of the third value in thinking, as this exchange between James Randi and Richard Dawkins shows

The topic of this article is similar to my own argument:

Skeptical of the Skeptics!

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Dace_amazing3.htm

 

[pv+]

duh! AND SO AM I, and that is what this framework does, it forces us to BE HONEST ABOUT OUR LIMITATIONS CRITICALLY

Nothing seems to force you to be honest about your limitations. But then with your limitations, perhaps nothing could. Idiot!

Tell me Blubberbrain, were you born that way or have you had to work hard to perfect your mind numbing stupidity?

 

[pv+]

I may be using supranatural inappropiatly and not in the strict sense as my meaning intends.http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Dace_amazing3.htm

Actually, Bubbleblabber, you are using the entire alphabet inappropriately!

 

[Jeff Corey]

...princaple non related to my argument....
...you're truth values...
please correct me where i am mistaken.....
.. I dont understand... an non-sequitor,... or imaginiation subverting it.
You're arguments...

Gosh darn, I am sure glad my studints knows how to spell non sequitur, principle, imagination and also knows the difference between "your" and "you're". And know where to place that apostrophe thang. And don't put no "an" in front of a word which starts with a consonant.

 

[WWHP]

Let's go back and look at the main point of your original post, which I take to be :

no, the main point of my original post is that many critical arguments crumble into nothingness when considering the third value, that is my main point, not an ancedotal comment about randi.

The implication being, of course, that he should not be. See, here's the thing -- while it might apply in the rarefied air of logical formalism, mystery, the third value, whatever you want to call it, DOES NOT APPLY WITHIN THE REALM OF EXISTENCE CLAIMS. These claims are what Randi deals with -- "There exists X." Here's why they don't apply.

You just said that the third value is not relevant, and, allow me to quote; DOES NOT APPLY WITHIN THE REALM OF EXISTENCE CLAIMS.

Which I counter my with WMD argument, which is an example of one of the arguments that crumble into nothingness.

So address my arguments, not you're false interpretation of my main point

This "third value" from your ternary logic system is an imutable category that doesn't exist in the real nut-and-bolts world that Randi and other skeptics deal with.

Tell that to Richard Dawkins, who warned James Randi that he may have to relenquish his prize due to peri-normal phenomena.

I would suggest James Randi update his application definitions real soon!

It would require that we cannot, even in principle, verify claims of existence that would possess this value.

you're assuming that the value is on the object, and not in the perception of the observer. True and false are both values not on the objects either, they also are inside the perception of the observer.

Dialectic relates logic to the observer.

Otherwise, it is clear that they would actually possess the first or second values. But in the history of human experience there has been no physical phenomenon whose existence we cannot in principle either verify, or say "we don't know."

ever hear of dark matter? how about consciousness?

how do we know that UFO's are not purely mysterious objects that we many never be able to determine what they are?

Besides, this is almost ancedotal, the third value does not belong to individual things, it belongs to our minds like true and false does.

so in that light, the universe in it's comprehensive entirety could be said to be pure mystery, we can never own all the information all the time.

This "we don't know," you would call the third value. But it is not, in that it is not an imutable formal logical category -- it is contingent, and can be overturned at any time.

it can be overturned in an instance, but not in existence, for if one mystery is uncovered, surely another one remains, eh? and surely both a true and false value can also be overturned at any time based on further investigation.

This is why your third value, as I and others have repeatedly pointed out, is only trivially true.

It's about as trivial as the argument over WMD in 2003.

Do you understand what this phase means?

yes, it means it's not useful in critical thinking in relationship to how you mean it.

It means not that I personally don't find it interesting -- it means that it is uninteresting in a broad academic sense.

Well Richard Dawkins disagrees with you as well as me

It has no profound ramifications, no matter how you dress it up in highfalutin' language.

it's only ramification is 'we dont know'.

And since your premise is that this third value DOES apply, your argument is incorrect.

my arguments are related to James Randi's steorn claim and WMD, your not addressing my arguments

Seriously, dude, even if that were true, it still wouldn't be a metaphor. It wouldn't even strictly be a simile. You really shouldn't use words you don't understand.

you didnt answer my question, and I'm not married, so again, hehe, your METAPHOR doesnt apply